In 1891 it had a revival and kept going fairly well through that decade. It picked up even more after the turn of the century when the gold mines put on larger crews and when dredging machinery was moved in to operate the placers. But following the usual pattern of these towns, World War I ushered in a growing paralysis, and by 1917 the Gold Cup mine, Tin Cup’s mainstay, shut down. Tin Cup slumbered on in a complete trance except for an occasional sportsman. Little by little its quaint charm, including fire hydrants that date from 1891, attracted more people. By 1960 it was a substantial summer resort with more people taking over the many deserted cabins and buildings and telling of its unique wild past.... Gothic is reached by returning down the Taylor River to Almont and taking the road up the East River to its junction with Copper Creek. Crofutt described it in 1881 as the most important mining camp in Gunnison County with a population of nine hundred and fifty. It was established June 8, 1879, and made rapid progress, having many large stores, hotels, restaurants, saloons, shops of all kinds, a public school, a smelter (which Frank Hall says never operated), three sawmills and a weekly newspaper. Shortly its population rose to fifteen hundred. But, as one old-timer recalled, the Gothic district was the paradise of prospectors but not of miners. It was streaked on every mountainside with protruding veins of quartz. A blind man could locate a claim. But the ore values were not high enough for exploitation. The district had only its unusual beauty amid its surrounding peaks—Treasury, Cinnamon, Galena, Baldy, Belleview and Italian—and to the north the towering Elk Mountains. Gothic died. Only one resident remained until Dr. John C. Johnson, a former dean at the Western State College in Gunnison, saw its possibilities in 1928 for a fully accredited six-weeks summer school—the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory—and bought the two-hundred-acre town. Each year its distinguished staff of scientists invites other eminent scholars in the biological field to a conference and symposium at the end of the regular teaching session. Such topics as “The Living Balance Between Flora and Fauna” are discussed. The laboratory has brought Gothic into a national prominence never attained by its mines. The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory with its nine hundred and five acres of primitive spruce and fir land, which sweep up the side of Baldy Mountain, made Gothic unique in 1960. It was the only ghost town that had turned into a school. [Illustration: Bryant McFadden, 1958] GOTHIC HAS TURNED FROM MINES TO PLANTS Garwood Judd, variously known as “The Man Who Stayed” and “Mayor of Gothic,” lived off and on in the Town Hall until his death in 1930. _From Lake City_ [Illustration]