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Underneath what is now Lake Granby, there used to be ranches and pastures in a town named Monarch. Known as Grand County’s “Atlantis”, the bustling town boasted a small hotel, school, bowling alley, theater and a dance hall in the early 1900s.
The town of Monarch has been described as a “boom and bust” town by the Grand County Historical Association.
According to the association, prior to the 1880s there was a strong mining industry just north of Granby. However, the Grand Lake Area Historical Society notes that the Monarch Consolidated Gold and Copper Mining and Smelting Company, whose founders developed Monarch, only ever produced about $150 worth of copper each year.
The mines were soon exhausted in the 1880s, and locals turned to other ways to make a living.
A 2,800-foot long chute carried tree trunks down the hillside to the lake. Pictured is a log flume at Monarch which was used to transport lumber and logs down mountainous terrain. Grand Lake Historical Society/Courtesy photo
No official Monarch population numbers exist, but the historical association estimated the peak population was around 2,000 residents. Most of these residents were full-time laborers.
Monarch Lake was created through a damming of a portion of the Colorado River, which used to be called Grand River, in 1904. The town of Monarch was built 1.5 miles away from the lake.
The town consisted of a boarding house, a store with a classroom in the back, post office, dance hall with a bowling alley, a few small cottages and a sawmill. A box factory was built later in 1906. However, a fire with unknown origins burned down the box factory in Monarch.
Other structures in the town survived, but Monarch soon became a ghost town. Some historians wonder what would have become of Monarch has the box factory not burned down.
Life became hard across Colorado and much of the United States during the 1930s. In 1929, a drought engulfed much of Colorado and the Eastern Slope was suffering badly.
As a result, the idea to divert water from the Colorado River to the eastern region of Colorado was proposed. By 1949, on the site of what was once Monarch, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation began to fill Lake Granby. Today, the town sits underwater.
Monarch’s log flume still runs down the hillside into Lake Monarch. There is a trail around Monarch Lake that takes hikers directly under the flume.Grand Lake Area Historical Society/Courtesy photo
The first major step for this project began in 1938 with the construction of the Green Mountain Reservoir. The Bureau of Reclamation oversaw the construction of the nearly 20-year-long project. The Colorado Big-Thompson Project carried a price tag of $162 million and resulted in the creation of Lake Granby and Shadow Mountain Reservoir.
Charley Sutherland contributed reporting to this article
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