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.

The mines wound down through the twentieth century, and Silverton's last major mine and mill closed in the early 1990s. What carried the town through was the train. After World War II, passenger traffic climbed on the narrow-gauge line down to Durango, and by the 1960s the railroad — now the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad — was actively courting tourists, delivering a steady stream of visitors that helped Silverton survive when the ore ran out. Today about 600 people live here year-round, in the only incorporated town of San Juan County, which at an average elevation of roughly 11,240 feet is the highest county in the United States. Most of the surrounding land is national forest, and US 550 — the 'Million Dollar Highway' — threads north over Red Mountain Pass toward Ouray, one of the most spectacular and demanding mountain drives in Colorado.

Silverton today is a small, sturdy mountain town that wears its history on its sleeve — a National Historic Landmark where the whole downtown is the attraction, with Greene Street's brick storefronts, the Grand Imperial Hotel, and the mining museum and old jail run by the county historical society. In summer the coal-fired narrow-gauge train arrives from Durango and the sidewalks fill; the surrounding San Juans open up for jeeping the old mining roads, hiking wildflower basins like Ice Lake, and driving the Million Dollar Highway. In winter it's quieter and deeply committed to snow: Silverton Mountain nearby is a legendarily steep, mostly-guided ski area, and the backcountry is right out the door. It's a place for people who want big alpine scenery, a real sense of the past, and neighbors who know each other by name — remote, genuine, and gorgeous in every season.