The story
Crested Butte Arts Festival in Crested Butte
The Crested Butte Arts Festival is a juried fine-art show held along historic Elk Avenue in Crested Butte, Colorado, each summer. Tracing back to a 1971 arts fair organized by the Crested Butte Society, it now draws roughly 150 exhibiting artists and more than 10,000 visitors over three days for the first weekend of August.
Crested Butte, Colorado, was a coal-mining town before it was an arts destination, and the Victorian storefronts that line its historic Elk Avenue still carry that mining-era architecture.