Before buying a second home in Colorado, Jim and Beth Stormont decided to put two mountain towns to the test. They spent 10 days in the small ski town of Crested Butte, then the same amount of time in larger, better-known Breckenridge.

Breckenridge felt a bit too much "like Disney in the mountains," said Jim, a hospitality developer in his 60s. But the Atlanta couple found Crested Butte to be a "peaceful, beautiful, quiet, serene place," he said. "We want a place to get away, slow down."

Eventually, in 2024, they spent about $6.3 million building a five-bedroom, roughly 5,300-square-foot compound just outside Crested Butte, where they now spend almost half their time, said Jim.

The historic coal-mining town, spanning less than a square mile, has no stoplights or chain restaurants. The town (population 1,639 in 2020) is hard to get to -- only 20 miles from Aspen on the map but 100 miles by car -- which has helped keep it smaller than other Colorado ski areas.

In 2018, Vail Resorts bought the Crested Butte Mountain Resort ski area, putting the little town on the map for many skiers who hadn't previously visited. The pandemic brought even more outdoor adventurers to the town, driving up housing prices. In the upper Gunnison Valley, where Crested Butte and the ski resort are located, the median sale price so far this year is about $1.23 million, up about 23% from the same period last year and double the median from the same period in 2019, said real-estate agent Jesse Ebner of Signature Properties Ebner & Associates. Investors have taken notice, and affluent newcomers are building large houses with plunge pools and home oxygenation systems, with budgets of $12 million to $17 million, said real-estate agent Channing Boucher of LIV Sotheby's International Realty.

"The wealth factor has completely changed," said Boucher. "That's what we're all kind of grappling with now."

While many real-estate markets in western ski areas slowed this year, the Crested Butte area's luxury market has continued to appreciate, said Boucher. An estate outside town asking $25 million is in contract to set a local sales record, said listing agent Diane Aronovic of Bluebird Real Estate. Home sales in the area typically top out around $12 million, said Ebner.

Wealthy homeowners have owned homes in the Crested Butte area for decades; billionaire Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner Mark Walter bought a home there in the 2000s. And at about 9,000 feet above sea level, the town's cool climate has long made it a summer destination for second homeowners from Texas.

Texas commercial real-estate developer Jason Thumlert, 47, grew up skiing in Crested Butte. He and his wife, attorney Lindley Bain, wanted to instill a love of nature in their children, who are now 9 and 11. They built a ski-in, ski-out house on Mount Crested Butte in 2024. The roughly 6,000-square-foot house cost about $5 million to build, he said, plus about $615,000 for the roughly 0.8-acre plot of land.

Crested Butte prices have spiked in part because of a shortage of desirable, buildable land, real-estate agents said. Much of the land outside town is preserved, restricting growth, while the town itself -- incorporated in 1880 -- has strict demolition and building restrictions due to its historic nature, said Boucher.

Buyers have begun to notice the area's potential for price appreciation, said Jake Klopp of Urban Standard Capital, a luxury residential-development lender.

Texans Dr. William Elfarr and his wife, Barbara Elfarr, heard about Crested Butte from friends. After their first visit in January, they started looking for a home there, in part as an investment, said William, a 59-year-old urologist. In May, they paid $5.85 million for a newly renovated four-bedroom house, said Boucher, their broker.

"Crested Butte is in a little corner of Colorado where the big investment people have really not gotten in yet," William said. "What it gives me is diversification."

The Elfarrs said they also plan to take frequent ski trips to Crested Butte, and spend summers in the 5,450-square-foot house as a cool-climate escape from Texas. In warm weather they plan to golf, fly fish, and visit the local farm-to-table restaurant Sunflower, said William.

But as more wealthy homeowners come to the area, some locals fear the area will lose its small-town charm, said Boucher. Others complain of weekend partying and the abundance of short-term rentals, said local homeowner Bob Colvey. There were around 1,150 short-term rental listings in the Crested Butte area in September, up nearly 50% from the same period of 2018, according to AirDNA, a data-and-analytics provider.

"It presents the question of, 'What do we want to be as a town?'" said Colvey. "Do we just want untethered growth, or do we want to maintain the characteristics that attracted people here in the first place?"

The town is considering a new tax on non-primary residences, according to the town website.

Dane Tucker, a 56-year-old Oklahoma resident, has been vacationing in Crested Butte since high school. He built a roughly $5 million vacation house on Mount Crested Butte with architect Andrew Hadley in 2023.

Sentiment toward second homeowners has worsened since the pandemic, Tucker said, adding that he makes an effort to contribute to local causes and overtip at restaurants.

"The locals dislike the second homeowners," Tucker said. "But the second homeowners are what drives much of the revenue around there."

Ben and Kate Towill, who work remotely as the founders of a hospitality-and-design company, wanted to leave behind the hot summers of Charleston, S.C., and raise their two children in the mountains, where they could ski, mountain bike, hike and camp, said Kate.

Kate, 40, who visited Crested Butte as a teenager, first brought her family to visit the town in January. The Towills had so much fun that they decided to start looking for a home, she said. They considered moving to Aspen or Basalt, Colo., but loved Crested Butte's community, schools and "raw, magical" feel, said Kate.

They moved into a rental before paying $3.45 million in August for a 3,300-square-foot, four-bedroom home overlooking downtown Crested Butte, said Aronovic, their real-estate agent. They are planning to renovate, but want to maintain the rustic log-cabin aesthetic of the house, said Kate.

Kate loves that her children, ages 5 and 9, can bike to school; on winter Wednesdays, they ski instead of having traditional gym classes, she said.

"They call it Colorado's last great ski town, which I do understand after being here," she said. "I feel like we've found a little bit of a secret, which is cool. Don't tell anybody."