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11 Most Endangered
Black Hawk & Central City
Year Listed: 1998
Location: , Colorado
Current Status: Endangered
Threat: Development
Significance
In the 1850s, people flocked to these small Rocky Mountain settlements in search of gold. When the boom was over the towns went into decline, but they managed to retain many of their historic buildings as they slipped into decades of economic slumber. The wake-up call came in 1990, when Colorado voters legalized gambling to attract visitors and revive the towns' struggling economies. The first gambling establishments were small and installed in historic buildings, but the pace and scale of gambling-related development have increased dramatically in the past years. Officials in Central City recently approved a casino structure 12 stories high and 900 feet long, with a floor area 100 times larger than its historic neighbors. In Black Hawk and Central City, historic resources are increasingly viewed as liabilities rather than assets. Boom times are back, but the price of prosperity is the loss of irreplaceable remnants of Colorado's colorful mining history.
Updates
In starkly different ways, casino development continues to threaten historic resources in these two former mining communities west of Denver. Large-scale casino construction has transformed Black Hawk, once the smaller of the two towns, into a booming Las Vegas-style gambling resort. Hotel rooms are being added to many of the new casino projects; structures as high as 30 stories are now in development. Several historic homes have been relocated from the commercial district to an area near the border with Central City. One older home in the commercial district that has not yet been moved is the Lace House, a Carpenter Gothic-style landmark that was built in 1866. It stands isolated on a pile of dirt, surrounded by scraped hillsides and parking lots. While gambling has brought large new developments that are transforming the historic character of Black Hawk, the situation is much different in nearby Central City. Here, the threat is from neglect and a shrinking economic base. Many historic buildings that once housed small casinos are now empty or nearly so. Efforts to attract heritage travelers and other visitors have largely failed. A new road connecting Central City to Interstate 70 has brought some increase in traffic and a new casino is now under construction in the historic commercial district.
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