Steamboat Springs

Seven thousand feet up in the Colorado Rockies, nestled quietly below one of the largest ski mountains in North America, sits a small ranching community that serves as a constant reminder that the Old West is alive and well. Long before Steamboat Springs became the world class resort it is today, the Ute Indians adopted the area as their summer home. The inviting waters of numerous mineral springs, mild climate, abundant wild game and rivers teeming with fish, made the area a true paradise. The town got its name when trappers, travelling through the area in mid 1800s, found a spring that made a chugging noise which sounded to them like a steamboat. Fur trapping gave way to gold mining and eventually ranching and coal mining.