You are here

Home

mining

Animas Forks

Added by yongli on 11/04/2015 - 13:55, last changed on 08/14/2022 - 21:18
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 productive mining , though several nearby...

Augusta Tabor

Added by yongli on 01/16/2020 - 13:57, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 13:54
Augusta Tabor (1833–95), born Augusta Louise Pierce, came to Colorado with her husband Horace and young son during the Colorado Gold Rush of 1858–59. As an astute businesswoman and careful money manager, she helped her husband become one of the country’s wealthiest men in the late nineteenth...

Avalanche

Added by yongli on 08/24/2022 - 13:20, last changed on 11/16/2022 - 07:38
Avalanches are quite common in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains . They can occur anywhere there is a sizeable amount of snow and steep slopes, meaning most of Colorado’s High Country (from 10,000 to 13,000 feet) is prone to avalanches. The massive snow slides are extremely dangerous; between 1859 and...

Breckenridge Historic District

Added by yongli on 11/04/2015 - 15:27, last changed on 09/30/2022 - 02:43
Settled as a gold-mining camp in 1859, Breckenridge has gone through a series of booms and busts typical of Colorado’s mining towns. The advent of skiing in the 1960s revived the town after decades of stagnation, bringing modern development but also greater interest in historic preservation. Today...

California Gulch Superfund Site

Added by yongli on 10/11/2021 - 16:52, last changed on 11/09/2022 - 04:41
Established by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1983, the California Gulch Superfund Site encompasses about eighteen square miles in central Lake County , including the city of Leadville . One of the nation’s first Superfund sites, it was created to clean up heavy-metal pollution...

Cardinal Mill

Added by yongli on 05/21/2018 - 16:14, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 03:39
Located about two miles west of Nederland in western Boulder County , the Cardinal Mill processed gold, silver, and tungsten ore from its parent mine, the Boulder County Tunnel, as well as other local mines between 1902 and 1942. The Cardinal Mill was an essential part of the area’s tungsten boom...

Chaffee County

Added by yongli on 01/30/2017 - 16:45, last changed on 11/29/2022 - 14:44
Chaffee County lies in central Colorado on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains and along the Upper Arkansas River valley. It is bordered by Lake and Park Counties to the north, Park and Fremont Counties to the east, Saguache County to the south, and Gunnison County to the west. Chaffee County’...

Georgetown–Silver Plume Historic District

Added by yongli on 11/18/2016 - 16:27, last changed on 11/26/2022 - 11:42
Located in the upper Clear Creek valley about forty-five miles west of Denver , the Georgetown–Silver Plume Historic District is one of the best preserved historic mining districts in Colorado. In the late nineteenth century, Georgetown thrived as the area’s commercial and professional center,...

Hanging Flume

Added by yongli on 11/09/2015 - 13:05, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 04:39
The hanging flume is a three-sided, six-foot-wide and four-foot-deep wooden trough that is suspended for ten miles along sandstone walls 150 feet or more above the San Miguel and Dolores Rivers. During late nineteenth-century gold rushes , many Western mining companies built flumes to get water to...

Leadville Strike of 1880

Added by yongli on 04/10/2020 - 10:49, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 13:54
The Leadville strike of 1880 was the first major labor conflict in the central Colorado silver boomtown, shutting down most of the area’s mining district from May 26 to mid-June as miners pressed owners and managers for higher wages, an eight-hour workday, and more control over their working...

Matchless Mine

Added by yongli on 11/06/2015 - 10:58, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 13:54
One of the most famous mines in Colorado, the Matchless Mine in the Leadville Mining District produced millions of dollars’ worth of silver for its owner, Horace Tabor , in the early 1880s. The mine is perhaps best known, however, as the home of Horace Tabor’s second wife, Elizabeth “Baby Doe”...

Precious Metal Mining in Colorado

Added by yongli on 08/09/2022 - 11:55, last changed on 08/27/2022 - 07:28
From the 1850s to the 1920s, gold and silver mining drove Colorado’s economy, making it into an urbanized, industrial state. The rapid development of Colorado’s mineral resources had political, social, and environmental consequences. The mining of gold and silver in Colorado began in earnest during...

San Juan County

Added by yongli on 06/27/2016 - 15:27, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 12:43
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 portion to the newly formed Ouray County, and...

San Miguel County

Added by yongli on 08/16/2016 - 10:45, last changed on 11/15/2022 - 15:40
San Miguel County covers 1,289 square miles in southwest Colorado. Named for the river that flows northwest across its eastern flank, the county is bordered to the north by Montrose County , to the east by Ouray County , to the southeast by San Juan County , to the south by Dolores County , and to...

Shenandoah-Dives Mill

Added by yongli on 08/25/2016 - 12:08, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 12:43
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 total of nearly 10 million tons of rock and...

Shenandoah-Dives Mining Company

Added by yongli on 09/21/2016 - 15:34, last changed on 08/27/2022 - 08:20
The Shenandoah-Dives Mining Company was active in the San Juan Mountains from the 1930s through the 1960s. As one of the largest mining operations in the region during the twentieth century, the company’s history exemplifies the boom and bust cycles and labor strife that were common in Colorado’s...

Teller County

Added by yongli on 08/16/2016 - 10:40, last changed on 01/31/2023 - 22:41
Teller County, named for former US senator and railroad mogul Henry M. Teller , covers 559 square miles of the high country west of Pikes Peak in central Colorado. It is bordered by Douglas County to the north, El Paso County to the east, Fremont County to the south, and Park County to the west...

Vulcan Mine Explosions

Added by yongli on 02/08/2021 - 15:47, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 19:40
Between 1896 and 1918, the Vulcan Mine in Garfield County exploded three times, killing a total of eighty-five workers. The successive blasts prompted action from labor unions and politicians to make coal mines safer. At the site of the Vulcan Mine today, there remains an active underground coal...
Subscribe to mining