Summit County first received worldwide attention in 1859 when prospectors discovered gold and silver in the surrounding hills. High country trappers, from 1810-1840, attempted to keep the glittering gold and silver-seamed mountains a secret, but the news filtered out of the remote area to the rest of the United States. By the summer of 1859, hordes of gold-hungry adventurers scaled the snow-covered Continental Divide to the mineral-rich valley of the Blue River, catapulting this gentle valley from tranquil isolation into the gold rush days. Mine camps lined the Blue River and its tributaries and a parade of colorful characters and scoundrels, like Pug Ryan and Methodist preacher John Lewis Dyer, marched their way on to the pages of history.
Bustling new towns exploded into existence just as quickly as they lapsed into ghost towns, like Parkville, the first county seat. Others, like Breckenridge, Frisco, and Dillon, flourished during the days of mining prosperity and clung to life years after the mines played out. Not until 1946 did snow become business in Summit County, when Arapahoe Basin Ski area opened its slopes. With the opening of Breckenridge Ski area in 1961, Keystone in 1970, and Copper Mountain in 1972, “The Summit” became one of the greatest destination ski areas in the nation and was coined “Colorado’s Playground”.
The County is centrally located in Colorado, being only an hour’s drive from the Denver metropolitan area. Interstate 70 (I-70), the state’s main east-west transportation corridor, bisects the County, and enhances the proximity of the County to Denver/Front Range communities. This proximity to a large metropolitan area has contributed greatly to the County’s popularity as a mountain recreational area. Included within the county are six municipalities (Blue River, Breckenridge, Dillon, Frisco, Montezuma, and Silverthorne), four major ski resorts (Arapahoe Basin, Breckenridge, Copper Mountain, and Keystone), significant National Forest and Bureau of Land Management lands, and two Congressionally-designated Wilderness Areas (Eagles Nest and Ptarmigan Peak).
Among Summit’s impressive features includes the beautiful Blue River, generating three times the flow of any other river contributing to the Colorado River basin. In the early 1960’s, the Denver Water Board took advantage of this river’s peak water flow and dammed the Blue River to create the 2,790 acre Dillon Reservoir. Green Mountain Reservoir, just north of Silverthorne, also utilizes the Blue River to generate power and provide irrigation to nearby ranchlands. The Blue River and its primary tributaries, the Snake River and the Tenmile Creek, define the county’s contours, cutting deep valleys into the area’s mountainous terrain.
Vegetation found in the County is based primarily on elevation. The lowest elevation areas in the Lower Blue Basin are composed primarily of sage meadows. At around 9,000 feet and above coniferous forest predominates. Timberline is located at approximately 11,500 feet, with areas above that elevation comprised of snow, rock, and alpine tundra.
The County is relatively small in geographic terms, occupying a total land area of approximately 396,000 acres (about 619 square miles). In the context of ownership roughly 80 percent of the land in the County is public lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. The remaining 20 percent is privately owned (this correlates to approximately 150 square miles). The majority of the private lands are found in narrow bands along the valley bottoms and adjacent to the major road corridors. It is along these major roadways that most of the existing and approved development occurs.