Creede Carved Its Fire Station Into the Canyon Wall

Walk to the top of Creede’s Main Street and the pavement runs straight into a cliff. The canyon walls of Willow Creek pinch in close here, leaving the little silver town nowhere to spread out. So Creede did something almost no other town has tried: it put part of itself inside the rock.

Fire is part of the reason the idea took hold. Creede grew fast in the 1890s, built of pine and pitch, and it paid for it. The town burned in its boom years, burned again about two decades later, and burned a third time in the 1930s. A place that keeps watching wooden buildings go up in flame learns to think differently about where to keep its fire trucks.

The cave firehouse itself, though, is a modern project. In the early 1980s the volunteer fire department had no money to buy land for a station, so local mining companies pitched in explosives and labor and blasted truck bays into the cliff at the north edge of town. The trucks have parked there since about 1982. The idea worked so well that in 1990 a few Creede miners started carving more tunnels nearby, and that excavation grew into the Underground Mining Museum and the town’s community center, all hand-cut from solid stone.

It is, as far as anyone can tell, a one-of-a-kind firehouse, and you can step inside. The museum offers self-guided tours much of the year and guided tours by appointment in summer. For current hours and tour details, check the Town of Creede’s official Mines & Museums page.