What's Up With Those Houses?

When Cripple Creek was built, the original part of the town was built on the hillsides so as not to disturb the valuable pasture land along the creek bottom. That was just in case the gold strike didn't 'pan out' .  
And just like developers today, the land planners of yesterday wanted to get as many homes and people into as little space as possible. So homes were built extremely close to each other. So close, that sometimes the roofs would hang over each other.  Making it very difficult to paint between the houses (probably a chore for the children).

Building houses this close together was fairly common in old mountain mining towns. And created a unique set of problems, besides the painting and maintenance, you can hear the neighbors. Their alarm clock. Their phone. Their...well...you get the idea. The picture below is between my house and the neighbor's. I'm just glad I have nice neighbors. Hope they say the same about us! There is enough room between our homes that a grown person can walk. 

Of course, that means any windows that face this space could potentially open onto the neighbor's window. Like our bedroom which opens onto our neighbor's bedroom window. The green seen through the window is my neighbor's house.

And while we do have some breathing room on the west side of our house, this wasn't always the case. There used to be a boarding house next door - situated on what is now my side lawn. I can't even begin to imagine .....