I looked through the dusty windows and gasped. I saw a vision of post-World War II American optimism, power and design. Before me in all its unrestored glory sat a 1949 Buick convertible, top up, tires inflated. I wanted the keys.<\/p>\n
Where was I? What was the story of this town? I walked back down the street, past another vintage 1964 four-door Chevrolet, and began to understand Helper\u2019s ties to Colorado and the world.<\/p>\n
In the race to connect the American West, the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad built tracks across the high plateau west of Grand Junction and up through Price Canyon northwest to Salt Lake City. The town site had been settled in 1881 by Teancum Pratt and his Mormon plural wives. He sought to escape \u201chunters, trappers, bachelors and rareheads,\u201d but he sold out to the D&RG in the fall of 1887. The railroad promptly built 27 frame houses for the immigrant flood soon to begin and in 1891 switched to standard gauge track.<\/p>\n
When the steam engines hit those steep grades they needed help, literally helper engines to push the trains uphill. Helper was born and thrived as a railroad town with adjacent coal mines in Carbon County. Miners arrived from all over the world to build a rural town of 5,000 people. To work on the railroad or in the coal mines, immigrants came from Greece, Yugoslavia, Slovenia, China, Italy, Japan and the Middle East to pursue their American dreams.<\/p>\n
By the early 1900s, Helper boasted Jewish and Italian mercantile stores, Greek coffeehouses, Italian bakeries, Japanese restaurants and fish markets, and by 1920, a polyglot population that spoke 27 languages. Helper thrived. The Helper Real Estate & Investment Co., with Assyrian, Italian and Jewish investors, built the Helper Hotel between 1913 and 1914. After 1942, the D&RG used the hotel for its train crews.<\/p>\n Built in the early 1900s, the Carbon Hotel was used as a \u201cbar, caf\u00e9 and sporting house \u2026 due to the large number of single male immigrants in the mines. The bordello on the upper floor was very popular, though somewhat illegal,\u201d explains an interpretive sign. George Gigoumakis, Steve Zoulakis and John Melon owned a grocery story at 80 S. Main St. Near the Helper Library, a black, 18-foot-tall \u201cBig John\u201d fiberglass coal miner statue \u201cis a proud symbol of pride for the mining industry.\u201d<\/p>\n Steve Grickas and Tony Stamatkis ran the Greek Zappion Coffee Shop. Ladies of the night frequented the California Hotel Lendaris and rented upstairs rooms in other buildings. The Point After Bar was the \u201ccraziest, wildest bar in Helper with standing room only on weekends,\u201d Gary DeVincent told me. He should know, he bought it.<\/p>\n A Connecticut native, just out of the U.S. Marine Corps, DeVincent and his buddies were \u201czigzagging across the West on our motorcycles and I wound up staying in Utah. Every Sunday, I liked to go for a ride and get lost. I went from Salt Lake to Helper, and I was amazed. I could see the remnants of an old town. It was truly a boarded-up ghost town. I thought it was abandoned and really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n He bought the gas station that made me pause, and as local folks started telling him stories, he learned that the wealthy station owner\u2019s son cut a wide swath through town with a fabulous Buick convertible. Older women remembered being teenagers, going to the drive-in and necking in the 1949 Buick\u2019s back seat.<\/p>\n He found the car\u2019s owner, and DeVincent was ecstatic, \u201cDo you want to sell it?\u201d he asked. \u201cI promise you if I buy this car, I\u2019ll put it back in the station where it belongs in the exact bay where it was parked every night.\u201d DeVincent did as promised, and then started buying more buildings.<\/p>\n He\u2019s got his historic motorcycle collection on the main floor of the old Elpe Hotel, which once had a silent movie theater and brothels upstairs. Those bedrooms are now exclusive Airbnbs. He has also purchased the Kiva Club bar, which was once a Mafia stronghold.<\/p>\n Helper has a fine museum with a room dedicated to United Mine Workers of America and displays about the Winter Quarters Mine explosion, which killed 250 miners and left 268 fatherless children and 107 windows. Nearby, Butch Cassidy robbed the Pleasant Valley Coal Co. office in Castle Gate and rode off with $7,000 in gold. At the museum, I dropped in a quarter to watch an HO-model train go around and around a vintage model train set depicting the area.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to embrace an industrial past. Gold and silver mining towns in the Colorado Rockies have done well with tourism, but rarely have coal mining and railroad towns made that transition, yet Helper now has an arts festival and the Outlaw Car Show & Cruise. Galleries can be found in converted grocery stores. New coffee shops have opened.<\/p>\n \u201cFifteen artists live and work here full time,\u201d Chicagoan Roy Jesperson told me. He and his wife renovated a grocery into an art gallery and spacious residence. They also founded the Helper Project, which is a nonprofit restoring old neon signs and redoing bungalows. Artists donated railroad-themed paintings that brought in $150,000 the first night of the sale.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery building on Main Street has been bought and is being restored. There is a lot of activity in town. Residents are working to improve things,\u201d Jesperson says as we walk past his black Porsche parked on the street. He keeps his vintage Austin-Healy sports car garaged. His floor-to-ceiling bedroom windows face the railroad tracks.<\/p>\n Helper is transitioning away from coal. Locals would like the Amtrak trains to stop longer. Tourism is picking up. Helper had a solid industrial past, and now, it has a future. I\u2019ll return to walk Main Street and look for the changes, but I also want to see that 1949 Buick again with its long steel hood and swept-back fenders. Just like the town with its vacant buildings, the stories that car could tell \u2026<\/p>\n