Nestled tightly into at one end of the Roaring Fork Valley in central Colorado, things could have worked out very differently for the former mining town known as Aspen.

At the peak of the silver boom in the early 1890's, Aspen was riding high. Home to over 12000 people, silver prices were stable and with the mines producing 17% of the US silver the town flourished. Civic buildings such as the Wheeler Opera House and the Town Hall were constructed and the stores and bars of downtown profited throughout the boom years. And then it ended.

The abolishment of the silver standard in 1893 saw prices tumble, and not even the discovery of the largest single nugget of silver shortly afterwards could lure people back to the mines. The coming decades were hard for the Roaring Fork economy, revenues from agricultural production never matched the silver years, and Aspen's population shrunk dramatically, with the Victorian heart of downtown beginning the fall into disrepair.

It wasn't until the 1930's that things once again began to pick up. Plans originally centred upon developing one of the peaks deep into the Aspen backcountry but the first trail was eventually cut down the front side of Ajax, and the rest, as they say, is history.