What To Do

Home > What To Do > Winter Activities > Historic Tours

Historical Tours and Museums


	Historic Walking Tour Tuesday - Saturday 10am and 2pm; Sunday 10 am (Summer season) Meet at the Welcome Center, Blue River Plaza, Breckenridge Visit the 1880 Alice G. Milne House and the 1896 W.H. Briggle House. See the earliest homes in town, from log cabins to stately residences. Learn about Breckenridge’s commercial history and see the buildings that housed the bank, stores, offices, barbershop, theater, restaurants, saloons and hotels. Also included on the tour are churches, the courthouse and school. Breckenridge Welcome Center Part information center, part historical museum, the 4,000 sq. ft. facility opened the summer of 2006. Built around a 19th Century log cabin, which was likely someone’s home, was fully exposed and renovated so the public can walk along the same floorboards and run their hands along the same hand-hewn beams that miners touched more than a century ago. The cabin has now become an interpretive museum featuring displays on life in Breckenridge in the 1880s. The Breckenridge Welcome Center also includes multimedia displays highlighting the town’s history from its days as an Indian settlement to a gold-mining mecca to Victorian ski village. Barney Ford House Museum Museum Hours: Daily 11am - 4pm This house museum is an 1880s Victorian Home restored to tell the story of the original owner and former slave, Barney Ford. Tours are available year-round. Edwin Carter Museum Museum Hours: Daily 11am - 4pm Built in 1875 to house a growing collection of Rocky Mountain Flora and Fauna by "Professor" Edwin Carter, the Summit Historical Society's walking tour in the summer stops here and welcomes visitors year round. Mountain Top Children's Museum This engaging children's museum offers exhibits, camps and workshops year-round for kids of all ages. Valley Brook Cemetery The first cemetery in Breckenridge was just southwest of the Broken Lance Road/State Highway 9 intersection at the south end of town. All but one of those early graves,that of Baby Eberlein, were moved to Valley Brook Cemetery in 1882. In 1997, the infant girl’s grave was moved next to the graves of her mother and brother in the Masonic section of the cemetery. Washington Gold and Silver Mine Tours: Tuesday - Saturday 10am and 2pm; Sunday 10 am (Summer season) The Washington Mine, operated as a "hardrock" or "lode" gold and silver mine beginning in the early 1880s, provides an excellent example of the methods, equipment, lifestyles and hardships of the underground mining era of Summit County. Once gold and silver were discovered in the mountains of Summit County in the late 1870s, literally hundreds of underground mines of all sizes and descriptions sprang up in areas such as Breckenridge, Montezuma, Frisco and surrounding regions. The mine is located in Illinois Gulch on Barney Ford Hill, just south of Breckenridge off Boreas Pass Road. Lomax Placer Mine Tours: Tuesday - Saturday 10am and 2pm; Sunday 10 am (Summer season) The Lomax Mine was a hydraulic placer mining operation active in the 1860s near downtown Breckenridge. The current site includes about five acres. Placer mining methods were used to recover gold nuggets and flakes that had been eroded from the rocks of the surrounding mountains and had been deposited in streams and rivers. Since gold is a very heavy mineral, it tended to sink to the lower layers of gravels and other stream sediments. The Lomax Mine is located at 301 Ski Hill Road on the way to the Peak 9 ski lift area. Iowa Hill Tours Saturday 1pm (Summer season) This two-story, log boardinghouse was built in 1876 to house miners who worked at Colonel A.J. Ware’s Iowa Hill Placer Gold Mine. Old newspapers, found on the walls of the structure before it was renovated, attest to the date of construction. The building’s seven multi-paned windows provide sufficient interior light. The large, sparsely-furnished structure has two doors and a corrugated galvanized-tin roof. The boardinghouse is perched on the side of a hill, and visitors need only look down the hill to see the effects of hydraulic mining on the environment. Rotary Snowplow Park Tours: Tuesday - Sunday 11am - 3pm (Summer season) In the years before there were snowplows as we know them, there were rotary snowplows, huge machines who’s giant, snow-blowing and cutting fans or blades cleared narrow-gauge railroad tracks, throwing snow 30 feet away on both sides of the rails. These behemoths relied on as many as four to six steam-driven locomotives to push them up the steep grades of Boreas and Fremont passes, for the rotaries’ boilers were used solely to turn their circular blades. The Rotary Snowplow is located near the intersection of Colorado Highway 9 (Main Street, Breckenridge) and Boreas Pass Road. Red, White and Blue Fire House Museum Tours: Saturdays 1pm - 4pm (Summer season) Although the name is patriotic, Red, White and Blue originates from three different fire companies that were organized in 1882 to protect the mining district of Breckenridge after three large fires almost destroyed the town. The three companies were the Red: The Pioneer Hook and Ladder Company, White: The Independent Hose Company, and Blue: The Blue River Hose Company. Collectively, they were called the Red, White and Blue Volunteer Fire Department. The Fire House Museum is housed in an historical two-story residence with its original stained glass windows featuring authentic fire-fighting equipment

Historic Walking Tour

Tuesday - Saturday 10am and 2pm; Sunday 10 am (Summer season) Meet at the Welcome Center, Blue River Plaza, Breckenridge

Visit the 1880 Alice G. Milne House and the 1896 W.H. Briggle House. See the earliest homes in town, from log cabins to stately residences. Learn about Breckenridge’s commercial history and see the buildings that housed the bank, stores, offices, barbershop, theater, restaurants, saloons and hotels. Also included on the tour are churches, the courthouse and school.

Breckenridge Welcome Center

Part information center, part historical museum, the 4,000 sq. ft. facility opened the summer of 2006. Built around a 19th Century log cabin, which was likely someone’s home, was fully exposed and renovated so the public can walk along the same floorboards and run their hands along the same hand-hewn beams that miners touched more than a century ago. The cabin has now become an interpretive museum featuring displays on life in Breckenridge in the 1880s. The Breckenridge Welcome Center also includes multimedia displays highlighting the town’s history from its days as an Indian settlement to a gold-mining mecca to Victorian ski village.

Barney Ford House Museum

Museum Hours: Daily 11am - 4pm

This house museum is an 1880s Victorian Home restored to tell the story of the original owner and former slave, Barney Ford. Tours are available year-round.

Edwin Carter Museum

Museum Hours: Daily 11am - 4pm

Built in 1875 to house a growing collection of Rocky Mountain Flora and Fauna by "Professor" Edwin Carter, the Summit Historical Society's walking tour in the summer stops here and welcomes visitors year round.

Mountain Top Children's Museum

This engaging children's museum offers exhibits, camps and workshops year-round for kids of all ages.

Valley Brook Cemetery

The first cemetery in Breckenridge was just southwest of the Broken Lance Road/State Highway 9 intersection at the south end of town. All but one of those early graves,that of Baby Eberlein, were moved to Valley Brook Cemetery in 1882. In 1997, the infant girl’s grave was moved next to the graves of her mother and brother in the Masonic section of the cemetery.

Washington Gold and Silver Mine

Tours: Tuesday - Saturday 10am and 2pm; Sunday 10 am (Summer season)

The Washington Mine, operated as a "hardrock" or "lode" gold and silver mine beginning in the early 1880s, provides an excellent example of the methods, equipment, lifestyles and hardships of the underground mining era of Summit County. Once gold and silver were discovered in the mountains of Summit County in the late 1870s, literally hundreds of underground mines of all sizes and descriptions sprang up in areas such as Breckenridge, Montezuma, Frisco and surrounding regions. The mine is located in Illinois Gulch on Barney Ford Hill, just south of Breckenridge off Boreas Pass Road.

Lomax Placer Mine

Tours: Tuesday - Saturday 10am and 2pm; Sunday 10 am (Summer season)

The Lomax Mine was a hydraulic placer mining operation active in the 1860s near downtown Breckenridge. The current site includes about five acres. Placer mining methods were used to recover gold nuggets and flakes that had been eroded from the rocks of the surrounding mountains and had been deposited in streams and rivers. Since gold is a very heavy mineral, it tended to sink to the lower layers of gravels and other stream sediments. The Lomax Mine is located at 301 Ski Hill Road on the way to the Peak 9 ski lift area.

Iowa Hill Tours

Saturday 1pm (Summer season)

This two-story, log boardinghouse was built in 1876 to house miners who worked at Colonel A.J. Ware’s Iowa Hill Placer Gold Mine. Old newspapers, found on the walls of the structure before it was renovated, attest to the date of construction. The building’s seven multi-paned windows provide sufficient interior light. The large, sparsely-furnished structure has two doors and a corrugated galvanized-tin roof. The boardinghouse is perched on the side of a hill, and visitors need only look down the hill to see the effects of hydraulic mining on the environment.

Rotary Snowplow Park

Tours: Tuesday - Sunday 11am - 3pm (Summer season)

In the years before there were snowplows as we know them, there were rotary snowplows, huge machines who’s giant, snow-blowing and cutting fans or blades cleared narrow-gauge railroad tracks, throwing snow 30 feet away on both sides of the rails. These behemoths relied on as many as four to six steam-driven locomotives to push them up the steep grades of Boreas and Fremont passes, for the rotaries’ boilers were used solely to turn their circular blades. The Rotary Snowplow is located near the intersection of Colorado Highway 9 (Main Street, Breckenridge) and Boreas Pass Road.

Red, White and Blue Fire House Museum

Tours: Saturdays 1pm - 4pm (Summer season)

Although the name is patriotic, Red, White and Blue originates from three different fire companies that were organized in 1882 to protect the mining district of Breckenridge after three large fires almost destroyed the town. The three companies were the Red: The Pioneer Hook and Ladder Company, White: The Independent Hose Company, and Blue: The Blue River Hose Company. Collectively, they were called the Red, White and Blue Volunteer Fire Department. The Fire House Museum is housed in an historical two-story residence with its original stained glass windows featuring authentic fire-fighting equipment