A History of Aspen

A History of Aspen utilizes a narrative style and 70 historic photos from the Aspen archives to recount the saga of Aspen and the role of its leading citizens as Aspen roller-coasted from a thriving mining town and Colorado's third largest city, through a period of quiet, to its current place in the sun as a famous resort town. In her description of Aspen's history, the author shows how from 1879 to the 1990s the freethinking, independent nature of the citizens of Aspen has not changed. The book's chapters follow the progression from the mining era of the late 1800s and the quiet era that followed, through the early ski period and building of a strong cultural base in the thirties, forties, and fifties, to the boom of the sixties and the growth and politics that followed.