Alma
On their way to Breckenridge from their home in Missouri in 1989, ski bum Mark Dowaliby and his wife found a house they could afford in this one-time gold-mine boomtown. The couple took a tour of the property. That took about a minute.
“It was 500 square feet,” Dowaliby said. “No plumbing. There was an outhouse. The kitchen was a shelf with enough room for a camp stove.”
The couple bought the house and moved in. Soon, though, they realized 500 square feet wasn’t nearly enough space. So they expanded the little cabin.
“We built a kitchen. Well, sort of a kitchen,” Dowaliby said. “When we were done the house was about 600 square feet.”
Today, Dowaliby, 49, leans back in a battered old chair in the Town Hall and laughs. He and wife Nancy – they met in junior high school, dated through high school and married when they were 18 – own five of the homes in Alma, which is officially the highest incorporated town in America. They live in one house and rent the other four, including the one with the sort of kitchen.
Oh, and Mark Dowaliby is now the mayor of Alma. His Town Hall office sits just feet from a still-active gold mine.
“Once in a while I walk around out there and kick a few rocks over, looking for gold,” he said, smiling. “I have not personally found any.”
And yet, Dowaliby and the other 234 people who, as of last weekend, live in the rough, spectacular town of Alma figure they’ve struck the mother lode.
“Alma,” the mayor said, “is like a pretty lady with no makeup.”
Tucked along Colorado 9 some 16 miles south of Breckenridge – the ski town that is like a pretty lady with lots and lots of makeup – Alma may have the most breathtaking backdrop of any Colorado town. Rising to the north are Mounts Lincoln, Bross and Democrat, 14ers all.
The town sits at 10,355 feet, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That Leadville, 18 miles to the west at an official elevation of 10,152 feet, has been known to claim the distinction of being the highest town in America is no small point with Almans … Almaites … people here.
“You make sure,” said former mayor Bob Ensign, “you get in the story that we’re higher than Leadville. We’re 10,578 feet.”
By unofficial measure of the highest spot in town, Bob is right. Officially, however, he is off by 223 feet. He is not what you’d call a “statistics guy.”
Bob, how long were you the mayor?
“Uh,” said Bob, his ponytail escaping from the back of his badly weathered mountain-man hat, “I was mayor for seven or eight years, I think.”
Luckily for everyone, town clerk Nancy Comer knows just about everything about Alma.
“This is a tough place to live and a tough place to maintain the roads,” Dowaliby began. “I don’t know how many miles of road we have. …”
From across the big room they share in Town Hall, Comer didn’t even glance up from her pile of paperwork. “Seven and a half miles of road,” she said.
“But it’s such a fascinating place,” the mayor continued. “It was a town before Colorado was a state. We became a town in, uh …”
“In 1873,” Comer said, this time glancing over at the mayor. “Dec. 2, 1873. ”
Mayor Dowaliby smiles and nods.
“To live here, you’ve got to be pretty tough,” he said. “I see people come and go all the time. They stay for a while … ”
“Statistically,” Comer said, “the average person who moves here stays for just two years.”
The biggest reason: winters.
Which last, more or less, for about nine months.
Although at 10,355 feet, even summer isn’t really summer.
“On a typical summer day you start out being too cold, and then you’re too hot for about an hour when the sun is beating down on you, and an hour after that you’re too cold again,” Dowaliby said.
Staff writer Rich Tosches writes each Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at rtosches@denverpost.com.
