Maps, photographs, records and accounts from around the valley, gathered in one place and made public.
Jasper has been lived in, logged, mined and argued over for a long time, and a fair amount of the record of that sits in private hands. Boxes in cabins. Folders in filing cabinets. Photographs nobody has scanned.
This is a slow, careful attempt to gather some of it. Nothing here is behind a login and nothing is for sale. Originals stay with whoever owns them.
Jasper is often dated to 1981, when Luke Anthony brought the plat to life and started selling cabin lots. That is the beginning of the Jasper most people know, but it is not the beginning of Jasper.
There was a town here in the 1800s. The federal government accepted a townsite plat for Cornwall, in this valley, in September 1897, and that survey was itself a retracement of work done by W. H. Cochran in October 1895. There were mines, a gold rush, and enough of a settlement that a Colorado School of Mines survey party came through and photographed the place. What Luke Anthony platted in the 1980s was laid over ground that had already been surveyed, worked and abandoned once before.
Much of what this museum holds is from that earlier Jasper.
This domain and website were set up in 2001, back when Jasper was not searchable on the internet at all. Google Maps did not exist yet. MapQuest had no record of the place.
It took a long campaign of emails and supporting records before Google Maps agreed to add Jasper, and they added it as a ghost town. The sticking point was that Jasper had no USPS zip code or formal postal designation, and at the time that was the main way a town got recognised as existing.
Over those twenty five years jaspercolorado.com has gathered a good number of historic photographs, documents and other things worth keeping. They will go up here as time allows. If you have something of your own, please share it.
Things photographed around the valley that have not been identified yet. If you know what any of these are, the curator would like to hear from you.
A hand notched log building well down valley from Jasper, roof failing and walls still square. Nobody has confirmed who built it or when.
Squared openings cut into a cliff face in the valley. They look worked rather than natural. Whether they are mine adits, storage or something else is an open question.
The Alamosa River below Jasper, with heavy orange and yellow staining through the gravel. The color has a long and contested history in this drainage.
If you have maps, photographs, letters, records or a story from around Jasper, the curator would like to hear about it. You do not need to send anything yet. Describe what you have and you will get a reply.
Originals stay with you. Anything added here is scanned or copied and credited however you ask.
If you would rather just be told when new items go up, fill in your name and email, tick the box and leave the description blank.