The dirt road to reach town (an eight-mile drive off of Cottonwood Pass CO Road 209), is not even maintained in the winter. Today, about 75 people live in Tin Cup, but only in the summer. Tin Cup was a vibrant-and often violent-mini-metropolis with five grocery stores, four hotels, a slaughterhouse, and about a dozen saloons. In 1881, the town’s population crescendoed at about 1,500, with 2,500 more residing in the surrounding outskirts of Taylor Park. Vandenbusche says that Tin Cup, founded in 1879 and originally incorporated in 1880 as Virginia City, landed its moniker after prospector Jim Taylor dipped a tin cup into Willow Creek-one of the area’s many streams-for a drink of water and noticed gold flakes shimmering off of the creek bed. At the end of the day, when the barkeeps would sweep-or mine-the floor, there would usually be a couple of flakes to find.” “When they went into a bar, they’d take out a pinch of gold, and that’s how they’d pay for their drinks. They’d saddle up to one of Tin Cup’s saloons, dump their cups of gold dust out on the bar, and refill the cups with the whiskey they’d drink all night long.Īccording to Gunnison County historian Duane Vandenbusche, the miners used leather pouches to collect their gold dust.“It’d be hard to carry that stuff in a tin cup,” says Vandenbusche, who is celebrating his 60th year as a history professor at Western Colorado University in Gunnison and included an entire chapter on Tin Cup in his book, Around the Gunnison Country. He’ll tell you that the whiskey, as well as Tin Cup the town, were so named because the area’s original gold miners kept tin cups in their pockets to collect the smallest particles of gold that would otherwise get lost in the fabric of their clothes. He would also go on to found Stranahan’s, Colorado’s first official whiskey that catapulted the Centennial State’s craft spirit craze, as well as Tincup whiskey, which drew its name from the town that inspired his love of Colorado. If it is raining beyond comfort please drive to the square, sit in your car and listen to the album alone.After college, Graber, who grew up in Missouri, headed straight for the Rocky Mountains, where he spent time as a volunteer firefighter, rodeo rider, and skijorer. If it’s lightly raining, I will still be waking around with a megaphone borrowed from a local elementary for field day use. If you are in or around the Denton area on May 17 at 7pm please meet me on the courthouse lawn for a walking tour of locations mentioned in the album lyrics and possibly an acoustic performance. Although I truly do believe reaching this goal is inevitable, I have decided to proactively work toward making my dreams of becoming a holiday founder a reality. I’ve had tremendous response in the 50 days since it’s release but I have yet to reach “fake holiday turns to real holiday” success. I set that date in the lyrics in hopes that someday Waitsgiving would be celebrated as a real holiday and the city would shut down and observe patience every year on my birthday. Hello, last month I released an album about a fictional holiday that takes place every May 17th. So many beautiful moments packed into one night. I got to plug the Beatles to a group of suburban teens.
![diggy diggy](https://www.cardcow.com/images/set127/card00041_fr.jpg)
Some strangers walked by, said “hey fishboy” and kept walking as if this happens all the time.
![diggy diggy](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pvUCsB7iSgk/hqdefault.jpg)
#Diggy's adventure ghost town square full#
Robin and Brandon came with the first Fishboy shirt ever made, Sarah brought me homemade snocone syrup, David showed up to document (head to his account for a full video) I made everyone press the crosswalk button. Thank you for coming out and letting me lead you around the town I love and missed.įolks from all over DFW, Houston, Austin, Tulsa showed up just to see what would happen. It was truly a surprising and touching moment to be met with after over a year without playing shows. Yesterday I headed out to the square thinking that I’d take some goofy selfies alone in the rain and was instead met with beautiful weather and a group of 40-50 friends and fans that I’ve met through out the history of the band.