American Road Trip Talk 03-06-26 Journey to the Top of the Rockies in Colorado's Lake County

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The horizon is wide and the highway is calling. That means it's time for another episode of

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Welcome to American Road Trip Talk. We're always happy to have you along for the ride.

Adam Disharm, thank you so much sir for joining us. You have such a great place to enjoy.

It's great. I'm honored to talk to you today. Yeah, so my name is Adam Disharm,

and I'm the Tourism and Economic Development Director for Lake County, which is a Leadville in Twin

Lakes. So I'm the Destination Marketing Organization representative for Visitor Leadville Twin

Lakes, and I'm the top of the rocky scenic byway coordinator and I have been for four years now.

Top of the Rockies. I'd like to hear more about that organization. Wow, what a great connection.

That would be some good people to work for. Yeah, yeah, it's a fun, it's a fun group.

Okay, so how extensive is your experience and how did you come upon this organization there

because I imagine those kinds of jobs don't grow on trees there and it's you know your qualifications,

your bone of feedays would be super important. Sure. Yeah, so my background is I was actually born

in roommate of the Silver Lake Motel in Falmouth, Massachusetts. So I've lived and worked in

hospitality kind of my entire life. I've done every job you can do in the hospitality industry

from bus boy to night auditor to running, you know, being a general manager of a resort in Lincoln

New Hampshire, which is a it's a small resort community that is pretty similar to Leadville, Colorado.

Then I had about a 20 year stint in filmmaking and was super fortunate to travel all over the

world that worked mostly in sort of travel and nature and food documentary filmmaking and then

when I started to have a family ended up in in Leadville, Colorado and I was still doing filmmaking

at the time, but you know, we have some pretty unique weather in Lake County. We have you know,

we average about 400 inches of snow this year has been a little different, but on general we

we get a lot of snow up there. So I got stuck on the wrong side of the Eisenhower tunnel.

One too many times coming back from Denver from a trip and I said I need to find some local work

and at that time now this is right sort of at the height of COVID and people were coming out of

quarantine and they wanted to get outside desperately. So we saw 46% increase in visitation

in 2022 and 2021 to Lead County to Leadville and Twin Lakes at the time. So the community actually

created the first ever tourism director position and yeah, given my background, I was I applied and

was chosen to become the first tourism director and with that I sort of I actually kind of inherited

the top of the rocky scenic byway role. At the time they're you know with COVID and everything

going on there was kind of a leadership vacuum sort of in that role and so I stepped into that role

and that was a little bit unique at the time because in the past or you know more traditionally

scenic byways tend to have sort of a stand-alone board or sort of stand-alone leadership, but

our top of the rocky scenic byway is a little different. If you're not that familiar with it,

it actually incorporates Lake County, well I'll name the places that incorporates because that's

easier, but basically it is Mintern, Red Cliff, Leadville, Twin Lakes all the way down the

copper all the way over to Aspen and and right over to the border with Chafee County. So rather than

being sort of a byway or a stretch of road that is sort of through one county or one jurisdiction,

there are multiple jurisdictions that sort of encompass the top of the rocky scenic byway and

you know it's one of the more beautiful drives I think in the country. I mean it criss-crosses the

continental divide three times. Anyone who's not familiar with Independence Pass, it's pretty stunning

drive and so it's a pretty massive asset for all of our communities and sort of have the

representation from my organization. Visit Leadville Twin Lakes was a great opportunity and you know

we have Independence Pass and sort of the village of Twin Lakes in Lake County so it was kind of a

no-brainer for me and pretty shortly after sort of I started my job in my role is when Camp Hale

was designated as a national monument and that is also along the top of the rocky scenic byway so

Camp Hale of course has all of the history with the 10th Mountain Division in World War II so it's

a pretty special place and a pretty special part of the Colorado Rockies so you know it's been

it's been a pleasure to sort of be a part of the organizational pleasure and an honor I'm quite

sure yeah yeah and you know with the with Camp Hale you know again that World War II history and

sort of I mean the 10th Mountain Division was fairly critical in terms of sort of changing the

course and changing the history of World War II and we do actually every single year they do a

commemorative ski at ski Cooper which is also in Lake County and that is always an honor to go out

there and get a chance to ski with folks who are current and former 10th Mountain Division soldiers

and just sort of feel the reverence and sort of feel the history of and the importance of sort of

that landscape because that was the original training grounds for soldiers during World War II

who up to that point we did not have anything close to an Alpine Division and the US Army just

didn't really have the the training and the capacity to be able to deal with some of the harsh

mountainous environments that they experience in Italy when they when they finally went you know

onto the battlefield so it's it's yeah it's pretty special and pretty unique and has this mix of

sort of history and culture and natural beauty that makes it a pretty wonderful place.

I remember the legend of what was on legend with the the history of Tobruk

there and having to scale those cliffs. That's right. I mean war is hell you know no no enemy goes

out of the way to make it convenient unless they're blunt. Yeah that's right that's right that's right

and it's interesting to the uniforms because when you get up into those northerly climbs

well not I noticed that among the Germans particularly but I'm sure we had our own

way of adapting they started to wear a lot of white they don't want to be easy targets there so

you're blending into the atmosphere and I remember they would have these officers and they'd

have these white coats around when I'm sure we had our answer to that because you don't want to

make yourself an easy target obviously. Yeah yeah we have we actually have quite a few artifacts

in in our community and sort of commemorating 10th Mountain Division and that's a visitor center

which is right on Harrison Avenue which is right on our main street we actually have an exhibit

that commemorates the 10th Mountain Division in Camp Hale and you're 100% correct everything

it's all white all the equipment was white in fact the skis were white the snow shoes were painted

white everything was was that white color and yeah I think one of my favorite stories of

sort of that that time period and sort of the initiation or the initial attack that the 10th

Mountain Division was in gate when they engaged when the Allies engaged in in the war in Italy is

they planned to do to do a big push to do a big sort of mountain hike and they wanted to do it

in the cover darkness and they wanted to be as quiet as possible and be able to take out guards

and they're actually in Denver at History Colorado there was an exhibit that they had for quite

some time that commemorated Camp Hale in the 10th Mountain Division and they actually had the

original bow and arrow the first arrow that was shot and they and it's cracked you know because

they they it was actually a soldier from New Hampshire who is an excellent archer and in order to

not sort of alert the enemy that of their presence the first shot that rang out was actually

from a bow and arrow and from a skilled archer and they actually still have that original arrow

they had an on display at that exhibit and that collection has since been retired but pieces

of that collection are actually on display at another facility that History Colorado owns

currently and as well as in Denver they have a really a large exhibit right now commemorating

ledville's Irish heritage because ledville at one point during the mining peaks the mining

of the late 1800s the largest concentration of Irish immigrants other than Boston, Massachusetts

which is actually originally where I'm from the highest concentration of Irish immigrants

in the United States was in ledville Colorado sort of doing the mining up there so we have some

pretty deep ties to Ireland in our community and we actually have a sister city in Ireland

that you know we have a great relationship with and we have we actually have two St. Patrick's

state parades we have a St. Patrick's state parade and then we also have a you know halfway

through the year we do what we call a practice parade and it's remarkable it's right down Harrison

Avenue and we have bagpipes and just it's a big celebration of our Irish heritage so I didn't

hear anything about green beer but it must be there oh absolutely absolutely yeah yeah set the

the silver dollar saloon so yeah the silver dollar saloon which is actually one of the oldest

you know there's always sort of people who will die for the title but you know on paper

one of the one of the oldest saloons in the United States the silver dollar saloon is still open

and operational right on Harrison Avenue and it's pretty remarkable they actually have the old

the original bar top and they also have the original glass that has real gold in it that came

imported from China that's behind the bar and if you haven't been to the silver dollar saloon it's

it's like a step back in time it's worth a visit I do I like those areas that preserve their past

and invite you to come and enjoy that's a lot of the appeal on this program we do a lot of shows

regarding Route 66 there so we have an admiration really a reverence if you will therefore the past

and a great deal of respect for the people who want to preserve it so that we can step back in time

otherwise it's lost forever and that's it's an experience that people should miss

particularly if you are parents and grandparents more especially taking the grandkids there to

experience something as a step back in time are heritage because that way it isn't lost you've got

the stories a lot of it's in the stories and the recollections so that it becomes part of the

collective memory through the generations absolutely yeah we're we're that's probably one of the

things about our scenic byway that I really appreciate the most is that there's a number of

interpretive panels along the byway that commemorate our mining history we have ghosts we have ghost

towns so we have the ghost town of independence that's straight up off the top of independence past

but we also in our community we have the National Mining Museum in Hall of Fame so that commemorates

the mining heritage of this area dating all the way back to 1860 when they actually found gold first

and they found a negative gold in California gulch that the original prospectors they claimed

that they held in their hands more gold than had been mined in an entire year in the state of California

and after that discovery seven thousand miners came up and over mosquito pass and into the Arkansas

River Valley to start mining that area and pretty quickly they realized that there were

as many deposits of gold as they thought but they had the good fortune of discovering that one of

the larger reserves of silver in the United States was discovered there and this was pivotal

and pretty critical when the US currency was silver backed so one of the largest concentrations

of wealth in the United States at one point was in the Arkansas River Valley and in in Leadville

so we had 40,000 people living in in the city of Leadville at its peak we currently have 2,500

so it's pretty wild to think about 40,000 people living on top of each other in essentially a one

square mile area but they made it happen and you know as I mentioned many of those folks were

of were Irish immigrants and we actually have a we actually have an Irish memorial that is in

Evergreen Cemetery and it actually names all of the immigrants because at the time many of the

immigrants you know they were day laborers so when they were buried they were buried in pine boxes

and Gallo graves and many of them were not named so there's actually indents kind of in the soil

where the boxes have actually decomposed and sort of honor those folks they've actually created a

memorial and named all of the immigrants and so we do get quite a few folks who travel along the

top of the rocky scenic by way to come to that memorial and honor their ancestors so yeah that's

very true in our community entirely they're entirely worthy of that recognition and to be part of

the collective memory no doubt about it on this program we love to talk about well ghosts certainly

but ghost towns absolutely just as much yeah but in terms of the the ghost towns at them tell us

about the ones that are best known and particularly those that are reachable because I mean if

they're not accessible it's going to be only the intrepid to go there and if they're too accessible

then you've got a big tourist trap you know yeah sure the idea sure what about those that retain

their authenticity through a natural preservation and decay Bodhi in California is an example of that

letting decay naturally and it's to whatever degree open to visit there how about the area

that you're talking about sure yeah so the top of the rocky scenic by way is actually a pretty

unique offering in that regard because independence the town of independence as I mentioned it's

actually it was a mining camp or a town that was constructed literally at the top of independence

pass so we're talking I think it's that 12,000 feet and it it it experiences pretty severe weather

and so to access the continental divide which is right there in the top of independence pass it's

actually only open from right around Memorial Day to right around Labor Day so that's a naturally

limiting factor but it's also up at such a high elevation and it's literally you know on the

side of a mountain so it doesn't actually you can see every aspect of it from your vehicle

but also you can park and you can go explore it but it does not have that sort of tourist

trap field because you know there's an element of natural selection in terms of folks who are

willing to go along independence pass because you know it's the type of drive and the type of road

that no vehicle over 35 feet is allowed and you know you you kind of have to have your wits about

you as you're driving but it is again you know we talked about the million dollar highway and some

of these more well-known drives this independence passes a breathtaking drive in fact it's it's one

of the reasons why I ended up moving to Lake County is just doing that drive and when I was a

filmmaker I was there on a film shoot and it was just breathtaking so put that so you have

the town of independence and then if you go in if you travel into the village of Twin Lakes which

is part of unincorporated Lake County you have the interlock in hotel and the Dexter cabins and

the village itself is actually made up of sort of a collection of old mining cabins but also old

historic hotels and features that again there was so much wealth generation in Leadville sort of

during the mining boom that Twin Lakes was kind of the respite you know it's 20 minutes down the road

but again that's 20 minutes driving and at that time it was it was mostly transport was usually

through burrows and then eventually through freight you know trains so for in order to sort of

explore these artifacts you know you have to do I think it's a half a mile hike to the to the

interlock in hotel but it's one of the most popular hikes in central Colorado because it is flat

and it is accessible and then you could actually go into the old hotel and see how it was set up

but you know it's a few rooms and and pretty simple but the Dexter cabin is actually the Twin

Lakes visitor center so that's a pretty nice sort of you get to really experience history and kind

of be in the cabin and touch it see it feel it but it's right there and then the other one I'll

mention is the route of the silver tings so that actually is a drive that you can do it's on the

east side of Leadville and you can take your car and then you can get out and walk and it's connected

into the mineral belt trail which is a 12 mile paved trail that you can walk or bike or in the winter

you can ski and snowshoe it and there's interpretive signage all over the place that sort of lays out

the mining history and talks about the headbrains and talks about sort of each one of the mining

clings and who owned it and what you know where that wealth ended up and things like that so yeah

those those again the thing that I love the most and appreciate about the top of the rocky scenic

byway as well as sort of Leadville Twin Lakes is that the history is is not gated off it's not

behind a velvet rope it is something that you can touch and see and please don't take it with you

right because there's also that that harm of you know we we have we have a really really deep

connection in that in the Arkansas River Valley to the youth the southern youth Native American tribes

so we're always trying to inform folks that the history is there for you to enjoy and kind of

explore but just try and have as much respect and reverence for it as you can yes it will you

on one trip to Hawaii we went to my partner and I went to to Maui there and there if you go

to the right places you can get a black sand beach there and the tradition there with Madam

Paley according to legend is that you don't take anything away from her you don't you don't you

don't take your souvenirs because they will bring you misfortune there so you know call me

superstitious but I abided by the local custom absolutely shook the dust off the bottom of my shoe

so I wasn't taking anything and had an attitude of of respect so at the very least if you're there

you're on sacred ground and there are still sacred sites there where I forget the Hawaiian name but

they are around where rituals were performed these are hallowed grounds there and if you're

any kind of responsible citizen to say nothing of being a good tourist you're going to honor the

local customs and respect the land no matter what absolutely yeah that's a huge that's a huge

piece for us you know around 75% of the top of the rocky scenic byway is on Forest Service lands

and and or national monument land you know with the 10 10 mile wilderness so we really try and

impress upon people that you know this is really a fragile ecosystem it's a pretty it's a most of

the top of the rocky scenic byways is located on a pretty pretty critical wildlife habitat corridor

and we do have everything from boreal toads to bald eagles to you know foxes and links and bear

and now wolves so it's it's pretty important that people kind of number one from a safety standpoint

make sure that you know you're driving with sort of that heads up attitude to make sure that you're

not going to have an unfortunate interaction with wildlife but also just understanding that you're

very much in a wild space that is critical wilderness so it is a big part of the work that we do

at the top of the rocky scenic byway is to make sure that you know we're focused on destination

stewardship and and sort of trying to preserve this place because you know as I always say if you

don't preserve the area that you're visiting then there's no place for you to come back and visit

so you know some of these more remote locations yeah we really try and impress that upon our visitors

were the wolves reintroduced yeah that's correct yeah the Colorado Parks and Wildlife started the

wolf reintroduction program two years ago now and they started obviously they started in a pretty

small footprint but they've expanded their range at this point they meaning the wolves themselves

and they're they're most of the wool all of the wolves are fixed with trackers and at this point

I would say every you know every inch of the top of the rocky scenic byway off off of the road

obviously has been sort of explored by the wolves at this point I love the sound of that but at night

you must hear some wonderful cries yeah but yeah we do have we we have a healthy coyote population as

well in our area in the Arkansas River Valley not as much obviously up in the mountains but

you know in in the valley itself so yeah you you certainly can you know I myself have seen

links with prints I haven't seen a wolf but I've heard you know you hear anecdotes from community

members who have who have at a distance seen wolves but we definitely have interactions with black

bears and and you know obviously elk and moose and deer and we have we have you know pretty healthy

populations of wildlife it's in documentaries and you're a documentarian I admire you and envy you

for that there's I'm one of those people that loves a good documentary I'll take that over a good

movie most of the time as a matter of fact drama has its place comedy certainly they're in that's

wonderful but I love documentaries if they are well made now Ken Burns is the Sankhanol

of their master there however there are many others who put together some flying documentaries

there and there you're you're seeing I'm using a fancy term cinema very David you're not really

trying to simulate reality you're offering reality it's a raw slice that you know I think back

in for example I'm sure you've seen it the grizzly man yes there yeah and that was oh my goodness

yeah well yeah he found out the hard way you could get that's right and you go in there because

if you go into a space like that make your energy positive I took away from that program and

I'm sure it's good advice for anyone visiting your area they're don't go in with a bad attitude

animals are remarkably sensitive to energies in other creatures humans are no exception

yeah absolutely no I think we you know the the thing that I always try and press upon anyone

you know whether you're in your car or on a hiking trail etc is that you know we have to have

a deep sense of reverence for these places these wild spaces and the the quote that I love from a

a local guide in our community is that sometimes when people get into wild spaces they let their guard

down because I think a lot of time people come from suburban or met more metropolitan areas where

they're always on guard and then they get into these wild spaces and they kind of assume like okay

there's nothing else to no one else around so I can kind of let my guard down but the reality is

that in these you know sort of more pristine especially fragile ecosystems right we're up we're

ledville is the highest incorporated city at 10,200 feet and we have the two highest 14ers that's

a 14,000-foot peak we have Mount Alberta about massive which are the two two highest 14,000-foot

peaks they're in our community so they are home to some of the most fragile ecosystems we have

cryptobiotic soil where if you take one step on cryptobiotic soil you will actually destroy soil

that has been developing for thousands of years and there's a fragile ecosystem of

living things that rely on that soil so I always say that you know please don't let your guard down

and that doesn't well I'm not when I say don't let your guard down it just means have respect and

have reverence for the fact that you you know even though you don't see any trash around you or

even though you don't see you know other fire rings just recognize the impact that you're having

on the environment Adam Disharm thank you so much sir for joining us very illuminating I learned

a whole bunch during this episode I'm grateful to you and it'd be nice to be out there some

diet someday and meet you personally don't know whether that will ever happen but my envy will

persist that you have such a great place to enjoy and from which you can make a pretty decent living

it's great yeah an honor to talk to you today thanks so much yeah please come out and visit us and

yeah thank you so much for the opportunity you're welcome and thank you ladies and gentlemen

for tuning into American Road Trip Talk along with Thomas and Becky Rep co-founders of American

Road magazine we remind you to visit our website americanroadmagazine.com to preview the current

issue until next time dream well and drive safely on the American Road

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