Two blocks wide, 9,118 feet up
Silver Plume is the highest of the Clear Creek towns and the smallest — about 180 people in an 1870s silver camp squeezed between I-70 and the mountainside, the terminus of the Georgetown Loop Railroad. Main Street is the historic district; Woodward, Brownell, and Mountain Street climb toward the base of Sunrise Peak. Nearly every house is a small miner's frame cottage on a narrow lot, and many of those lots end in a steep rear yard. That is where the deck usually goes, which makes it a structural project first: stepped footings, taller posts, railing at height.
The town issues its own permits
Silver Plume runs its own building permits, on paper and email. You download the 2026 Building Permit Application and fee schedule from the town's Licenses & Permits page and submit it to the Town Clerk at Small Town Hall, 710 Main Street; the Planning & Zoning Board reviews applications and meets as needed at 7 pm. The town notes an online application is coming, but for now it is paper and email, and a board that meets as needed sets its own pace. Silver Plume is also part of the Georgetown–Silver Plume National Historic Landmark District, so exterior changes fall under town planning review; we prepare drawings and material specs with that in mind. Parcels outside town limits permit through Clear Creek County in Georgetown.
Snow at the top of the county
The town publishes no design-load table, so the county's design criteria are the reference: a 42-inch minimum frost line, deck piers at least 36 inches below grade, and a roof snow load looked up by elevation on the county's ClearMap table. At 9,100 feet, Silver Plume sits at the heavy end of that table. Every beam, post, and footing under a covered deck is sized to the parcel's number, and an open deck carries its share too — winter accumulation is a real load. The county also enforces the 2025 Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code with a defensible-space site plan; we confirm with the Clerk whether it applies in town, and we detail for embers regardless — framing bays screened, undersides kept clear.
Composite for a cottage that gets shoveled
A Silver Plume deck is shoveled for half the year and baked by thin-air sun for the other half. Capped composite does not soak up meltwater before a freeze and does not need refinishing every summer. On a narrow, steep lot, the deck is often the only usable outdoor space, and slim aluminum or cable railing keeps the mountainside in view instead of behind pickets.
Old decks on old houses
Decks hung on 1870s cottages over the decades were framed to whatever the builder had on hand. We inspect before quoting. Sound framing earns a composite re-deck; an undersized or rotted frame gets a replacement on current-code structure, in writing either way. Rebuilding once beats repairing twice, and at this elevation the difference shows up the first winter.
Seventy-five minutes, scheduled in blocks
Silver Plume is about 75 minutes from our Centennial shop — up I-70 past Idaho Springs and one exit beyond Georgetown. We group mountain-corridor work into consecutive-day blocks and time footings around the short season at 9,000 feet; the drive shapes the calendar, not the price or the guarantee. Run the cost calculator for a planning range, then tell us what you are planning and we will come walk the lot.