Cover photo by Denver Public Library Western History Collection

High Stakes Game in Colorado

Historic mining towns are betting their future on revenue from slot machines, blackjack, and poker to preserve old buildings and keep their economies alive.

By GILLIAN KLUCAS

Driving into Black Hawk, Colo., just past the sign identifying it as a national historic landmark district, the visitor is confronted with a vibrant rendition of a tropical bird affixed to a glitzy, Caribbean-inspired casino perplexingly called the Isle of Capri. Its huge parking garage has been gouged into a hillside. Next to the Capri sits the Riviera, another casino with a theme jarringly inappropriate to its Rocky Mountain setting. Up the street are four more large, modern buildings, all promising the flashing lights and ding, ding, ding of slot machines inside. Just 40 miles west of Denver, the old mining town of Black Hawk (pop. 100) attracts more than 100,000 gamblers a week.

A mile up the road lies Central City. To the casual observer, this charming Victorian mining town looks much as it did in the 1870s: brick buildings with high, arched windows, narrow streets, frame houses, and stone churches. Behind the facades, however, many of its buildings have been converted to accommodate casinos, although not the grandiose sort found down the road. But Black Hawk's evident prosperity has eluded Central City: the streets are nearly deserted and For Sale signs lean against the dusty windows of its historic buildings. The casino spectacle down the gulch is the distraction that short-stops gamblers from the interstate, and to the sort of visitor who once sought out Central City for its historical authenticity, this second town is tainted by its association with slots. The irony is that Central City embraced gambling as a last-ditch effort to preserve its historic structures.

The two towns' different approaches to preservation and gambling—Black Hawk's near indifference to historic integrity and Central City's attempt to control casino development and minimize gambling's architectural impact—have pitted these communities against each other, and the outcome has affected historic preservation throughout Colorado.

For more of this story, subscribe to the magazine, look for the September/October 2003 issue on newsstands, or e-mail us to purchase a copy.

Read more excerpts from our current issue.