The wildfire that reduced 45,000 acres around Last Chance, CO to ash in 2012 may have been the knockout punch for this crossroads town, but decades of economic decline dating to the 50s, when the interstate came in 40 miles to the west and south, had long since sapped it of its vitality.
To call Last Chance a “once-thriving town” may be a stretch, but it was surely a place with a purpose, and a discernible identity, the source of fond memories for the farm families who worked the windswept fields, and travelers stopping at the Dairy King or staying at the motel on their way to or from Denver.
Marsha and I ventured there last year to see what we could find. The place had been the subject of a few Denver area news profiles after the fire, and before that in several blogs devoted to ghost towns. Little had been said or written about Last Chance in the years, since, however, and for that reason it qualified as a forgotten place, in some ways many times forgotten, and due a visit.
We aren’t the first to have stopped by this faded place, to have found some qualities in what remains of Last Chance that seem unjustified by the facts on the ground. It is not a pretty place, but it may in fact be beautiful. Its story is largely unremarkable – the story of its decline could be told of a thousand other Plains towns across the Midwest and West – and yet it possesses an air of mystery.
That’s the way it looked to us, anyway – a little bit beautiful and a little bit mysterious.
A burnt-out old crossroads is never just a burnt-out old crossroads.
Cafe Decay 
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