Masontown began in 1866 when General Buford built a mill at the site of the old Victoria Mine. The operation was enlarged in 1872 when the Masontown Mining and Milling Company added a 20-stamp, $75,000 reduction works with a 20-ton cyanide process facility. It was then that the town acquired its name after Masontown, PA, home of the company's investors. The town and its surroundings boasted a boardinghouse, 10-12 cabins, 12 tunnels, several hundred residents and, by 1882, proximity to a railroad. The rail's nearness was important because the company shipped its gold and silver to the Denver Mint. Despite the town's and company's improvements, prosperity died out by 1910.
Masontown sits next to a long-established avalanche path. A slide wiped out General Buford's mill in 1912. Another heavy snowslide demolished most of the rest of the town in the spring of 1926. What little remained of the town burned to the ground in a July 1968 fire. Not destroyed are true and false stories about the town as well as true tales about the illegal whiskey produced there by bootleggers during Prohibition.
Directions: Masontown is located above and one-half mile south of Frisco on the lower slope of Mount Royal.