About the Breckenridge, Frisco and Dillon, Colorado Area 

Looking West Over Dillon at Buffalo Mt..
This is the beautiful town of Dillon, overlooking Lake Dillon we see today.  Consisting of many homes and condominiums - many overlooking the lake - the town offers a small-town atmosphere with a vibrant business community.

Located approximately 75 miles west of Denver via I-70 and U.S. Highway 6, Dillon has a population of about 750.  Dillon's beautiful location on the shore of Dillon Reservoir provides an unrivaled scenic backdrop for an abundance of summer activities.  Its close proximity to the famous Summit County ski areas makes it a convenient spot for winter vacationers.

At an elevation of 9,087 feet above sea level, Dillon enjoys the typical high mountain weather of all the towns in Summit County - 300 days a year of sunshine, average temperatures of 75 degrees in the summer and 30 degrees in the winter.

The Dillon Marina is a full-service marina  offering access to Lake Dillon.  World class sailing, boating, trout fishing and mountain recreations opportunities abound. With 26 miles of shoreline, the lake offers many secluded spots.

Great shopping values abound at the Dillon/Silverthorne Factory Outlet Stores.  And recreational opportunities are almost limitless.  Across from the marina is a trail-head to miles of paved bike paths offering spectacular scenic tours.  The surrounding National Forest also provides mountain-biking, rafting, fishing, hiking, horseback riding and camping.  Jeep tours on old mining roads will take you to nearby historical mining towns


When Bayard Taylor passed through Summit County in the summer of 1866, he camped near the present-day site of Dillon.  The group's exact location is known because the journals they kept mention the confluence of three streams - the Blue, the Snake and a third, unnamed one (we know it today as Ten Mile Creek).

Taylor's book, Colorado:  A Summer Trip, tells of dense pines, thick green grass, hills of aspen, sagebrush in higher, drier areas, and fields of wildflowers.  The Snake River, "saddle-deep and "swift," was forded with great difficulty.  The Blue River was a "foaming" stream with an "impetuous" current that almost carried one horse and rider to their deaths.  The raging water completely submerged one pack mule while it was fording the stream.  The valley of the Blue, here narrowed by mountains, was full of pools, quagmires, fallen timber and rock slides.

To make the same trip today, Bayard Taylor would need a submarine.  Gone are all of the landmarks he noted - flooded over by Lake Dillon.

The idea of bringing water from the western slope to the eastern slope began early.  In 1913 the City and County of Denver began buying water rights west of the Continental Divide.  What would become Lake Dillon began with the Collier Mountain Tunnel Project, proposed by W. H. Meyers and George J. Bancroft in October of 1907.  While the proposal never got beyond the filing stage, in May of 1913 the first filing for a Blue River water diversion project was made by the State Engineer and the plan was based on the original Meyers/Bancroft plan.

In February 1946 the Denver Water Board recommended that the Blue River water diversion project (at that time called the Montezuma tunnel) be approved for consideration.

Thus began the moving of an entire town.

Clearing for the dam began in April 1960.  The 231-foot-tall earth fill dam would eventually impound 252,678 acre feet of water.

During the depression years, the Denver Water Board gained control of much of the reservoir site by buying property in the old town of Dillon at tax sales.  By the 1950s as much as three-fourths of the town was owned by the Water Board.
                                                                                          
The photo you see on the right is Dillon's Main Street sometime in the 1950s.

Representatives of the Denver Water Board and people in the Dillon area met at the Wildwood Lodge near Dillon on November 3, 1955, to hear the Water Board's plans and to air the concerns of local residents.  The Water Board predicted that the proposed new town as well as the homes and businesses in it would be better than what existed at that time.  Residents had the option of buying land in the  new town or exchanging their property for some land in new Dillon.  As you might imagine, local residents expressed strong feelings about a number of concerns.

Responses to the Water Board's desire to buy the remaining necessary property were mixed.  Some resisted; some held out for higher prices.  By the Beginning of 1959, the Water Board was completing negotiations with the few residents still owning property within the site.  A letter mailed to Dillon residents in December of 1959 indicated the old town must be evacuated by April 1, 1961.  That date was later pushed ahead to August 1, 1961.

By January of 1960, seventy-eight land owners had already sold their property to the Water Board.  Throughout the next tow years, the Summit County Journal reported on the movement of people and buildings out of the old town.  Some went to Denver; some to Breckenridge, Keystone, Frisco or the new town of Silverthorne.

The dam was completed in July 1963 and water storage began in September of that year.

Perhaps the most unusual item moved from old Dillon was the Dillon Cemetery.  Established in 1885 it was the only cemetery patented under Federal law.  The patent was signed on June 30, 1901 by President McKinley.  The Western Vault Company moved over three hundred graves to the new 38 acre site located east of the new town, along U.S. Route 6.

Many sites had been considered for the new town of Dillon.  After much deliberation the town board chose the ridge north of the old town of Dillon and south of Straight Creek, where present-day Dillon resides.  The firm of Trafton Bean was awarded the contract for designing the new town.

The result is the beautiful town of Dillon.