Take a Unique Trip to Colorado Ghost Town + Hippie Town

Colorado is full of awesome places to visit that many consider to be hidden gems. There are plenty of ghost towns, cute mountain towns, and even a few authentic hippie towns still around.

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However, one road trip that many Coloradans either don't know about or at least haven't embarked on is the scenic drive through the ghost town of Caribou all the way to the picturesque hippie town of Nederland.

Colorado Road Trip to Caribou + Nederland

Boulder, Colorado is well-known for being home to the University of Colorado - Boulder and was once considered to be one of the largest hippie towns in the state. While the town does still have some hippie elements, it's certainly a lot different than, say, in the 1960s and 1970s.

However, if you take Highway 119 for roughly 16 miles up into the mountains, you'll discover two very unique places.

Caribou, Colorado was once a thriving mining community home to quite a few silver miners and their families. However, like many of Colorado's other mining towns, Caribou was eventually abandoned and is nothing more than a small ghost town with some ruins in the form of stone buildings that you'll see below.

Roughly five miles west of Caribou is the hippie town of Nederland. Nederland's motto is "Life is Better Up Here" which was adopted back in the 1960s when hippies began to move in.

Today, Nederland is much larger than back in the '60s but it is definitely still a hippie town.

Keep scrolling to take a virtual road trip up to the mountains west of Boulder to Caribou and Nederland: