A Cambridge-educated mine superintendent shot himself in a self-dug cliff grave in 1887 after years of nightly violin vigils
810 Willis Street (trailhead), Silver Plume, CO 80476
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public hiking trail; no fee to visit the Griffin Monument.
Access
Limited Access
Challenging out-and-back trail: 3.6-3.8 miles round trip, 1,200+ feet elevation gain, unpaved mountain path to cliff-side monument at roughly 10,000 feet elevation
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1870 · Georgetown-Silver Plume National Historic Landmark District · 1884 Fire and 1899 Double Avalanche · Clifford Griffin Memorial — documented Victorian-era dark history
Silver Plume sits at roughly 9,100 feet elevation in Clear Creek Canyon along what is now Interstate 70, about 50 miles west of Denver. The town grew rapidly during the 1870s and 1880s silver boom and was incorporated in 1880 as part of the Georgetown-Silver Plume Historic District, which is listed as a National Historic Landmark. At its peak the town supported saloons, hotels, and a substantial immigrant mining workforce.
Two major disasters shaped Silver Plume's nineteenth-century history. A fire in 1884 destroyed much of the town's commercial core. On January 29, 1899, two avalanches struck within hours of each other — the second killing people who had come to help the survivors of the first. The back-to-back slides killed several residents and collapsed structures on the town's upper slopes.
Clifford Griffin was born July 2, 1847, in Shropshire, England, and educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge University. His fiancée died the night before their planned wedding. By 1880 Griffin had emigrated to Colorado and taken a position as superintendent of his younger brother's gold mine operation, known as the 7:30 Mine — named for the 7:30 a.m. start time, an hour later than the regional standard. He built a small cabin on the cliffs above the mine.
Each evening after work, Griffin returned to the cliff and played violin. Townspeople below could hear the music drifting down the canyon; some reportedly waited outdoors in the evenings specifically to listen. On June 19, 1887, after what observers described as a particularly long recital, residents heard a single gunshot. They climbed the cliff and found Griffin lying in a grave he had cut by hand from solid rock. A suicide note specified that he wanted to be buried on that spot. His brother buried him there as requested.
The town later raised money for a ten-foot granite obelisk, hauled by wagon to the cliffside. The monument still stands above Silver Plume, accessible via the 7:30 Mine Trail.
Sources
Clifford Griffin's story generates ghost-lore from a foundation that is unusually well-documented: a named individual, a specific date (June 19, 1887), a specific cause of death confirmed by witnesses and a suicide note, and a grave that still exists and can be visited. That documented history provides the anchor for the legend that follows it.
The haunting claim is simple and consistent: violin music heard after dark near the 7:30 Mine Trail cliff. The regional tourism site for Clear Creek County includes Silver Plume among its haunted destinations, noting the Griffin legend specifically. The music is described as faint, intermittent, and sourceless — the same quality of sound that townspeople heard from Griffin himself during his years of evening performances.
No paranormal investigators appear to have formally documented audio recordings at the site. The legend circulates primarily in regional hiking and dark-history writing. The story is treated with some degree of dignity in most retellings because the historical record supports the basic facts of Griffin's life and death, and because his self-prepared grave and the community monument suggest that contemporaries understood his grief as genuine rather than theatrical.
The 1884 fire and 1899 avalanche deaths add atmospheric weight to Silver Plume's dark-history profile, though these events do not have distinct paranormal traditions attached to them. The town's preserved Victorian architecture and the abandoned mine ruins along the trail contribute to the general sense of a place that has not fully shed its nineteenth-century losses.
Notable Entities
A challenging hike from the east end of Silver Plume (trailhead at Willis Street) through historic mining ruins to the granite obelisk memorial at the cliff where Clifford Griffin played violin and was found dead in his self-dug grave on June 19, 1887. The round trip is approximately 3.8 miles with 1,200 feet of elevation gain. The trail also passes the ruins of the 7:30 Mine itself.
The town of Silver Plume — a National Historic Landmark district — preserves intact Victorian mining-era commercial buildings from the 1880s silver boom. The 1884 fire and 1899 double avalanche that devastated the town are part of the interpretive signage along Main Street.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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