I went hiking up Rattlesnake Gulch Trail at Eldorado Canyon State Park today. Took some pictures along...

I went hiking up Rattlesnake Gulch Trail at Eldorado Canyon State Park today. Took some pictures along the way.

This trail runs up the side of the mountain, passing the remains of a hotel that burned down in 1912, four years after its construction, when its boiler exploded. All that remains are the scorched and rusted boiler, the fountain from the grand plaza (now a cement plant pot), some cinderblock crumbles, and a fireplace with a kettle deformed from the heat of the blaze.

It then runs up to a wide vista of the continental divide (the panorama), and then off to a view of an active railway. These pictures do a terrible job of capturing the scale and magnitude of it all.