Colorado Books

Fabulous guide to wildlife viewing areas in Florida. It led me to to many places not found in any other books. The directions are clear and concise, and the site descriptions are well-written. I spent an afternoon at one extraordinary, magical place where I was literally tripping over the local wildlife. As I was about to leave, the first person I had seen all day came up to me and asked me where I lived, since this was a place only the locals knew about. She was astounded that I was from out-of-town. Sure enough, the log book, which only showed a few visitors per day, had no one from out-of-state but me in it! I just hope that these areas remain as unspoiled as they are now. This book made my trip to Florida worthwhile!

When you are next lucky enough to find yourself in sections of the Florida peninsula still green and grassy or blue and wavy, you'll have a sharper chance of spotting limpkins, roseate spoonbills, plovers, manatees and alligators and hundreds of species more, even mice, with this perky pink guidebook in your backpack. Florida Wildlife Viewing Guide takes you to the most popular and also the least-known local, state and national preserves where you can make like a Florida (wild) native.

I live in the heart of Ghost town country. I knew about some of them, but the place is rotten with them; and this book located these bits of bygone history for me. Even my old office building sits on the bones of an old ghost town I'd never heard of. If you love Colorado (and you should) and history and adventure and beautiful back country driving and hiking, this book is the one you want. Buy it and carry it with you. I've seen others and this is by far the most complete and up to date.
-P-

I love this book. It is very extensive. There are 3 volumes in this series- this one (which is Volume 2), plus Volume 1 (Northern region) and Volume 3 (Southern region...

What is nice is that these books are pretty updated (1999). Some of the Colorado ghost town books that I have looked at are very outdated- published around the 1970's.

This book (as well as the other 2 in the series) are very thick books-this one has 616 pages!)
It is packed full of infomation.
Some ghost town books leave some of the smaller, lesser-known ghost towns out- but these 3 volumes have them all!

There are black and white photos for each ghost town- plus the fascinating history behind each one. Some even have updated information listed about the town- such as how the Ghost town of Guffey (originally called Freshwater)once had a dog as Mayor-and they now have a cat as Mayor!! (This is true).

In this book- Volume 2- Central Region- it includes these counties:
Eagle, Garfield, Pitkin, Park, Lake, Teller, Chaffee and Gunnison.
The ghost towns listed are NUMEROUS- but here are just some of them:

Redstone, Ruby, Ashcroft, Aspen (once called "Ute City"), Carbondale, Emma, Dotsero, Independence, Gilman, Gold Park, Cripple Creek, Altman, Anaconda and Mound City, Tabor City, Dayton, Guffey, Fairplay, Buckskin Joe, Como,
White Pine, Tincup, Sargents, Quartz, Pitkin, Ohio City, Pieplant,Marble, Irwin, Iola, Gothic. Crystal, Crested Butte,
Romley, St. Elmo, Monarch, Buena Vista, Garfield, and etc.....

There are many, many more towns in this book- I just can't list them all!

This is a wonderful book combing the early history of Colorado and the narrow gauge and later standard gauge railroads. The railroads were the dominating force of progress in the mountainous terrain, bringing down coal, silver, gold and other minerals, while carrying supplies up to the mines and ranchers.

The author captures the smell and sound of steam engines working the narrrow corridors of the mountains. It is like being in the cab, with the sounds of smoke pouring from the stack, steam gusting, whistle wailing, bell clanging, and fire roaring in the firebox, and the smells of coal and grease and hot metal combined with the lurching and pounding of the engine on the narrow gauge tracks.

The book will appeal to steam fans, rail buffs and history schloars for a look at the "reality of railroading in the West."

This is a reprint of a Colorado and Southern engineman's life story. Although the book is very readable, you won't find much of the "romance of the rails" here - just hard work and men trying to get a job done in often dangerous circumstances.

It's a good introduction to steam-era railroading for those who are too young to remember, and it will revive memories for those who do.

It's almost as if there are two Grand Canyons. There's the one on the calendars and post cards, the big view from the rim. Then there's the inner canyon, the one experienced only by river runners and hikers. And sometimes--rarely--by readers. Rarely because it's hard to do justice to the canyon. The canyon is all about Time, and it takes a lot of time to even start to get to know it well.

The University of Arizona's Desert Places series teams up leading authors and photographers to offer personal explorations of famous landscapes. Yes, in its desert climate too the inner canyon is quite different from the cool, pine forest rim. The team for the Grand Canyon is Ann Zwinger and Michael Collier, both of whom have spent a great deal of time getting to know the canyon. And it shows.

In the course of the river trip in this narrative, Ann Zwinger offers us her usual graceful exploration of wonders large and small. She is a careful naturalist who notices the smallest patterns, yet she is also ready to find the largest poetry: "I work my fingers into the interstices of this cool rough rock that contains all earth's hopes and dreams. I think that if there is any place I can ever come close to glimpsing the age of this earth, the forces that formed it, the heat that melded it, the seas that overlay it, the time out of mind of sand grains formed, raindrops fallen, breezes wafted, sunshine shafting, all that went on and on in dogged perseverence, millennium after millennium--it is right here, right now."

Grand Canyon photographers seem prone to the same syndrone as canyon painters. You can usually tell which ones have spent too little time here: they've learned the rules of landscape painting in art school, and now they try to force those rules onto the canyon. But the canyon has its own unique rules, rules made of light and shadow and subtlty. Most artists and photographers aim for grandeur, not even grasping the concept that the inner canyon is an intensely intimate place. Fortunately Zwinger's intimate prose is matched by Collier's intimate photos. A rim tourist wouldn't even recognize many of them as being the Grand Canyon: there are slot canyons, flowers, rock formations. But best of all, half of the photos feature people, usually small figures against a sinuous landscape, often only shadows, shadows pondering, shadows that are not anyone in particular but universal human shapes. Shadows that evoke some of the mystery of canyon and time, life and earth.

A work of impressively accessible scholarship, Grand Canyon: Little Things In A Big Place, knowledgeably authored by Ann Zwinger (Adjunct Professor, Colorado College) and illustrated with black and white photography from Michael Collier offers an intimate and descriptive survey at the awe-inspiring spectacle of the Grand Canyon including the rare beauty and striking imagery of one of the world's greatest natural wonders as well as a comprehensive and brief exploration into its more precise recreational and geological complexities. Grand Canyon: Little Things In A Big Place is very strongly recommended for all readers searching for an overall introduction to the Grand Canyon, as well as those aspiring to vacation in exploration of the great wonder for its remarkable detailing and timeless perspective of the panoramic sight.

A great reference book for those interested in learning more about Colorado Wineries. Cannot wait for the next edition.

I think the Brad and Alta Smith did a wonderful job researching and "discovering" these wineries, most of which are extremely under-publicized. This book is a handy guide which gets you to every winery and tells you all you need to know about each one before you arrive! A MUST BUY!

The Hero Within tells a series of touching stories that will keep you turning every page - I could hardly put it down; at the same time, by the end of the book I had a new sense of what a treatment center like the Colorado Boys Ranch is and how it works to utilize a variety of treatment methods and perspectives to achieve amazing results. This combination of wonderful storytelling and factual reporting makes for an impressively compelling series of 'case studies' that should be of interest both to the average reader and to people who have a particular (academic) focus on studying psychiatric treatment models.

The Ranch's evolution from an orphanage into an accredited residential treatment facility touches on many of the issues that have been prominently debated in discussions of the philosophy of psychiatry - questions about how to treat both persons and bodies, minds and brains; it is well worth reading as a direct account of how a leading institution developed its unique treatment perspective.

It is even more worth reading as a heartwarming series of success stories that can help to remind us all that change, even if it is hard, is not impossible.

This well written book is a compilation of heart warming success stories about boys who have lived at the Colorado Boys Ranch in La Junta,Colorado. The authors have done a wonderful job of describing the way these boys' lives were changed for the better by their time spent at the ranch. Many of these boys come from dire circumstances. The ranch has used the rural setting to achieve a remarkable success rate that is setting a standard throughout the nation. The stories are fascinating and I could hardly put the book down. Buy this book and you will be helping troubled boys around the nation (as all the authors' proceeds go to the Colorado Boys Ranch). Also your heart will be uplifted and you will be thoroughly entertained.

The author moved to the Colorado frontier at the turn of the century when he was a preteen. His descriptions of the hard work for survival that his family endured, along with the peacefulness of a time that was not burdened by extra possessions, made me homesick for a different time. He reminded me that a lot of what we are missing is time to sit and look at the sky (there was no school nearby, so he didn't attend one). It was not an easy time, and illnesses before penicillan could be deadly. But courage and love went a long way, even though those words were not mentioned. I was quite moved by this family's determination to succeed.

Hal Borland grew up on the Colorado frontier early in the 20th century, his family being among the last to take advantage of the Homestead Act. Although the story is set from 1910-1913, within the lifetime of a few old people I know, it's so far away from the world of the internet that it's staggering. In some ways like the Little House on the Prairie books, but somewhat more sophisticated, this is a completely true account of Mr. Borland's childhood, and it relates the events of his difficult life, and also explores deeper subjects such as the nature of time. A difficult book to find, but a very worthwhile read.

It's a great guide to the CT and I often use the advice for any trip I'm planning. It goes into great detail for the thru hiker or the day hiker, about the CT, or regardless of where you hike.

This book is in excellent source of information on the Colorado Trail. The sections are perfect for day/weekend hikers as well as thru-hikers. The advice on trail hiking is also very accurate and useful.

Dan Flores has lived most of his life in the Horizontal Yellow. Another, more historical term for this land would be the Spanish-Mexican Frontier. Florida was not settled from Mexico, of course, and the settlement of California was decades to more than a century later.

Flores explores this land from both the history and natural history points of view, with the historical part generally beginning with the first Spanish-U.S. contact as part of post-Louisiana Treaty boundary negotiations.

Not all Texas is the Southern spillover of Dallas and Houston; get acquainted with the rest of it, and adjacent areas, in this book.

Dan Flores' long-awaited new book once again proves he has few peers when it comes to a deep understanding of his native Near Southwest, a vision for its long term health, and the ability to weave a tale which is scholarly, literary, and deeply personal.

This book, although fiction, is true history. It was written by Henty in 1894. It's a classic adventure novel right up there in the ranks of Swiss Family Robinson. Henty was an outstanding writer of his time. It's very easy to get lost in this book, I'd be suprised if anyone could read it without putting it down. It's full of references and dialect of days long gone by. I want to jump into a time machine and go live with Tom for a while and quit worrying about traffic and work. I am fortune enough to own an original 1894 hard copy of this book that was given to me by a family friend and will cherrish it for ever.

This book presents a factual side of western history in an exciting way! That is very rare these days. From the first few pages, you are drawn in by young Tom's determination to join his uncle in Colorado and the dangers, joys, and sorrows he encounters along the way. I read this book in five days; it is an impossible put-down! All those who love history or just great stories will love this book.