Custer County started with silver and settled into ranching

The towns in the Wet Mountain Valley sit where they do because of ore. In the 1870s, silver and gold strikes drew people into camps like Rosita and Silver Cliff, and a new county, Custer, was carved out of southern Fremont County to govern the rush.

Mining booms tend to be short. The ore that built the camps thinned out, the crowds moved on, and some places shrank from busy towns to quiet sites. The valley did not empty, though. It had wide grassy bottomland and a cool climate, which turned out to be well suited to growing hay and raising cattle. Over time, ranching, not mining, became the steady backbone of the county.

That history still shapes the map. Westcliffe and Silver Cliff sit close together as leftovers of the boom era, while the surrounding valley is open ranch country. Knowing this helps explain why a small county has old townsites, mining ruins, and large family ranches all in the same view.

As you take in the old townsites and mining ruins, just give any old shafts and tailings a wide berth and enjoy them from a distance, since the workings themselves can be unstable. With that in mind, the valley is a rewarding place to read the landscape and trace its boom-to-ranch story.

For the documented history of the camps and the county, look to History Colorado and the Colorado State Archives.