page_title: Aspen, Colorado
section_title: Sister cities
hierarchical_section_title: Aspen, Colorado / Sister cities
caption_attribution_description: 51042. Colorado. Aspen silver mines.
context_page_description: Aspen is the home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. Its population was 6,658 at the 2010 United States Census. Aspen is in a remote area of the Rocky Mountains' Sawatch Range and Elk Mountains, along the Roaring Fork River at an elevation just below 8,000 feet above sea level on the Western Slope, 11 miles west of the Continental Divide.
  Founded as a mining camp during the Colorado Silver Boom and later named "Aspen" because of the abundance of aspen trees in the area, the city boomed during the 1880s, its first decade of existence. The boom ended when the Panic of 1893 led to a collapse in the silver market, and the city began a half-century known as "the quiet years" during which its population steadily declined, reaching a nadir of fewer than a thousand by 1930. Aspen's fortunes reversed in the mid-20th century when neighboring Aspen Mountain was developed into a ski resort, and industrialist Walter Paepcke bought many properties in the city in the 1950s and redeveloped them.
context_section_description: Aspen's sister cities are:
   Abetone Cutigliano, Italy
   Bariloche, Argentina
   Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France
   Davos, Switzerland
   Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
   Queenstown-Lakes, New Zealand
   Shimukappu, Japan
caption: Silver mines in Aspen, 1898
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