They intrigued the Spanish, lured the fifty-niners, and provided a home for several generations of eager prospectors and determined hardrock miners. To all of them they were known as the San Juan Mountains. Some of Colorado's highest and most rugged peaks insured a challenge for anyone who sought to wrestle their mineral resources from the granite-ribbed depths. For over 250 years, determined men have attempted to extract the treasure.

The Spanish came first in the eighteenth century; the Utes, who earlier had traversed these mountains for centuries, did not stop to mine. The Utes objected to the Spanish intrusion, one reason that the trespassers from the Rio Grande Valley did not linger. Certainly by the time of Juan Maria de Rivera's expedition of 1765, many of the intriguing Spanish place-names were already in common use. New Mexican miners had come, worked for a season or two, and gone home; they were trespassing on the king's resources and did not wish to give him his royal fifth of all the ore mined, as the law demanded.

There can be no doubt that the Spanish explored deeply into the San Juans. The Ouray Times (September 4, 1876), for example, stated that "old openings and tools" were found in Poughkeepsie Gulch, and a year later the Engineering and Mining Journal described an "abandoned open cut" that had been found along a silver vein on the shore of Lake Como. The Spanish came and went, leaving behind names and fascinating stories of lost mines and buried treasure that still lure people today and trap the unwary into futile searches.

In the 1820s trappers were working the San Juan streams for another natural resource—beavers. According to later reports, the well-known Kit Carson, among others, "strongly insisted" that these southern ranges were "prolific in mines of gold, silver and other precious stones." By the time of the famous 1859 Pikes Peak rush, the legends and stories of the San Juans were wafting on the wind, hard to pin down but tantalizing to ponder. The fifty-niners rushed instead to Gregory's Diggings and Payne's Bar on the eastern slopes of the Rockies, where Central City and Idaho Springs soon would be. The San Juans lay weeks of mountainous travel away, a trip that seemed unnecessary in light of the great strikes of that glorious year on the Front Range. Nevertheless, within a year Charles Baker would be in the park on the western side of the mountains that bears his name and where Silverton now sits.

Baker led a small party into the San Juans in August 1860, after which he enthusiastically promoted his discoveries. One member of the party described the mountains he had just visited as "the highest, roughest, broadest and most abrupt of all the ranges." He concluded his article in the October 12, 1860, Rocky Mountain News with the exhilarating observation that in this "range the metalliferous development of this region, if not of the North American continent, reaches its culminating point." That was what the readers wanted to see, as plans for a rush in the spring of '61 got underway.

The rush came as anticipated, generally by way of New Mexico and up the Animas River on Baker's toll road, which passed through Animas City, another Baker-inspired creation. Unfortunately, this rush failed for several reasons: not enough placer gold, unfriendly Utes, an isolated site, and a climate and elevation not conducive to months of prospecting. By fall the rushers were gone, and the San Juans had regained their customary solitude. Not for long, however, would they remain quiet. Those rumors and legends still beckoned, and others came to try their luck. Once the Civil War ended and peace returned to a troubled United States, more rushers moved in. The fact that the San Juans remained, in the words of contemporary Colorado author Frank Fossett, "terra incognita" only enhanced the speculation of what might be found among those high peaks and deep canyons.

In 1869 prospectors worked their way up the Dolores River as far as present-day Rico; the next year, men struggled back into Baker's Park. This time they came to stay, although initially they worked only from late spring to fall, when the snows forced the closing of operations. No longer was the search simply for placer mines; lode mines were discovered and opened, and by 1874 small settlements were appearing near the gateways to the San Juans and in some of the mountain valleys. Permanent settlement took root when year-round mining became possible.

One of the most interesting of the early pioneers, John Moss, focused his attention on La Plata Canyon. Moss negotiated a treaty with the Utes for the land and brought in California capital to underwrite his mining. Parrott City, at the mouth of the canyon, served as his headquarters. For several years he and his followers prospected and mined in the area, digging not only for precious metals but also for coal. Isolation, scant profits, and Moss's own eccentric nature doomed his effort. His was the first, but not the last, of the attempts to find the mother lode in that canyon's depths.

Among the first results of the renewed interest in the San Juans was conflict with the Utes, who had been guaranteed this land by treaty. Most San Juan miners, unlike Moss, did not stop to negotiate with the Utes, simply assuming the land to be theirs by frontier right. Government was under pressure from both sides, one that had treaty rights, and another that wanted better (meaning more profitable) use made of the region. The result was the signing of the Brunot Agreement (September 1873), in which the Utes ceded 3.5 million acres, the heart of the mining country. In return, the Indians received $25,000 annually and retained the right to hunt on the ceded land as long as game lasted and peace was maintained.

Within a decade, the Utes were gone from much of Colorado's Western Slope as a result of the continuing friction between the two peoples and the killing of Nathan Meeker. Meeker, a sincere but misguided agent to the White River Utes, had served in the northwestern part of the state. The misunderstandings and conflicts that characterized confrontations between these different cultures and races elsewhere in the West were repeated in the San Juans, and in the end the Indians gave way. As was typical in the mining West, the end for the Utes came quickly and decisively.

Meanwhile, settlement and development of the San Juans went on apace. Through the gateways at Lake City and Del Norte swarmed the miners, crossing over high mountain passes, searching on mountainsides and in canyon valleys for their golden dream. Others followed the longer, more roundabout route up the Animas Valley. Some of them remained there to begin farming and ranching to serve the needs of their contemporaries in the mountains, where the growing season seemed virtually nonexistent. They founded the little settlement of Animas City (the second), south of Baker's original site; the village's population had grown to 286 by the time of the 1880 census.

In Baker's Park, the towns of Silverton, Howardsville, and Eureka took root to serve the miners who worked in the surrounding mountains. At higher elevations, Animas Forks and Mineral Point nestled among the peaks, maintaining a precarious existence while anticipating that nearby mines would produce a bonanza. The largest high-country town, Silverton, neared 1,000 inhabitants by 1880, showing the drawing power of mining. Elsewhere in the San Juans, other camps struggled for their share of business and some permanence. Ouray emerged as the natural rival of Silverton, each struggling to dominate an economic sphere of mines and small settlements. Let a rival try to take away some of a town's trade and influence and a nasty newspaper war could erupt. Lake City, too, had a string of dependent satellite camps strung out along Cinnamon and Engineer Passes— Sherman and Capitol City, for example. Across the mountains, the little camp of Columbia (soon to be renamed Telluride) clung to existence in a beautiful valley, isolated from all its neighbors.

For the miners, the 1870s were a decade of waiting - for investors to appear with needed funds, for mills and smelters to work the ores profitably, and, most of all, for the railroad to provide desperately needed efficient transportation. The railroad had the potential to solve the rest of the problems. San Juan denizens had no doubts that their district contained an abundance of minerals that would make it one of the Rocky Mountains' great mining regions.

In late 1879 the world looked brighter than ever before to isolated, land-locked Silverton. Denver & Rio Grande surveyors were at work in the Animas Canyon; the wonder of the age was about to challenge the San Juans. The editor of the La Plata Miner (December 29) could not restrain himself: Silverton, "queen of the Silver land," was about to begin a "boom for this country that would not cease growing for a hundred years to come." Three weeks before, the same newspaper had observed, "in fact, it is impossible to estimate the great advantage in every way the completion of this road will be to our camp." The town with railroad connections had a bright future; the one without them faced considerable obstacles to success.

For years a railroad into these mountains had been envisioned, but the lack of finances and engineering problems delayed the coming of the iron horse. Surveyors had to be belayed down canyon walls to complete their work. The D&RG became embroiled in a debate with Animas City about its future as a railroad hub. When the city fathers of the small agricultural community refused to meet the railroad's terms, the D&RG did what it had done before: it threatened to launch a rival community. The La Plata Miner reported on December 20 that railroad officials were busy buying up town sites and coal lands in anticipation of locating a new community 2 miles below Animas City. "The company town would knock the stuffing out of the present town, yet it will be a good thing for us all, and especially our San Juan neighbors."

The forecast could not have been more accurate. In September 1880 the first survey stake for the new town of Durango was driven, and within three months 2,500 people had crowded into the site along the banks of the Animas. Soon it emerged as the regional smelter center, with its San Juan and New York smelter providing the most advanced technology available. Durango also emerged as the business and banking center of the region and became, briefly, the largest town on Colorado's Western Slope.

Silverton watched and waited as the "plucky road" attempt to advance into the San Juans. One problem after another created delays. Silverton quickly realized that the railroad would be a mixed blessing. The local Greene smelter was purchased by a D&RG-backed entrepreneur, dismantled, and carted south to be erected as an economic bulwark for Durango, Silverton's new rival. The rail road reached that community in July 1881, and the tracks quickly moved beyond it toward the primary goal of the mines.

The D&RG built as far as Rockwood, 17 miles north, before winter closed in and ended construction. For one glorious season that little camp enjoyed a boom as the end-of-the-track supply point. The following spring the D&RG encountered its most difficult terrain, the "high line," immediately beyond Rockwood a narrow shelf had to be blasted out of the granite cliffs to accommodate the rails. Overcoming that obstacle, the railroad moved on, and the first train steamed into Silverton in July 1882 As the La Plata Miner (July 15, 1882) observed. "So far, all that can be done by the outside world has been done, for by this medium it has been opened to us—what now remains is for us to do—to commence to make ourselves and make good our statements'" The San Juan Herald (July 6. 1882) was even more exhilarated. Silverton, the "Gem City of the Mountains, the most prosperous and promising camp in the entire San Juan," was the "center of the richest mineral area on the face of the earth."

Every other San Juan town and camp would have been eager to debate those statements, and each awaited only its own railroad connections to give Silverton a run for its money. The arrival of the D&RG inaugurated two decades of railroad building within the district. The D&RG built extensions from its main line over Marshall Pass to Ouray in 1887 and to Lake City in 1889, and it purchased the line that Colorado mining man and railroader David Moffat built into Creede in 1892. Nevertheless, the D&RG never had the San Juans all to itself. Three short lines were constructed out of Silverton to tap its nearby mines—the Silverton Railroad (to Red Mountain, 1888-1889), the Silverton and Northern (eventually reaching Animas Forks, 1904), and the Silverton, Gladstone, and Northerly (to Gladstone, 1899). These three routes made the community the narrow-gauge (3 feet wide, as opposed to standard gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches) capital of the country, but each was tied into the D&RG line at Silverton and remained dependent on that larger system.

In 1890-1891 Otto Mears, who had built two of the three smaller lines, constructed the 172-mile Rio Grande Southern Railroad, which curved from Durango to Ridgway, tapping Rico, Telluride, and mines along the route. Mears, who had first built toll roads into the district back in the 1870s, became the transportation king of the San Juans, but even he could not free himself from the D&RG. His Rio Grande Southern tied into its rival at both Ridgway and Durango; when hard times hit in the mid-1890s, the D&RG took over control of the Rio Grande Southern, which became a feeder line.

Now that the San Juaners had the railroad connections they had always coveted, it was up to them to develop their mining potential. Quite literally, they sat atop a mineral bonanza. Gold had first attracted their attention in the early 1870s, and then silver veins were discovered. Into the 1890s silver reigned as the predominant metal. Copper, lead, and zinc were recovered as byproducts, and coal was mined in the Durango area, an important reason the D&RG had been so eager to establish itself there.

The San Juans were not settled by one rush. Interdistrict rushes kept the miners moving for nearly twenty years. Prospectors ventured into what became the Telluride district in the mid-1870s and found some promising lodes. But, as author David Lavender pointed out, "In the late 1870s, the upper San Miguel district was as tough a place to work a mine as any in the United States." The lodes with the most potential stood at 11,000 feet or more above sea level, where snow limited digging to the summer months, and ore had to be taken by pack train over Imogene Pass to Ouray to be milled. It was a costly and time-consuming process. Major development awaited the arrival of the Rio Grande Southern. With transportation connections completed, Telluride developed into the greatest of the San Juan mining towns, and its mines finally were given the opportunity to show that they were the region's richest.

The Red Mountain district briefly pushed Telluride from the front page in the 1880s. It soon had its own camps, newspaper, and rich producing mines. The Red Mountain Pilot (June 2, 1883) hailed the "pride of Red Mountain," the Yankee Girl Mine (whose shaft house can still be seen from U.S. 550, opposite the Idarado Mine), for its "possibilities unlimited with an ore body which grows richer at every foot of depth." Every foot of depth also produced more natural acid, which seeped into the mines to corrode pipes, pumps, and "everything of iron." It took some experimentation and a good deal of expense before the problem was solved. Mining in the Red Mountain district was more expensive than in neighboring areas.

Rico envisioned itself as another Leadville, that most famous of all Colorado silver towns, but found itself relegated to a lesser role. So, too, did Ouray, until the Camp Bird Mine made it famous in the late 1890s. Ouray, however, capitalized on its scenery and hot springs to become the first of the San Juan tourist attractions. Even small camps such as Dunton, Summitville, Ophir, and La Plata would have moments of glory before sinking into oblivion.

The Silverton area remained a steady producer for decades, experiencing mineral excitements at Animas Forks, Mineral Point, Eureka, and Cunningham Gulch. Those districts kept up interest until well past the turn of the century. Eureka, with its famous Sunnyside Mine, would not come into its own until an economical process to work zinc was devised. Thus, it boomed just before World War I.

Although Lake City never panned out as well as its boosters had hoped, even it had moments of feverish activity into the 1890s, when new strikes portended more ore than would actually be produced. The last great silver rush came in the early 1890s at Creede. "It's day all day in the day time, and there is no night in Creede," sang newspaperman-poet Cy Warman about the town. Creede attracted the national attention that had escaped earlier San Juan rushes. Just about the time the San Juans were ready to open one of their new areas, the greater discoveries at Leadville and Aspen would dominate the Colorado scene and push the San Juans out of the limelight. Also helping Creede was the railroad, which ran almost to the town's doorstep from the time the rush started.

Creede's candle flickered brightly only for a moment before it dimmed. Silver mines in the San Juans and throughout Colorado suffered a devastating setback, one from which they never recovered, with the crash of 1893 and the subsequent depression. If the San Juaners needed proof that they were dependent on a national and international silver market, now they had it. The price of silver had been declining for years as production increased and the world market stabilized. San Juan miners and western silver miners in general had demanded government purchase and price supports, but Uncle Sam responded with only half a loaf, purchasing silver with which to coin dollars. As part of the reaction to the crash, government help ended, and the price of silver collapsed to the 50-cents-an-ounce range. Colorado's great days as the top silver producer in the United States had ended.

Those had been heady years, years to be savored. Fortunately, the San Juans still had gold mines, particularly within a triangle defined by Ouray, Silverton, and Telluride. This area endured as the heart of San Juan mining, and mines such as the Tomboy, Smuggler-Union, Camp Bird, and Liberty Bell rose to take up the slack. Well into the twentieth century the San Juans would continue to be a major mining district. The last major mine, the famous Sunnyside, did not close until 1991. At long last, Silverton's economy was forced to look to something besides mining.

The crash of 1893 did more than close silver mines; it also marked the end of the widespread opportunity to venture out on one's own, select a likely outcropping of rock, file a claim, and start mining. Mining had become big business, dominated by large corporations owned by outsiders. The miners who worked the mines became little more than daily wage earners, laboring long hours in a dangerous, difficult industry. Their pay did not appear to compensate them adequately for the risks they took. As San Juan poet Alfred King, himself blinded in a mining accident, wrote:

Thus the battle he fights for his daily bread;
Thus our gold and our silver, our iron and lead,
Cost us lives, as true as our blood is red,
And probably always will.

To try to improve their bargaining position in this new industrial world, the miners joined the Western Federation of Miners, a union despised by management. The San Juans became one of the union bastions of the Rocky Mountains. Management seethed and waited for a chance to crush the WFM.

The result was predictable: labor tension increased, and finally, in 1903-1904, Telluride and another famous gold district, Cripple Creek, exploded in turmoil. When the smoke finally cleared, communities had been disrupted, people driven from the district, lives lost, and civil rights trampled into the dust. When National Guard companies marched in on behalf of the owners, lasting hatreds were generated, and the state paid a high price in money and a tarnished reputation. The union had been broken, but at what sacrifice? Neither the San Juans nor the other portions of the state where these battles had been fought would ever be the same again. The camaraderie of the old days was history. The end came, as one young lady in Creede observed, when the "people did not have the faith that Creede would come back." There were other indications that an era had come to an end. The Silverton Commercial Club promoted the San Juans in 1913 as a place for recreation and tourism, and the Engineering and Mining Journal reported on January 10, 1914, that the Camp Bird Mine was "virtually exhausted," that Hinsdale County "is comparatively inactive," and that, apart from the big three mines, the output from the rest of the Telluride district "is not large."

Those had been wonderful decades since the 1870s, nevertheless. The San Juans had been opened, settled, and developed. The production figures for these years give only a partial idea of the impact they had made. San Miguel County produced over $70 million in gold, silver, lead, zinc, and copper; San Juan County topped $53 million, and Ouray County, $67 million. San Juan mining operations had made pioneering advances in the use of tramways to transport ore, in industrial use of electricity, and in utilizing various new types of equipment. Mining camps had been born, had prospered and died; the survivors proudly remembered their heritage. Along with the good things there had, of course, came disappointment, failure, and tears—mining never produced just profits and success. In the end it may be said, along with the unknown poet who published these lines in the Silverton Standard on January 3, 1903:

And when the throng of eager men—
Men of heroic mould and true—
Wrought mines that silver might be had
They builded better than they knew—
These men now gone.

REFERENCES

Crabb, P., and Dunn, S., eds, 1991. Ridgway Colorado Centennial 1881-1991. Ridgway, CO: The Ridgway Sun, 28 pp.

Engel, C. M., 1968. Rico, Colorado: A century of historic adventures in mining, in J. Shoemaker, ed., San Juan-San Miguel-La Plata Region: New Mexico Geological Society Guidebook, nineteenth Field Conference, pp. 88-93.

ADDITIONAL SOURCE

Nossaman, A., 1989. Many more mountains, volume 1: Silverton's roots. Denver: Sundance Books, 352 pp.