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Animas Canyon Toll Road

The Animas Canyon Toll Road was built in 1876–78 to connect the mining town of Silverton to the coal beds and agricultural produce of the Animas Valley near what is now Durango. The roughly thirty-mile wagon road operated for about five years before it…

Animas Forks

Established in 1875 and occupied until the 1920s, Animas Forks is a ghost town northeast of Silverton in the San Juan Mountains. It sits at an elevation of about 11,200 feet. It survived primarily on the strength of speculative investment rather than…

Animas River

Until recently, the Animas River—known in Spanish as “El Río de las Ánimas,” or “The River of Lost Souls”—was one of only a few undammed rivers in southwestern Colorado. The Upper Animas River Canyon bears the legacy of the longest hard-rock mining…

Gold King Mine Spill

Around 10:30 am on August 5, 2015, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) crew ruptured a plug of rock and soil at the Gold King Mine north of Silverton, releasing an estimated 3 million gallons of contaminated wastewater. This water ran into Cement…

La Plata County

La Plata County covers 1,700 square miles in southwest Colorado. It is named for the La Plata River and La Plata Mountains, both of which are named for the Spanish word for “silver.” La Plata County is bordered to the north by San Juan County, to the…

Missionary Ridge Fire

The Missionary Ridge Fire began on June 9, 2002, northeast of Durango in southwest Colorado. It burned until July 15, destroying forty-six houses and cabins and charring 73,000 acres of La Plata County forest. One firefighter died while fighting the…

San Juan County

San Juan County was established just before Colorado became a state in 1876. It initially stretched from the Utah border in the west to its present border in the east. The next year, the first state assembly allocated most of San Juan County’s western…

Shenandoah-Dives Mill

Located two miles northeast of Silverton, the Shenandoah-Dives Mill (also known as the Mayflower Mill) was constructed in 1929 and became the longest-running mill in the San Juan Mountains. Operating most years from 1930 to 1991, the mill processed a…

Silverton

Silverton is a historic mining town established in 1874 in Baker’s Park in the heart of the San Juan Mountains. After the Denver & Rio Grande Railway (now the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad) reached the town in 1882, the surrounding…