To understand Craig Hinkson’s passion for building, you have to flip the pages of history back to the early 1970s, when the mines above Ouray were still pumping out precious metals, residents burned coal to heat their homes and an 11-year-old boy saw the town differently than most his age.

Hinkson often grabbed a 4-foot by 8-foot piece of plywood when he came home from school and set about making his own city, scratching in the dirt to create streets and crafting buildings out of milk cartons.

R...