Gold Hill (1863) was born following 1859 placer and lode gold strikes on the hill for which the community was named. Profitable gold soon played out, and a forest fire, which sent the populace deep into the mines for safety, destroyed much of the original town. Tourism developed following World War I, and by the 1930s the town had become a summer resort and, more recently, a remote suburb of Boulder. It remains a log village of dirt streets at the end of a bumpy mountain road.
The original townsite contained 17 blocks of mostly 50-by-100-foot lots along Gold Run Creek. The earliest buildings are log, single story and rectangular, with gable roofs, like 210 and 240 Horsfal Street. Wood-frame construction came later, along with more sophisticated hipped roofs and stylistic embellishments such as decorative shingle and turned porch posts. The Gold Hill Historic District, including Main, Pine, College, and Horsfal streets, contains log and vernacular frame buildings, many set on stone foundations.
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