“We were under the Kansas Territory when we first opened. At one time, there were more people here than in Denver."”

Roy Weingarik

NEVADAVILLE - If you wandered up Nevadaville Road on Sunday morning, July 13, you might have wondered if you had stumbled into another time. 

The sleepy ghost town of Nevadaville was buzzing with life as the Mountain Miner’s Breakfast kicked off at 7 a.m., filling Masonic Lodge #4 with the smell of sausage, hash browns, and pancakes fresh off the griddle.

Tables were packed with families, masons, history buffs, and curious travelers, all swapping stories over plates piled high with scrambled eggs, sausage patties, chilled berries, and syrup-soaked stacks of pancakes. 

For $15 a plate (free for first responders), guests weren’t just eating breakfast: they were helping preserve a piece of Colorado history.

“This is our one big fundraiser,” said Jake Westling, a relatively new Mason who bought property nearby and quickly got swept up in the lodge’s story. “It’s been going on, on and off, since the 1970s. Every year we’re getting better. We used to serve cold pancakes, now they’re hot, and that makes a big difference.”

The lodge itself, built in 1879, has survived fires, abandonment, and decades as a boarded-up relic before members like Roy Weingarik fought to reopen it in the mid-1970s. 

“We were under the Kansas Territory when we first opened. At one time, there were more people here than in Denver,” Weingarik explained.

More than just breakfast

Outside, the Wild Bunch re-enactors brought the old main street to life, joking with the crowd, trading bits of mining lore, and staging lively gunfight shows at 10, 11, and noon. 

Music from Some Sweet Day drifted out the open windows of the lodge, mixing with laughter and the clip-clop of hay wagon rides ferrying visitors from the parking area near the Masonic Cemetery up the hill from the lodge.

Across the street, the original Nevadaville City Hall and jail were open for tours, and the old Kramer Saloon, now an antique store, welcomed curious guests looking for relics. 

Upstairs in the lodge, visitors peeked into ongoing restoration work and a collection of mining artifacts, some freshly unearthed during recent construction.

The Masonic Hall was full of mystical tools and interesting ritual adornments.

Keeping history alive

The breakfast isn’t just a fun tradition; it’s survival for a lodge that doesn’t have a deep treasury. Proceeds from every breakfast support critical repairs, including a long-overdue new roof. 

“We’ve been patching it for years,” Westling said. “Now we’ve got to tear the whole thing off and start fresh. It’s not cheap, but you’ve got to have a roof over your structure.”

Though only a handful of members actually live in Nevadaville, Masons from across Colorado pitch in to keep the lodge alive. They have even started a First Responders Award Banquet to honor local heroes, and they regularly help send Clear Creek and Gilpin County band students to summer music camps.

For a few hours on this July morning, Nevadaville wasn’t a ghost town at all. It was alive with clinking silverware, the sound of fiddles and guitars, and the chatter of people discovering that history, like pancakes, is best served hot.