Leadville, Colorado - Federal Campgrounds

Thanks for all the information. Always a pleasant task to make a choice of beautiful places to go and camp.

jolooote wrote:
oh, one more piece of info; all around above and under the mountains & even under the town of Leadville are hundreds of miles of old mineshafts. These tunnels & shafts were sealed years ago because of water intrusion. It is highly suspected that all these tunnels are now filled with an imense amount of contaminated water. Many experts greatly fear that someday these tunnels will fail and all the water will destroy the town and surrounding areas in a massive flood.

The "experts" cited here were mostly the local county commissioners trying to provoke congressional response to a bureaucratic tie-up revolving around which federal agency would pay for the mine drainage tunnel's repair. While a small developmen north of town was in the tunnel's drainage path, the city of Leadville was never under a threat, nor was any of the campgrounds around Turquoise Lake. The water blockages are being mitigated and flooding is no longer a worry here.

My two favorite campgrounds near Twin Lakes are White Star, which has been referred to here, and Parry Peak, which is west of the town of Twin Lakes on Hwy 82. Both are NFS campgrounds with no hookups or dumps. The local water district has a dump station at the south end of Leadville which is open 7 days a week and asks a $5 fee.

Come see us! Bring a jacket, even if it's summer...

oh, one more piece of info; all around above and under the mountains & even under the town of Leadville are hundreds of miles of old mineshafts. These tunnels & shafts were sealed years ago because of water intrusion. It is highly suspected that all these tunnels are now filled with an imense amount of contaminated water. Many experts greatly fear that someday these tunnels will fail and all the water will destroy the town and surrounding areas in a massive flood.

Several years ago we stayed at White Star CG on Twin Lakes. Beautiful with very large, well separated sites, but no hookups. Camp is about 1/4 mile from the lake edge. There are good roads to drive down to the lake for boating/fishing.
Just on the south end of the town of Granite is a good gravel road that leads west to a really neat old gold mining ghost town called Winfield.

We like Mayqueen, at the far west end of Turquois Lake. It is right on the water, good fishing, small beach for swimming, and decent privacy between sites. It is over !0,000 ft. in elevation, so nights are always cool.

In '97, going from Aspen to Leadville Area, we found & camped by Twin Lakes at a forest service campground. A very nice campground, beautiful Lakes, nice canoeing on them.

Twin Lakes Campgrounds: Dexter ** Lake View ** Parry Peak ** Twin Peaks ** White Star
http://www.forestcamping.com/dow/rockymtn/si.htm
I believe we stayed at White Star:
GENERAL COMMENTS:
The elevation is 9,200 ft.

The campground, one of five in the Twin Lakes Recreation Area, is
composed of three loops - Valley, Ridge and Sage. The Sage Loop
is very open with little to no shade, long level parking aprons
and closest to the Twin Lakes Reservoir. Ridge Loop is above the
reservoir among mature Ponderosa pine. Some sites have a view of
the reservoir with shorter parking aprons. The Valley Loop is a
fragrant combination of sage understory and Ponderosa overstory
with some very long parking aprons and no wheelchair friendly
vault. Twin Lakes, CO is on the National Register of Historic
Places. It is an interesting day trip and a good place for the
cook's night out. Firewood is available for a fee.

Follow CO 82 from Twin Lakes area to Independence Pass, a very neat & scenic area. This will take you to Aspen as well. Not easy to get RVs by one section of the road, one lane with a boulder blocking the way. But we got our C-Class MH by towing a Geo Metro with a 17' canoe on the Metro's roof. Didn't loose the mirror either. A few were on the ground there however.

Keep them coming. This is what we are looking for. We tend to try for reservations where we can get them. Any one tried the Lakeview campground?

There are a variety of campgrounds around the Turquoise Lake, ranging from tent only to setting up on the edge of a parking lot. No hookups, and I've been told that there in no longer water or dump stations available. I've stayed at Father Dryer during the week, but had to move to site 12 at the edge of the parking lot at Tabor (which had the best view) because the weekends in July & August were pretty much all reserved.

View from Site 12, Tabor Campground:

We stayed in Molly Brown Campground at Turquoise Lake last summer. Our site had a really nice view of the lake. We hadn't made reservations so we only had it for a few days that were opened between other people's reservations.

This page http://rollinginarv-wheelchairtraveling.blogspot.com/2013/07/turquoise-lake-recreation-area-nf.html on our blog has a picture of our site plus if you click on the Reserve America link there are more pictures on their website. The dump station may be opened by next summer. I think that they were having problems with the water lines during our visit.

Have a good time!

We live close to Madera Canyon south of Tucson - in the Santa Rita Mountains; view it from our back yard. In the National Forest.

We picnic and hike up there.

Off for a picnic yesterday and all parking & picnic areas closed off. That, and pit toilets, is all they have there.

Going to make this as visible and painful for the public as possible.