Silverton, Colorado

Silverton sits in Baker's Park, a high valley in the heart of the San Juan Mountains where Cement Creek and Mineral Creek meet the Animas River, at an elevation of 9,318 feet. Prospector Charles Baker found a little gold here in 1860 and talked up 'Baker's Park' so effectively that hundreds rushed in — only to find far less easy gold than advertised, a brutal climate, and land that was still Ute country. They drained out complaining of the 'San Juan Humbug,' and the Civil War kept others away for years. The area was formally Ute land under an 1868 treaty until the 1873 Brunot Agreement opened the San Juans to mining and settlement. Silverton itself took shape in 1874 — Francis Marion Snowden built the first log cabin that year — and the town won an election that fall to take the county seat away from nearby Howardsville.

What made Silverton was ore and, finally, a railroad. Its central spot at the confluence of several streams made it the natural supply, smelting, and social hub for a ring of high mining camps — Animas Forks, Eureka, Howardsville — but the remote San Juans couldn't really pay until heavy ore could move cheaply. That changed when the Denver & Rio Grande Railway reached town in 1882 and set off a long boom; the population quickly doubled to around 2,000. San Juan County itself, named for the surrounding mountains, had been established in 1876 just before Colorado's statehood. The town filled with the brick-and-false-front commercial buildings and the Grand Imperial Hotel (built 1883) that still line its streets today — a mining-era streetscape complete enough that the whole town was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961.