Clear Creek town stirs with small business.

• Author: Sukin, Gigi
• Position: REGIONALREPORT

Exit 226 off Interstate 70 is one of the least-used off ramps of the mountain corridor. In 2012, Shae Whitney and Brady Becker stumbled upon a 600-square-foot 1890s mining supply store and former bakery in the old mining town of Silver Plume after a day of play on the peaks. Already, Whitney had begun applying her education and bartending experience toward a natural bitters production line in Denver.

"I think we were just ready to be out of the city," says Whitney, founder of DRAM Apothecary, a natural bitters company and drinking destination for Silver Plume locals and weekend warriors traveling the hilly highway.

"We were perplexed that the town still existed," Whitney recalls of their first visit.

The once-bustling mining town in Clear Creek County, at more than 9,000 feet, has dwindled with time and shifting economies. Today, about two-thirds of Silver Plume's original structures remain intact along dilapidated, unpaved roads, and little action or comprehensive community strategy is apparent despite the prime location nestled next to the heavily trafficked highway corridor and mountain towns.

But for Coloradans who came or stayed for easy access to a high quality of life in the outdoors, Silver Plume remains an idyllic community to put down roots.

"We found this place. It was for sale. DRAM was already started. I was just doing it out of my kitchen," Whitney says of their watering hole. Shelling out about $200,000 for a corner storefront, the couple moved from Denver to Silver Plume in 2013.

Before DRAM, Whitney worked at City 'o City, a bohemian restaurant in Denver's Capitol Hill neighborhood. "I realized that most of the bitters stocked at bars I had worked at were synthetic," she says. With a background in food science, ecological agriculture and botany, she launched her product line in 2011, touting her cocktail bitters that were "without synthetic dyes, flavorings, preservatives or flavor oils."

SMALL BUSINESS--SMALL TOWN

As the operation rapidly expanded, Whitney and her business-life partner, Becker, searched for a commercial kitchen throughout Denver, but prices were high. When the pair found their Silver Plume property, less than 50 miles away from Denver, they were sold, though the space required a transformation.

"Brady and I did all the work ourselves," Whitney says of the overhaul of DRAM Apothecary Tasting Room & Bread Bar. "Brady has a master's in architecture. We cleaned up and repainted the building, installed the furnace. All the plumbing was redone. We refurbished the whole thing," with the exception of the exterior, which remains rustic, stressing the magic and mystery of the mining town.

The bar officially opened in 2013, only sporadically for special events to start. These days DRAM is usually open...