The Redstone Historic District is located in and near the unincorporated community of that name in western Pitkin County, Colorado, United States.

It includes the original community of Redstone as built by Colorado Fuel and Iron (CFI) for the coal miners it employed.

John Cleveland Osgood, CFI's president at the time, spent lavishly to create quality housing for miners and their families, as well as various other public buildings, in an effort to forestall unionization.

Eventually the town rebounded slightly and today is home to a small arts community; many of the remaining buildings have been restored.

Redstone Boulevard (also County Route 3), lined with some of its original Llewellyn Westinghouse cast iron streetlamps, is the backbone of the district.

[2] On the west its boundary follows either State Highway 133 or the east bank of the for roughly one mile from 242 Redstone, and the parallel point on Hill Road, in the north, the limit of the historic portion of town, to where Hawk Creek flows into the Crystal south of Osgood Castle.

The eastern slopes are additionally part of the Maroon Bells–Snowmass Wilderness that separates Redstone from the county seat, Aspen, 22.5 miles (36.2 km) due east.

After a long prehistory of exploration and colonization, the town's remote resources were exploited and made accessible for a brief period of prosperity.

[3] Treaties with the Utes, the Native American tribe that had long claimed the Crystal Valley and other lands in today's Pitkin County as home, made it more amenable to settlement after the Civil War.

A line that might have connected to the valley, the Aspen and Western Railway, was built to coalfields at Willow Park near Carbondale in 1888 by Colorado Fuel's main rival at the time.

Due to bank failures around Colorado and other aftereffects of the Panic of 1893, it took the rest of the 1890s before financing was in place and actual construction could start.

[3] Another delay, caused by a United Mine Workers of America strike, left Osgood bitterly opposed to unions.

In the labor unrest of the era, the shabby and unsafe housing, which miners often shared with their families, were a frequent source of complaint.

[8] After adding running water and building homes at El Moro, a camp near Trinidad, CFI concluded it was possible to do the same on a larger scale with Redstone.

Osgood decided the company town would be on the other side, away from an improvised, unplanned development that represented the way mining communities had been to that point.

In particular, he was enamored of the Swiss chalet style, popularized a half-century earlier by the influential Eastern architect and critic Andrew Jackson Downing in his pattern book The Architecture of Country Houses.

Instead of the board-and-batten siding common in other late 19th-century Colorado mining towns, they had clapboard or shiplap, painted in pleasant, "restful" pastel colors.

At the rooflines were wide overhanging eaves meant to provide shelter from bad weather, decorated with wavy vergeboards and shaped wooden brackets.

Their main blocks' hipped roofs, considered more picturesque by Downing, were pierced by gabled dormers and center chimneys.

[6] Larger buildings included the Tudor Revival Redstone Inn, originally a 40-room dormitory for the unmarried employees, at the south end of the center of town.

At the latter facility, treating others to drinks was prohibited, a policy that CFI had implemented in Coalbasin and found effective in limiting the impact of alcohol consumption on the quality of life.

[6] The club was complemented by the Big Horn Lodge across the river, meant for company meetings, banquets and entertaining guests from out of town.

Architecturally they were similar to the workers' cottages in the center of town, but they were located on larger lots on the hillside with greater setbacks from the road, giving them a view over the valley.

Mature trees were left standing, making the neighborhood seem carefully landscaped[6] Just north of Osgood's estate, at the south end of River Road, were the houses of senior managers.

[10] As construction was completed, CFI was encountering financial difficulties due to strikes at its facilities elsewhere in the state and its heavy investment in its Pueblo plant.

In the aftermath John D. Rockefeller felt that Osgood's recalcitrance and apparent insensitivity to the miners' concerns there vindicated his belief that poor character led to social conflict.

Lucille inherited the estate, and finished the redevelopment, only to have the hotel fail quickly as the Great Depression ruined the tourist trade.

But the loss of the original buildings continued, as many of the cottages were either demolished as a result of the neglect after so many winters at 7,200 feet (2,200 m) above sea level in the mountains, or moved.

After the resurgence of Aspen as a resort in the late 20th century, Redstone began to gain residents and attract tourists who valued its historic buildings.

[14] Many of the original cottages and most of the larger buildings from Redstone's peak years have been demolished, but some noteworthy structures remain from the era.