6 Most Charming Towns In the Rockies
By July, wildflowers bury the ski slopes above Crested Butte, the Wildflower Capital of Colorado. Jackson marks its town square with four arches of shed elk antlers. In Telluride, a main street of Old West storefronts dead-ends at a box canyon and Bridal Veil Falls. At the edge of Glacier National Park, the 1910 Belton Chalet still puts up travelers in West Glacier, one of a handful of small towns that give the Rockies their character.
Crested Butte, Colorado
Come July, the slopes above Crested Butte trade snow for wildflowers, and the state made the nickname official: the Wildflower Capital of Colorado. The 10-day Wildflower Festival built around them offers more than 150 workshops on everything botanical. About 1,500 people live here year-round, at 8,885 feet in the Elk Mountains, in a downtown of preserved 1880s coal-mining buildings.
Crested Butte Mountain Resort takes over in winter, known for steep terrain and shorter lift lines than the resorts closer to Denver. The drive from the city is about four and a half hours, which locals will say is the reason it never feels crowded. Snow or wildflowers, Crested Butte is worth the drive.
Granby, Colorado
Each January, the 3 Lakes Ice Fishing Contest sends anglers out onto Lake Granby, Shadow Mountain Reservoir, and Grand Lake for cash prizes. Come summer, Granby throws one of Colorado's biggest small-town Fourth of July parades and a rodeo at the Flying Heels Arena. The town of about 2,000 rests at roughly 7,900 feet, with the Continental Divide across the skyline.
Granby Ranch offers downhill runs, cross-country trails, and a golf course once the snow melts, and Snow Mountain Ranch adds dog-sled rides through the backcountry. Grand Elk rounds out the golf. The west entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park is about 20 minutes away, close enough for a morning hike before dinner in town.
Jackson, Wyoming
Four arches built from shed elk antlers frame the corners of Jackson's town square, collected off the National Elk Refuge on the edge of town. The refuge winters one of the largest elk herds in the country. Grand Teton National Park lies just north, with Yellowstone beyond it, and the National Museum of Wildlife Art overlooks the refuge from a bluff above town.
Jackson is the biggest town here, about 11,000 people at 6,237 feet, and it is busy year-round. Three resorts ring the valley: Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, Snow King right in town, and Grand Targhee on the far side of the Tetons. Grand Targhee, the farthest out, is where locals go for powder without the lift lines.
Park City, Utah
Park City spent four decades as the winter home of the Sundance Film Festival, the largest independent film festival in the country, with premieres, panels, and celebrities crowding Main Street each January. That Main Street survives from the town's 1800s silver-mining days. About 8,600 people live here at 7,000 feet in the Wasatch Range.
Deer Valley and Park City Mountain Resort put serious skiing at the edge of downtown, and both hosted events at the 2002 Winter Olympics. Park City is also home base for the US Ski and Snowboard team, so the skiers carving the slopes may be training for a medal.
Telluride, Colorado
At the closed end of a box canyon in the San Juan Mountains, Telluride is walled in on three sides by peaks. Bridal Veil Falls drops 365 feet at the head of the canyon, the tallest free-falling waterfall in Colorado. The town of about 2,700, at 8,750 feet, grew up as a mining camp, and the Old West storefronts along the main street date to that era.
Summer brings the music, with the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in June and Blues and Brews in September. A free gondola connects the town to Mountain Village over the ridge, one of the few free lifts of its kind in the country. Winter belongs to the Telluride Ski Resort, and the drive from Denver takes about six hours southwest.
West Glacier, Montana
The Belton Chalet opened in 1910 as the first of the Great Northern Railway's lodges at Glacier National Park, and it still takes guests today, a National Historic Landmark on the edge of town. West Glacier, once called Belton, is home to about 219 people at 3,169 feet. Its whole reason for being is the west entrance to Glacier, right at the town line.
Summer is the busy season, with rafting and fishing on the Middle Fork Flathead River before the park itself takes over. Winter empties the place out, and the handful of cafes and shops that stay open treat visitors like old friends. Most of the businesses follow the park's seasons.
Choosing a Base in the Rockies
The right town depends on what the weekend is for. Park City leans on big-name events and serious skiing, Sundance and a pair of Olympic resorts among them, and charges resort prices to match. Granby is quieter and cheaper, better suited to ice fishing and a Fourth of July parade than to a celebrity sighting. Whichever way it goes, the peaks around town climb past 13,000 feet, and the mountain air is the same.
