Dillon: The Town at the Bottom of the Lake
Near Breckenridge, Colorado
The town of Dillon, Colorado, has moved three times. The Dillon Mining Company established it in eighteen eighty-one on the Snake River. Within sixteen months it relocated between the Blue River and Tenmile Creek.
In eighteen ninety-two it moved again when the Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad arrived. The third move was the definitive one. In the nineteen fifties, Denver decided it needed more water and chose the Blue River confluence as the site for a massive reservoir.
Construction began in nineteen sixty-one. The entire town, including its cemetery and more than three hundred graves, was relocated to higher ground before the dam closed. By nineteen sixty-three, the original Dillon sat deep underwater.
Lake Dillon now covers it, though in drought years the old townsite briefly reappears at the waterline.
