The best mornings in Nathrop start with a coffee thermos and a decision about how far up the canyon you want to go. County Road 162 begins at Highway 285 and runs west along Chalk Creek for sixteen miles, ending at a nineteenth-century mining town that most of your out-of-town guests have already put on a list without knowing they can drive to it from your driveway in under an hour.
If you live here, the value of that road is not the destination. It is the calendar. St. Elmo, the hot springs, the falls, and the general store all run on a compressed May-to-September season, and knowing what is actually open on a given Saturday is the difference between a good day and a locked gate. This is a guide to using the corridor the way a resident should, stop by stop, with the seasonal fine print built in.
The first six miles: hot springs, not a hotel stay
The turn off Highway 285 at Nathrop puts you on 162 within a quarter mile of the Chalk Creek confluence. The road climbs gently at first, past pasture and cottonwoods, and by mile five you are at Mount Princeton Hot Springs Resort at 15870 CR 162. Most residents already know the resort's pools. Fewer take advantage of the fact that the property doubles as a community venue in the shoulder months, hosting the Alliance's Chocolate Lover's Fantasy fundraiser and Chaffee County Habitat for Humanity's annual Mac & Cheese Bake-Off in the same ballroom that fills with resort guests in July.
That matters for a Saturday plan because the parking lot is a useful mental checkpoint. If it is full by nine in the morning, the upper canyon will be busier than you want by ten. The road up to St. Elmo follows county road 162 for about 12 miles until you reach the town of St. Elmo, and is plowed year round, but plowed does not mean uncrowded, and the corridor has no meaningful passing lanes past the resort.
Miles six to twelve: the part everyone drives past
Between the hot springs and St. Elmo, three things are worth stopping for, and most weekend visitors skip all of them because they are focused on the ghost town at the end.
Chalk Cliffs. The pale gray face on the north side of the road is not chalk. It is kaolinized quartz monzonite, and the best pullout to see it is about a mile past the hot springs. Early light works better than late. By early afternoon the cliff is in shadow and the color goes flat.
Agnes Vaille Falls. The trailhead is roughly seven miles up 162. The falls themselves are a short walk from the parking area. If you have not been in a few years, treat the current signage as the last word on what is accessible — the site has changed since a 2013 rockfall, and the interpretive framing along the trail is worth reading.
The Alpine Tunnel approach. A gravel spur near mile ten climbs toward the old Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad grade. It is not a place to take a low-clearance sedan, but it is a place a resident can point a curious houseguest and let them walk the last stretch on foot.
The through-line for all three: they are quieter than St. Elmo, they are free, and they reward locals who go on a Tuesday evening rather than a Saturday at noon.
Mile sixteen: what "ghost town" actually means here
St. Elmo is not a museum. It is a privately held, still-inhabited hamlet with a working general store and a few full-time residents. Founded in 1880 during the silver rush, it grew fast on the strength of the Mary Murphy Mine and the arrival of the Denver, South Park & Pacific line, then declined when Congress repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893 and the bottom fell out of the silver market, with mines closing and the railroad pulling up stakes in 1927. Today it sits on the National Register of Historic Places, and enough of the original town plan survives that walking Main Street feels less like a reconstruction and more like a pause.
Two things are worth knowing before you go:
| Business | Season | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| St. Elmo General Store | May through September | Souvenirs, snacks, sunflower seeds, cabin rental |
| Ghost Town Guest House | Seasonal | Bed and breakfast in the historic core |
| Public parking | Year-round | Fills by mid-morning on summer weekends |
The St. Elmo General Store operates from May to September, providing a variety of souvenirs, snacks, and drinks and is the closest thing the town has to a visitor center. If the store is closed for the day, most of the interpretive information is on the exterior signage, so bring a phone with a downloaded map — cell service in the canyon is inconsistent.
Why the chipmunks are the whole point
Every resident I have taken up 162 for the first time has the same reaction at St. Elmo, and it has nothing to do with the buildings. It is the chipmunks. There are dozens of them, they are habituated to visitors, and the general store sells small bags of sunflower seeds for the express purpose of letting kids feed them off a palm.
This is not a trivial detail. It is the reason the town works as a family day trip in a way that most ghost towns do not. A five-year-old will tolerate about eleven minutes of "look at the old buildings" before asking to leave. The chipmunks buy you another hour, which is exactly enough time for the adults to actually read the plaques on the Home Comfort Hotel and the schoolhouse.
The related lesson for locals: bring your own bag of seeds from the grocery store in Buena Vista if the general store is closed on the day you go. The animals do not check the calendar.
The road past St. Elmo
For most residents, sixteen miles up and sixteen miles back is the whole trip. But 162 does not actually end at St. Elmo. It continues as a rougher road toward Tincup Pass, one of the higher and more technical passes in Colorado, and the trailhead network around town includes the Chalk Creek Trail and access into the surrounding Sawatch Range.
Two things about that continuation:
- The pass road is a summer-only proposition and requires a high-clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicle. Rental Jeeps and side-by-sides are the norm at the parking area for a reason.
- If you are hosting Front Range family for a weekend and one of them wants "a real Colorado experience," Tincup Pass will do it. If they arrived in a Camry, it will not.
The trailheads around St. Elmo are the more accessible answer. Mount Princeton Hot Springs Resort's own guidance describes twelve popular trailheads in the Nathrop area with hikes for all abilities and age levels, and the density of options within a fifteen-minute drive of the ghost town is genuinely unusual. Most Colorado mountain towns give you two or three. This corner of Chaffee County gives you a dozen.
Building a weekend around it
A few combinations that work, none of which require leaving Nathrop for more than half a day:
- The classic loop. Coffee at home, drive up to St. Elmo by 8:30, walk the town for ninety minutes, back down to Mount Princeton Hot Springs for an early afternoon soak, home by four.
- The event day. Time your trip to the Chaffee County Fair, running July 24 through August 1, 2026 at the Chaffee County Fairgrounds, 10165 Co Rd 120, Salida. Up the canyon in the morning, down to the rodeo grounds in the afternoon.
- The guest tour. For visitors who want history rather than a hike, pair St. Elmo with the Buena Vista Heritage Museum. The through-line — mining boom, railroad, silver crash, quiet century — is easier to explain when you have seen both.
The bigger point for anyone who has been in Nathrop long enough to stop noticing the drive: 162 is one of the few corridors in Colorado where a genuinely significant historic site, an operating hot springs resort, a well-maintained trail network, and a working seasonal business district are stacked inside sixteen miles of the same road. Most of the state has to pick two of those. Chalk Creek has all four, and the season to use them properly is about five months long.
If you have questions about what living along this corridor actually looks like, or you are thinking about how a property near Nathrop fits into your longer plans, Mary Kale knows this stretch of Chaffee County the way a neighbor does. Reach out when you are ready to talk.
