Salida's Historic Downtown
Near Salida, Colorado
Walk the streets in the center of Salida and you are walking through a historic downtown district. Block after block of brick and stone storefronts date back to the railroad boom years, when Salida was a busy division point and the money and people flowing through town built solidly and built to last. Because the railroad kept the town prosperous and then, later, because the town slipped into a quiet stretch when the railroad declined, many of those old buildings were never torn down and replaced.
They simply survived. In the year nineteen eighty four, the downtown was recognized as a National Historic District, a collection of historic buildings that together tell the story of a working railroad and mining town. Today those same brick storefronts hold coffee shops, restaurants, breweries, bookstores, and art galleries.
The bones of the old commercial town, the tall windows and pressed metal cornices and painted advertisements fading on brick walls, are still here. It is one of those rare downtowns where the nineteenth century is not a museum exhibit but the actual, living streetscape you shop and eat and stroll through.
