Located on a lonely mountain plain in Colorado ski country, the silver-rush-era town of Leadville holds secrets as deep as its tunnels and old mine workings.

The highway climbs through aspen forest glinting gold in the Sun, rising through zigzag gullies, escarpments and precipices onto a high mountain plain so lonesome it seems to hum with silence. Snowdrifts huddle at the road's verges and on it goes persistently, almost gasping for air, past lonely farms beneath besieging summits.

There are many superlative road trips to take in North America, but if you find yourself on US Route 24, driving through Lake County in Colorado's Rocky Mountains, know you are on an old road to somewhere extraordinary.

Among the places on this storied route is Leadville, with a reputation often chalked up to its elevation. At 3,109m (10,200ft), it's the highest incorporated city in North America. But while the town is always in danger of being dwarfed by the surrounding landscape, the setting also reveals much mythology about Colorado's most lionised subjects: the gold rush and the Wild West.

"So many people, Americans included, are so unfamiliar with our story," said Katie Hild, manager of Leadville's Tourism and Visitor Center, housed today in the original red sandstone American National Bank building. "This is a town that's been shaped by bust and boom – so much has happened here."

The triumph of Leadville, as Hild puts it, is its many strata. The first mineral deposits were found in the area's California Gulch in 1860, and, within a year, around 10,000 prospectors had flooded the high plain, with more than $3m in ore extracted. By 1880, Leadville was served by three railroads, and between 1878 and 1884 the town had freighted 54 million ounces of silver. Soon, rich seams of zinc, iron, gold and lead were being quarried.

"Mining is our root and some of the largest pockets of precious ores on the continent have been found here," added Hild. "At its peak, there were 30,000 people in Leadville, but by 1893 silver prices had plummeted and the glory days were over nearly as quickly as they'd begun."

The Open Road

The Open Road is a celebration of the world's most remarkable highways and byways, and a reminder that some of the greatest travel adventures happen via wheels.

Exploring Leadville nowadays is a kind of treasure hunt – and much of this deep history can be absorbed in the Mining District outside town in the foothills below Mount Sherman. The Route of the Silver Kings, once the backdrop for one of the richest mining camps in the US, reveals 14 original structures and 20 sites from the era that visitors can explore on a signposted gravel road. Incredibly, the US Bureau of Mines estimates there are 1,329 shafts, 1,628 prospect holes and more than 200 miles of workings, all hidden beneath the surface.

For many, the 21-mile circuit represents more than just a charmingly loose collection of mineshafts. Rather, the ghost towns and, most dramatically of all, the buckled headframes and mining camp hoists have come to embody an idealisation of the American dream. It is telling that the names of the camps are Silver Spoon, Diamond Dolly, Upper Oro and Hopemore. But those with a silver gleam in their eyes are advised against any Indiana Jones type antics: all treasure hunting and metal detecting is strictly forbidden.

Leadville's name evokes tin-hatted miners picking through ore, but the town turns out to be equally infused with the spirit of a Wild West film set. There are around a dozen........

© BBC