BONANZA (AP) – Beyond one resident, three muddy streets, a Swiss cheese of dangerous mine shafts and a cemetery in Graveyard Gulch, there’s not much left of this former Colorado boomtown.
Later this year, Bonanza might not even be called a town. The state’s smallest municipality and one of its oldest is poised to go over the hill into history.
If the Secretary of State’s Office finds that Bonanza hasn’t functioned as a government in at least five years, the Saguache County town’s 133-year-old incorporation will be nullified. There is no clear record of an election since the 1990s.
The state has disincorporated dozens of other inactive municipalities over the past decade, with little fanfare. Because of its long history of mine camps and boomtowns, Colorado is home to more than 1,500 ghost towns.
On a recent day, Betty Ashley, who was the last town mayor, looked over the hillsides, dotted with weekend cabins, and described what the town used to be when she was growing up. She grew up in a house that had once served as one of Bonanza’s houses of prostitution.
“There were homes and businesses all along here,” said Ashley, 79, of the landscape before a fire in 1937 destroyed the visage of the boomtown.
In its prime, with thousands of miners working the hillsides, the town had two hotels, seven dance halls, a newspaper, grocery and clothing stores, a candy store, even a town baseball team, according to accounts. Now, with one resident left, Bonanza couldn’t field a game of catch.
Mark Perkovich, a 53-year-old Pennsylvania native, moved from Denver to Bonanza 19 years ago.
“I wanted to live at the end of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere,” he said.
After a January hearing, the Saguache County commissioners asked for a decision on terminating the town’s official status. The state agreed to hold off on a decision until at least Sept. 1.
With more time now, the defenders hope to find any record indicating some form of town governance within the past five years, which would buy Bonanza more time before the five-year window closes. They might try to find enough people willing to live here and serve as mayor and town council members.
Even if the town is disincorporated, that doesn’t have to mean the end of Bonanza, said Andrew Cole, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office.
Residents from a larger unincorporated footprint could incorporate and call the new town Bonanza, he said.
“They could do that the next day, if they wanted to,” Cole said.
