Built to provide energy to the Walsen Mine, Walsen Camp, and the town of Walsenburg, the power plant is the last remaining structure of the once bustling Walsen Camp, a coal mining settlement dating from the late 1870s. At its peak, the Walsen Camp boasted over 200 homes and a population of 1,200.
The building suffers from years of neglect, vandalism, and scrap metal scavenging. It has an eight-foot chain link and barbed wire fence surrounding the perimeter of the building, but vandalism and scavenging continue. With the high value of scrap metal, the building will continue to be a prime target.
In 2015, a preservation-minded buyer purchased the property and has plans to rebuild the lost wall. A group of CU Denver graduate engineering students was able to adopt the site as a semester project and completed an engineering assessment in 2018.