Victor revitalization a godsend to down-and-out mining town

VICTOR • Clay Brown is finally doing something elected city leaders have been unable to accomplish for decades: He is showing Victor how to remake itself.

Ever since Battle Mountain’s motherload played out decades ago and most of the gold miners left, Victor officials have been searching for a way to breathe new life into the tiny mining town.

But the town that rebuilt itself after a devastating fire in 1899 hasn’t been able to overcome the death blow it suffered when the Carlton Mill closed in 1959. By 1970, just 200 people lived in Victor and it seemed destined to join the growing list of boom-to-bust ghost towns that litter Colorado’s high country.

Then, about eight years ago, Victor was adopted by Brown, a regional manager in the Colorado Department of Local Affairs. He looked beyond the deteriorating, vacant buildings, boarded up windows, shuttered homes and saw potential.

“Our mission is to help strengthen Colorado communities,” Brown said. “A lot of communities in our state are struggling. Victor is struggling. I’m just trying to help them.”

City leaders are grateful for the work Brown is doing on their behalf.

“Clay likes Victor,” said Mayor Buck Hakes. “He’s great. He has taken us under his wing. He’s our mentor.”

Brown’s job is to work with stressed rural towns in eight Front Range counties, including Teller. Folks in Victor say Brown is more than just a government employee. To them, he’s their guardian angel.

The town definitely needs one.

“It’s like a ghost town,” said Gus Conley, 75, a native of the area and a retired miner who now owns G & S Sporting Goods in Victor. “Victor doesn’t have much going for it.”

It wasn’t always this way. In 1900, Victor was the center of a thriving mining district with upwards of 12,000 residents, three railroad lines, two trolleys, 20 doctors, six churches, 12 labor unions and 48 saloons. That was a year after fire destroyed 800 buildings and homes on 14 city blocks.

Victor has not been able to repeat its previous success.

Actually, Victor passed up a great chance to remake itself in 1990, when the historical mining towns of Central City, Black Hawk and neighboring Cripple Creek convinced voters to amend the Colorado Constitution to legalize limited-stakes gambling to fund historical-restoration projects. Victor declined to be included in the amendment.

“Everyone thought it would never pass,” said Sam Morrison, who owns Victor Trading & Manufacturing Works, where he and his wife, Karen, make and sell handmade brooms, cookie cutters and tinware. They moved here and opened their business in 1990.

“Victor needed $10,000 to join the amendment and everyone said ‘no.’ We really didn’t want it.”

Town leaders figured city folks would continue to come, explore its abandoned mines, admire its classic architecture, tour the Lowell Thomas Museum, buy a broom or an antique, grab a cheeseburger and a beer, maybe even stay in its restored Victor Hotel.

They never figured gamblers would go straight from their buses to the casinos. Or that tourists who admire the charm of the refurbished Victorians and 1890s storefronts along Bennett Avenue in Cripple Creek would mostly cringe at the many weathered, boarded up and abandoned structures lining Victor’s streets.

“Gamblers and tourists are not the same,” Morrison said.

The 1995 resumption of mining by the Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mine created 300 jobs in its cyanide leach operations and pumped millions in tax revenue into city coffers. It kept Victor from completely fading away. But the deterioration continued, in part because many of the employees commute from other towns.

Then came Brown, whose patience and skill at navigating state and federal bureaucracy helped Victor to obtain grants and loans to rehab the dam on one of its water reservoirs and build a water-treatment plant. Previously, Brown’s agency had funneled Victor preservation grants of $1.1 million to restore its historic City Hall.

Beyond finding money, Brown is rescuing Victor with his expertise in planning, goal-setting, grant-writing and basic government functions, Mayor Hakes said.

His help became critical last October when Gov. Bill Ritter suspended payments of gaming-impact funds to communities like Victor that deal with the impact of gambling but don’t get any of the benefits.

Ritter’s decision cost Victor more than a third of its general fund revenue, upwards of $500,000. Victor was in a crisis. Victor also lost its energy and mineral-impact funds.

Brown helped by attending frequent workshops in which he showed them how to build a budget and manage limited tax revenues. He also taught them how to craft a budget that doesn’t depend on gaming funds and reduces the town’s heavy reliance on revenues from the mine, which is the city’s biggest water customer.

“We’ve got to wean ourselves from depending so much on the mine,” Hakes said. “Clay’s teaching us we’ve got to make Victor stand on its own two feet.”

Revenue from the city water facilities is a key to Victor’s revitalization. Brown discovered that the system was so old and broken that Victor was giving away a fortune in water.

“We found less than half their water meters work,” Brown said. “They were losing a lot of revenue every month.”

So Brown helped the town land federal grants to electronically map the sewers and water lines, fix broken pipes and replace all the meters with new ones.

“Simply charging people for the water they use will help the town become financially solvent,” Brown said.

The town never could have afforded the work. But with $500,000 for the wastewater-treatment plant and sewers, $500,000 for drainage and $121,000 for the meters, the town is getting busy.

The infrastructure mapping and upgrades will help Victor attract a natural gas company to convert the town from all its propane tanks.

Brown said it’s also important to attracting new businesses.

There have been a few successes, already. A high-altitude youth soccer camp has taken up residence in the old high school. Artists galleries and shops are planned in an old, burned hotel. A Colorado Springs sports training company is considering sponsoring a mountain bicycle race in Victor.

Next on Brown’s list is restoring all or part of the lost gaming-impact funds. Then it’s on to economic development and marketing of its rich mining heritage.

Some folks, including Morrison, believe the town must play up its history and attract unusual shops like his to really thrive.

“There’s a place for heritage tourism here,” he said. “And businesses can make it if they find their niche.”

On June 7-8, a team of eight consultants will descend on Victor to assess its strengths and brainstorm opportunities. The team includes engineers, architects, designers, planners, and marketing and communications experts. It’s the result of a partnership Brown helped arrange with Downtown Colorado.

The consultants will meet with elected officials, business owners and residents to write an action plan. Then, it’s up to the community to start implementing the ideas and report back to the state on its progress.

“Victor’s got incredible potential,” said Morrison, the broom maker. “We’ve got all these neat 1900s buildings. Historic buildings that other people would kill for.

“We’ve got to make it a destination for people who want this kind of town.”

Folks here believe Brown might be able to make it happen.

“Clay has been a real catalyst for making things happen,” said Veldean Petri, a Victor resident since 1976, when she served a year as City Clerk. Petri has been a City Council member since 2007.

“What’s going on now in Victor is powerful and the work Clay has done has provided the foundation for what’s to come,” Petri said. “There’s a renaissance going on. Clay has been a godsend.”