San Juan Mountains

Alferd E. Packer (1842–1909), also “Alfred,” was a prospector who became famous after confessing to eating his dead comrades while trapped in the San Juan Mountains in February 1874. With the group starving and disoriented, it appears likely that Packer killed another prospector in self-defense and...

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...

The Brunot Agreement between the Nuche ( Ute ) and the US government in 1873 led to the development of mining in the San Juan Mountains by taking 3.7 million acres (about 5,780 square miles) from the Ute Reservation in western Colorado. As white encroachment continued over the next decade, tensions...

The Hardrock Hundred Endurance Run is a famously difficult and beautiful 100-mile trail race held annually in the San Juan Mountains . First organized in 1992, soon after the Sunnyside Mine shut down, the event honors the region’s mining history and its fragile high-alpine environment by taking...

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 east by Hinsdale and Archuleta counties, to the...

Lost Trail Ranch was established in 1877 as a way station and resupply spot along Stony Pass Road from the San Luis Valley to the mining camps of the San Juan Mountains . Located at an elevation of 9,800 feet along the Rio Grande , the way station served travelers until the early 1880s, when...

The town of Ouray was founded in 1875 along the Uncompahgre River near where it runs north out of the San Juan Mountains . Two years after the Nuche ( Ute ) people were dispossessed by the Brunot Agreement in 1873, prospectors found silver and later gold in the area and platted Ouray in a natural...

The Panic of 1893 touched off a nationwide economic depression that lasted for at least three years, threw millions out of work, and caused banks and businesses to fail across the country. In Colorado and other silver-mining states, the panic was tied to the abrupt collapse of the silver industry...

Samuel Hitt Elbert (1833–99) was the sixth governor of the Colorado Territory (1873–74) and was elected as one of the first justices on the Colorado Supreme Court after statehood in 1876. The son-in-law of territorial governor and businessman John Evans , Elbert held multiple positions in Colorado...

The San Juan Mountains are the largest mountain range by area in the Centennial State, spanning thirteen counties in southwestern Colorado. In addition to being the home of the Ute Indians for hundreds of years, the mountains intrigued Spaniards , lured the prospectors of the Colorado Gold Rush ,...

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 region experienced a mining boom that lasted...