City: Boulder, CO

Category: Relocation

Address: 23 miles from Boulder

Description: An 1890s gold strike brought 4,000 people to this greatest gold camp of northern Colorado. Ward merits a footnote to Colorado history, for this is where silver baron (and briefly U.S. Senator) Horace Tabor served as a postmaster toward the end of his life, which he passed in unaccustomed poverty. During the boom, $5 million in gold was taken from veins around Ward, but by 1930 the mines died out, and only three residents stayed behind. Hippies arrived in the 1960s, and many of them have never left; persistent rumors put heiress Patti Hearst in a commune near Ward when she was on the run with the SLA. It’s still a place of shaggy hair and beards to match, fringed vests, and love beads. On weekends, intrepid Lycra-clad bicyclists perch outside the general store, with great pride, sucking up cold mineral water and swapping stories about their 23-mile ride from Boulder to reach the hilly streets of Ward. Tourists gaze at the rustic buildings, their colors as faded as sand-washed jeans, within the thick mountain forests. The old Ward School, now the town hall and post office, is typical of wood-framed rural schoolhouses.Ward has an honor-system public library and a general store. The Millsite Inn (see the Restaurants chapter) sits above town on the Peak to Peak Highway (Highway 72), about 8 miles north of Nederland. The beautiful alpine hiking area around Brainard Lake is just west of Ward.