Gillett (sometimes misspelled Gillette[1]) is a ghost town located near Cripple Creek in Teller County, Colorado, United States.[2] The town underwent two name changes, first becoming known as West Beaver Park, then as Cripple City, and finally being named after W.K. Gillett, a railroad man. His partners, Henry Collbran, Irving Howbert, and Harlan Lillibridge created the Midland Terminal railroad, a branch of Colorado Midland Railroad.[3] The Gillett post office operated from August 29, 1894, until March 15, 1913.[4] Gillett is famous for being the site of the only bullfight ever held in the US.[5]
History
Gillett was reportedly a family-friendly community and included several churches. The nearby mines contributed to the boom of the town. In May 1896, Following a fire that destroyed their ballpark, the professional minor league baseball team from Cripple Creek that participated in the Colorado State League moved to Gillett.[6] The team folded at the end of the month.[7] In 1895, the only bullfight held in the US took place in Gillett. 50,000 people, some of them celebrities from the US and Mexico, attended. The bulls and bullfighters traveled to Gillett from Mexico; the trip possibly caused the bulls to become over tired and irritable. The bullfight soon turned into a riot. After the riot was quelled, the bulls were taken to slaughter, and their meat was given to the poor. During the first decade of the 1900s, the town began a slow decline and was completely or mostly abandoned by the 1940s. On June 16, 1965, a flash flood that delivered 14 inches (35.6 cm) of rain to the area between Pueblo and Denver flooded a small abandoned community dam above the valley where the town stood. The resulting flood washed away most of the town's ruins. The only remnants of the city are small parts of a church's walls (in the 1940s, only the roof had collapsed), located in what is now a hayfield to the west of the highway; the jail, located beside a few abandoned residential houses at a road bend; and a couple of fire hydrants.[5] Gillett also has a small airstrip that runs parallel with Colorado State Highway 67. Soldiers stationed at nearby Fort Carson (Colorado Springs) used to land and subsequently conduct high altitude survival training from there. Oddly enough, during the time when cattle mutilations were the most prolific in the southwest and near the Cripple Creek area in 1976, a motorist managed to take a picture of an unmarked helicopter (unmarked helicopters were often seen before and after the mutilations) close to the Gillett airstrip.[citation needed]
The Midland Terminal Railway reached Gillett in 1894, and the Gillett Post Office opened shortly after. Due to local topography, Gillette became the rail terminal for Victor, Colorado after a good stage road was built to there. The Co-Operative Brick Company on the outskirts of town was supplying bricks for the district. But Gillett proved too remote from the main mining district to ever attract more than around 300 people, the population in a 1902 report. When those mines declined, Gillett became a ghost town. Little remains today.[8]
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