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This laboratory amid the ruins of the old mining town began with the purchase of Gothic by John C. Johnson, a biology professor at Western State College. An international contingent of scholars gather here each summer to focus on biological and environmental issues at what has become one of America's premier Alpine field stations. The Oh-Be-Joyful and Swallow's Nest houses date from the early 1880s, and the Ore House and the Mammal and Parasitology Laboratory were built by T. K. Dissette in a 1914 attempt to revitalize the town. Laboratory personnel constructed nineteen additional buildings in the 1920s and 1930s, using the town's log and frame vernacular and, in some cases, lumber from collapsed buildings.