The Gunnison Connection and the Cold
Near Crested Butte, Colorado
Crested Butte does not stand alone. About thirty miles south sits Gunnison, the county seat, and for well over a century the two towns have been bound together, first by the Denver and Rio Grande narrow gauge and today by the highway that most visitors drive in on. Gunnison has a reputation of its own, as one of the coldest inhabited places in the lower forty eight states.
It sits in a kind of fishbowl, ringed by the West Elk, Elk, and San Juan Mountains, and at night cold, dense air slides down off every surrounding slope and pools in the low basin of the Gunnison River. On December twenty fifth, nineteen twenty four, the temperature there plunged to about forty seven degrees below zero. On winter mornings, Gunnison sometimes posts the coldest reading in the entire nation.
Crested Butte, sitting higher up the valley, is not far behind, with an all-time low of its own at forty-seven degrees below zero. Both towns wear their cold like a badge of honor. So as you explore this high, remote corner of Colorado, remember that its beauty comes wrapped in some of the most bracing air in the country.
