Exploring Silver Plume, CO and a Dark Local Story

Silver Plume is a very small town I visited on my road trip to Colorado. The reason was not photography or really sightseeing but more like a sinister history/story I got to hear from one of my favorite YouTubers who is called MrBallen. He does strange dark and mysterious real-life stories. He happened to do one of Silver Plume just a week before I left for Colorado, I knew I wanted to check this place out.

Silver Plume is located pretty much in the center of the state, in the mountains of Colorado. It was once a booming mining town in the 1800s but looks like now forgotten in time. The I70 interstate goes right next to it and I was driving it anyway so it was easy for me to visit it. The building in the town look old, and there is not even a paved road anywhere in the town. Silver Plume is also located pretty high in altitude. A bit over 9000 feet which is 2800 meters above sea level.

As I mentioned I visited this place due to the strange story I heard and I will try to shortly summarize it here. It involves strange deaths and disappearances of the people in this town and up on the trail in the mountain next to Silver Plume.

The Story

About 120 years ago when the town was still a booming mining hub there was one guy that regularly hiked up on the mountain to a good viewing spot and played violin. One day in 1880 he went up there, dug a grave for himself, played some violin and shot himself in the grave. Shortly later the mining industry went to shit there. It might be connected to suicide. Maybe he couldn't take it that he had no more job. Today there is a monument on the exact spot where he took his life on the mountain next to Silver Plume.

Giffin monument
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This is not the main story tho.
In 1988 there was a guy named Keith who came to live in Silver Plume to write a novel of some kind. He wanted to be closer to nature and somewhere in a quiet place to make it happen. For some time he didn't come up with any good ideas to write about and wrote other topics and journals he did. Soon he learned about a guy named Tom and his dog Gus, they went missing some 2 months earlier.

Keith did a lot of research on Tom and found out that his life was so similar to his, they were also almost the exact same age. Their birthdays were only a month apart. The bookstore where Keith worked in Silver Plume was also a workplace for Tom who went missing earlier and had not come back. Many thought that Tom went traveling to Europe because he talked about it but it was strange because the Police search had not come up with any tickets bought and no things were taken from the home.

The story and life of Tom and similarity to his got so interesting to Keith that he decided to write a novel of Tom but changed the name. Fast forward several months. Two hunters went up the mountain where the Griffin statue is but veered off the trail a bit into the forest. They saw something bright white. It was a tarp and under the tarp were bones, a human skeleton and a dog Skeleon with holes in the skulls. There was also a gun a few feet from the skeletons. The hunters alerted the sheriff and it was quickly found out that it was Tom and his dog Gus. It was also quickly ruled as a suicide.

Locals were not happy with his explanation because he did not seem suicidal or strange, like at all. Also, why would he shoot his dog? The dog Gus was the only family of his and he loved Gus so much. Also, why was the tarp on them!?

Tom and Gus
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They held a funeral in Silver Plume which Keith also attended and he apparently felt like they held his funeral there too because his life was so similar to Tom's. Keith suddenly knew the ending of his Novel. He immediately went to write the ending. A couple of days later he said in the bookstore cafe that he will be hiking to the mountains and will go to the top, it was necessary to end the novel he writes, in fact, I'm going right now. His buddy and worker in the cafe told him that it was not a great idea. It was already later in the day and the hike will take 6 hours at least, it will be night. Keith turned around and left for the trail, without much equipment and just wearing a simple T-shirt and jeans. Keep in mind that the altitude is over 12000 feet at the top, around 3700 meters above sea level.

The next morning when his buddy from the cafe went to check on Keith, he was not there. Obviously, Keith was still up in the mountains. He alerted the sheriff and as a result, one of the largest search efforts in Colorado was launched with rescue parties and also locals. They searched all of the trail, forests in the vicinity and mountain tops but after a week or two absolutely nothing was found.

They also went to search for his stuff where he worked in the bookstore. Looked at his computer where was only one document. The novel he was writing and in fact, there was an ending. He had made a hybrid character of him and Tom. The ending of the novel wrote: "He put on the jeans and shirt, walked out the door and up to the shadowless Colorado mountain forests"
It was like he exactly lived out the ending of the novel himself.

There are only theories about what might have happened to him. One possibility is that he committed suicide somewhere in the mountains but in a big search area the body was never found. Might have also gotten attacked by a mountain lion or a bear but then there would have been visible signs also.

I have my own theory as well. If it wasn't suicide then it might have been a severe case of altitude sickness. It's not a common thing to happen but if you go without water and do a hard hike at such a high altitude you might get it. Some people are more prone to it than others tho still rare. If you get it then it basically messes up your mind and brain. The only chance of survival at this point is rapid descent and hospitalization. If he had a messed up head but that point up there he maybe tried to get back down but got lost and might have managed a very long distance to an unknown direction. If he did have the severe altitude illness he would have died a couple of days later due to swelling in the brain and water in the lungs. It's just one theory which is pretty unlikely but it explains why the body was not found anywhere in the area. Whatever happened to him, the case is still open and unsolved since 1988.

Keith
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Here you can see the bookstore and cafe still there today where Keith and Tom both worked in. I too went inside, hoping to get a bite from the cafe but it was closed. The girl who worked there still kindly allowed us inside to see around. I told her why we came there and about this story, she knew about that.

Bookstore and cafe side by side

In the bookstore there was a huge dog, I can't remember the name, unfortunately.

Here are a couple of more photos I took when walking around Silver Plume.

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If you are interested in the story then see this video here by MrBallen who tells this much much better than I ever could, also much more detailed.

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Don't forget to participate in my monthly weather guessing game here and you might win 10 HIVE. The game is open until the 17th of July.

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