We returned to Denver late this afternoon by a more southerly route through the mountains. This, our guide explained, was the old prospectors’ trail. Dotted about on either side of the road were a large number of old mine workings. Some were still quite sophisticated structures, with trestles and mine heads. Others seemed to be little better than rabbit holes, with workings scattered over the mountainsides beneath the tunnels. Some had been closed off. Others were probably considered too inaccessible to be worth while blocking. This poignant patchwork of diggings from just a century-and-a-half ago represents the last traces of the frenetic madness that overcame Americans seeking their fortunes in 1859 (Colorado’s gold rush came ten years after California’s). Incongruously, high above them on a bluff, as the road starts to dip towards Denver, stands the house in the picture. Woody Allen enthusiasts will surely immediately recognise it as the house in Sleeper (1973), which was filmed in and around Denver, in part because of its modernistic architecture.