Creede Colorado Townsite – Ghost town
Photos courtesy of Joan Sinnwell May 2005
Creede took off after the Holy Moses mine was discovered by Nicholas Creede. Well actually his name was William Harvey but he changed his name when his girl friend married his brother.
Creede grew at an incredible rate in the early 1890’s. At one point the population was estimated at growing between 150 to 300 people a day. They even built a restaurant specially to serve 1,000 people daily. In 1882 there were over 8,000 people living in Creede.
Soapy smith ruled this town for a long time. I stayed in a room named after him when I was recently there. Probably the most enjoyable part of the trip was the accidental meeting of a old timer at the cemetery. It was close to Memorial day and he was getting ready to place the flags on the graves. Sometime I will have to explain “guess digging” to you like he did for me. If you are interested in Soapy Smith check out this site. www.soapysmith.net
For those of you familiar with the “dirty little Coward mister Howard” he was killed in his saloon here. Bob Ford was shot in 1892 by O’Kelly. He was buried in the cemetery and later dug up and moved to Missouri. What most people don’t know is that his grave was put to good use. They buried a negro murderer in it before they closed it up.
Lovely town with a great hotel and chef that serves up some delicious meals. The summer storms had washed out some of the roads I wanted to explore and they were blocked off. Still more than enough to see on a weekend. Plus we got to take part in the “Taste of Creede” festival.
If you want to read what happened to me in the cemetery go here.
A reader writes – Hello. I saw in your article about Creede that 8000 people lived there in 1982. I guess the year must be 1892. By the way, I like your site. We (me, my wife and 2 sons) had an very nice campertrip in Colorado in 2004 and I still find a lot of good and interesting information on your site. We plan to go back in 2009 for camping and flyfishing this wonderful State. Bert Dries, the Netherlands.
A reader writes – Nicholas Creede (William Harvey) had a sister who lived in Manitou Springs, CO by the name of Clara Harvey Pfifer. You can see her house at 941 Osage. “Uncle Creede” visited there often. Manitou isn’t a ghost town, though! The Harvey family wasn’t exactly poor — Clara left a large trust fund to her grandson, and the family owned a lot of property around Monroe, Iowa.
A viewer writes – Sunday, July 04, 2010 – my mother Babe Bartlett ran the hotel and bar in Creede for C. V. Henderson back in the 70’s and my husband worked for the judge as a mechanic It was still doing somewhat ok when i was there in the 90’s and I have a couple of Creede shirts. Shirley Bartlett  sbartlett59@yahoo.com