• A TCP is a permanent location; not an object or a moved item.

• A TCP is rooted in community history and important to maintaining cultural identity in the community.

• The integrity of the location remains--the landscape has not changed so significantly that the practice or belief no longer applies or makes sense.

Universally applied assumptions for this project include:

• Prehistoric sites should be considered potential TCPs unless consultation with appropriate descendent native tribes determines otherwise.

• Temporary sites such as arborglyghs or vegetation affected by a cultural activity may be potential TCPs.

• Some TCPs will have multiple cultural and temporal affiliations.

• The site should be greater than 50 years old to meet the National Register significance criteria.

The team considered land located under the jurisdiction of the San Juan National Forest and Bureau of Land Management in southwest Colorado.  The rugged and varied terrain in this region led to conclusions that most TCPs would relate to the use of the landscape, the amount of impact on the land, or conversely, the impacts of the terrain on the cultural practice.

Organizational Approach
Defining all of the existing and prospective traditional cultural places within the jurisdiction of the San Juan National Forest and Bureau of Land Management is a Herculean task. One way to manage the huge quantity of data is to divide the universe of TCPs into broad subjects representing major historical/cultural contexts of the area.  This method allows us to both identify known TCPs and to define categories for newly discovered cultural resources. The team initially defined a list of contexts that were amended and refined throughout the process.  The team created an overview of the category with examples and notes of known TCPs.

One type of forest resource that represents both intangible, impermanent resources, and traditional cultural properties, are culturally modified trees, which may be Ute ritually scarred trees or Hispanic arborglyphs. In either case, in situ the resource can not be protected or stabilized and will eventually topple. How then do we preserve and protect these cultural expressions unique to the San Juan National Forest and landscape? Some sites, such as Hispanic arborglyphs on high elevation aspen trees, may no longer be part of an active tradition because the sheep industry has collapsed since the 1950s because of increased use of synthetic materials instead of wool. Though sheep have lost their economic value in the state, herding traditions continue and ranching families may still retain high elevation grazing permits on public lands.

Similarly, Ute culturally peeled Ponderosa pine trees may represent a centuries old tradition of utilizing forest resources that is no longer practiced, but sufficient research has not been done to discuss the cultural significance of scarred trees one way or another.  Hence, the need for more research, interviews, and fieldwork.  This report is an overview for consideration and comment. TCPs remain cutting edge historic preservation because in most states, eligibility on the National Register is limited to two types of sites: archeological and historical sites.  TCPs, on the other hand, represent landscape use that may not fall into either category. As of  2002, no Colorado sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places have been cataloged as TCPs.  The federal guidelines exist for evaluating and documenting Traditional Cultural Properties, but most nominations to the Register, follow the standard criteria:

a.         Association with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history.

b.         Association with the lives of persons significant in our past.

c.         Embodiment of the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction.

d.         History of yielding, or potential to yield, information important in prehistory or history.

An excellent example of a potential TCP from southwest Colorado is Mt. Hesperus, also known as Big Sheep Mountain.    This peak is one of the four sacred mountains for the Navajos, and it is an historic gathering area for Navajo medicine men, and yet no artifacts may be found at the base of the mountain.  Other potential TCPs, often associated with trails, are Native American collecting sites for roots, herbs, and other forest resources.  Information on these sites rarely appears in the literature and will require extensive ethnography to analyze, designate and understand.  Hispanic herders on the San Juan National Forest and Rio Grande National Forest in the 1930s gathered plants and herbs in high elevation meadows to take back to their villages in northern New Mexico.  Whether that tradition continues is unknown.

Of the 4,751 archaeological sites on the Forest as identified by Dr. Philip Duke, these sites or corridors require further investigation as potential Traditional Cultural Properties of value to living inhabitants of the Four Corners area.  The scope of this project does not include formal tribal consultation, which should take place in a government-to-government relationship between the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management and interested tribes.

Equally intriguing are TCPs that may represent community continuity for hardrock miners in Silverton and other small towns, as well as ranching communities.  In each case, groups of people have used public land as part of their occupation over the last century, and there may be sites of traditional significance over and above economic pursuits.  Ancient Indian trails, which became mining trails, are still used by miners as well as hikers and backpackers.  Cowboys may still follow the same stock drives, and use the same corrals and meadows as they have done for a century on the west side of the San Juan National Forest.  Whether such sites actually represent traditional cultural properties, will take more time to determine.

An intriguing class of high elevation sites unique to Colorado and the United States may be known and named avalanche runs.  There are more avalanches between Durango and Ouray than anywhere else in the continental United States.  Those avalanches killed dozens of miners and settlers and both oral and written accounts abound concerning avalanche dangers.  Some sites have been commemorated with memorials and hence “are rooted in the community’s history and are important in maintaining the continuing cultural identity of the community.”  The San Juan TCP Team will conclude with specific recommendations, but our goal is to present data and information for further consideration.  Case studies will also be included, as well as a working bibliography.

II.  SAN JUAN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Prehistoric Native American Overview

Native Americans have used and accessed what is now the San Juan National Forest for possibly 10,000 years.  Archaic sites have been found on several ranger districts, and this research is best summarized in An Overview of the Archaeological Resources in the San Juan-Rio Grande National Forests by Dr. Philip Duke.  A high elevation hunting blind may be found just east of Kennebec Pass where there is a natural corridor for game to flow east to west along what is now part of the Colorado Trail.  After the Archaic hunter-gatherers left the area, Basketmaker peoples (? B.C. - A.D. 750) inhabited southwest Colorado planting corn at elevations of 8,000 feet and living in rock shelters, most noticeably the Falls Creek shelter north of Durango.  Burials at the site were excavated by both amateur and professional archaeologists and collections from the site are scattered among several repositories.  References to Falls Creek include Helen Sloan Daniels: Adventures with the Anasazi of Falls Creek (Occasional Paper #3 by the Center of Southwest Studies, 1976) and Prehistory in Peril: The Worst and Best of Durango Archaeology (1997) by Florence Lister.

Ancestral Puebloan peoples lived in the San Juan region beginning millennia ago, and their habitation sites cover the entire corner of the state though at lower elevations than the Basketmakers.  Research on Ancestral Puebloan sites, both in published reports and by contract archaeologists, is voluminous and ongoing thanks to major projects such as the Animas La Plata Project in Ridges Basin, the Fort Lewis College Field Schools which have excavated sites such as Puzzle House and the Pigg House, and the work of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Montezuma County where thousands of archaeological sites have been determined eligible for the National Register.  Connections between prehistoric Ancestral Puebloan sites and contemporary Pueblo tribes bear further research, investigation and consultation.  Within oral traditions of Pueblo groups, specifically the Hopi and Zuni, their ancestors accessed high elevation sites in the San Juan Mountains and they had ties to habitation sites in what is now the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.

Because of drought and escalating violence, which may have culminated in cannibalism as a means of social control, by 1300 Ancestral Puebloans had left the Four Corners area and continued their migrations elsewhere.  As with all great human migrations, there are both “push” and “pull” factors that stimulate movement. Ancestral Puebloans may have been “pushed” out of the Four Corners area by environmental and social factors, but they may also have been “pulled” to other areas by the new religion of the Katsinas.

Prehistoric:  The study area contains archaeological evidence of prehistoric activities from the PaleoIndian periods to the present.  Per the National Register definition for a traditional cultural location, a prehistoric site would require confirmation of cultural value from modern informants before a site could be considered a TCP.  Many specific site locations probably have lost their meaning to modern descendents, but the descendents may carry traditions associated with a larger area encompassing the specific site location.  Certain site types, however, would be more likely to have maintained site-specific importance as a TCP.  Sites that are clearly used for resource procurement and appear to have been visited more than once are likely TCP candidates.  If reviewed on a larger scale, rather than site by site, certain areas containing a higher density of certain site types could be identified as a TCP.  The best sources to further this research would be the site files of the Colorado Historical Society and the San Juan National Forest, and the Colorado Prehistory Context for the Southern Colorado River Basin by Lipe & Varien et al., 1999.  

Suggested Traditional Cultural Properties in this Category:

Historic Native American Overview 

The time period between 1300 and the coming of the Spanish to New Mexico in 1540 represents one of the most intriguing epochs in southwestern history.  Pueblo peoples had moved southeast towards the Rio Grande river valley and Ute peoples moved into Colorado, apparently from the Great Basin area to the West.  Uto-Aztecan speakers, the Utes became the mountain people whose territory included all of Colorado, northern New Mexico and Utah.  Ancestors of Ute bands now living in southwest Colorado, particularly the Weeminuche, lived on the Uncompahgre Plateau and adjacent San Juan Forest lands.  The White Mesa Ute Indians in southeastern Utah, who are enrolled as members of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, also are a source of information about traditional Ute properties in the western portions of Montezuma and Dolores Counties.

The Athabaskan-speaking Navajos also moved into the Four Corners area from the north but moved south of Ute territory into an area of Arizona and New Mexico and southern Colorado roughly bounded by the four sacred mountains of Mt. Hesperus to the northwest, Mt. Blanca to the northeast, the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff to the southwest, and Mt. Taylor near Grants, New Mexico to the southeast.  They warred and fought with the Utes, and the San Juan River became the northern boundary for the Navajos and the southern boundary for the Utes. Early Spanish accounts describe nomadic peoples as “Apache de Nabajo,” and it is not until later in the 18th century that distinctions are made between Navajos living among the four sacred mountains and Apaches living to the north and east of Taos and the Spanish settlements.

At the beginning of Spanish contact, no tribes had horses, sheep or domesticated animals other than dogs.  From 1540 until 1680 nomadic tribes warily watched Spanish soldiers and priests force their will upon the Pueblo peoples.  Then, with the successful Pueblo revolt of 1680, everything changed for Indians in the West.  The Pueblos made little use of horses and sought to kill them during the revolt, but the Utes and Navajos felt otherwise and minor horse stealing prior to 1680 increased to major theft after the Spanish had been forced to retreat all the way south to El Paso.  The Utes, who had been primarily involved in the deer trade by bringing prime finished buckskin into the trade fairs at Abiquiu and Taos, saw the opportunity to become rich with horses as did the Navajo.  Major horse herds were acquired by both tribes, as well as churro sheep herds for Navajo weavers.  Utes traded horses far to the north, and in northern Wyoming and southern Montana they received a valuable trade item they could never barter for with the Spanish—guns traded across the Great Lakes by the British.  Guns were also acquired from tribes to the east and French trappers and traders.

By the 1740s the entire Southwest was re-made by the swift and deadly combination of armed Native American raiders on horseback.  The territorial boundaries for the historic tribes became more distinct with Apaches to the east of the Rio Grande and south into southwest New Mexico; Navajos within their Four Sacred Mountains, and Utes ranging across all of Colorado and onto the Great Plains to hunt buffalo.  No longer confined to the mountains, Utes could now travel far and wide to hunt, and they began to adopt the material culture of leather shirts, leggings, teepees, and parfleches similar to the Plains tribes.

The Gobernador area of northwest New Mexico may have been especially important for the Navajo clans as they moved into the Four Corners.  This area seems to have served as a “cultural hearth” and an origin place for many songs, chants, and ceremonies.  In addition there is the architectural enigma of the “pueblitos” or tiny pueblos that dot the mesa tops and are built close to ancient male forked-stick hogans.  Whatever the Athabascan people learned in the gobernador area, it helped solidify them as distinctly Navajo, though certain chants and ceremonies also seem to reflect Pueblo traditions.  Intriguing ceremonial rock art suggests both Navajo and Pueblo influence.

The northern boundary for the Spanish frontier was the genizaro community of Abiquiu, which was constantly raided by Utes, Apaches, and Navajos.  As the slave trade increased on the Old Spanish Trail, women and children were taken captives and brought east to Taos and Santa Fe or west to Los Angeles.  The Paiutes so feared that their children would be taken as slaves by Ute war parties that they insisted on reservation lands to the north of Salt Lake City and well off the Spanish Trail.  By the first decades of the 19th century Taos Pueblo had been rebuilt with few doors and entrances, and exits only by roof hatches, which could be secured when raiders came near.  Ute oral traditions recount “cannibal” stories that may reflect family fears about losing children along mountain trails.  Navajo oral stories also describe the slave trade, and one vivid story depicts the plight of a young girl, taken by Ute raiders, who escaped by stealing two horses.  She rode so hard and fast to the south that one horse died beneath her.  She cut the saddle off the horse, hung it in a tree, and rode on with the second horse until it died.  Finally she walked and ran to safety.  Three decades ago, in the same canyons where tradition says the story took place, an old cottonwood frame Ute saddle was found in a pinyon-juniper tree.  The saddle is now in the Wheelright Museum in Santa Fe.  Navajos believe the saddle is proof of the oral tradition.

Historic American Indians:

Suggested Traditional Cultural Properties in this Category

Case Study: Hesperus Mountain or Dibe’nsta

Hesperus Peak in the La Plata Mountains is one of the four sacred mountains in Navajo cosmology and represents the northwest boundary of the Navajo cultural area.  In 1868 when the Navajos were still incarcerated at Bosque Redondo, the chief Barbacito said they would do anything if only they could go home and not be sent to Oklahoma.  In his speech to General Sherman he described the boundary areas including Hesperus Peak as one of the Four Sacred Mountains.

Hesperus Peak figures in Navajo lore not only from the treaty’s nineteenth century date but also much earlier in Navajo myth and legend.  One of the most important of all Navajo ceremonies, the Yei Bi Chai or Nightway Ceremony is performed only certain times of the year and is one of two major healing ceremonies held only during the winter months when the snakes are hibernating and there is no danger of lightning.  This ceremony is performed for eight days and nine nights and is initiated when a patient first seeks the help of a hand trembler, who can sense and feel symptoms of a certain nature.

By mid-afternoon of the second day of the ceremony sand is used to make figures on the four sacred mountains and the sand is placed in all directions beginning with the east, south, west and finally the north.  Talking God enters the hogan where the ceremony is being performed and he rotates himself around the patient four times in a clockwise motion beginning with the east and finishing in the north.

To this day Navajo medicine men, especially from Shiprock, New Mexico go to the area near Mt. Hesperus to gather sacred dirt and special plants for their medicine bundles.  The heart and soul of the Navajo start with the four sacred mountains.  Navajo medicine man George Blueeyes explains, “These mountains and the land between them are the only things that keep us strong…. We carry soil from the sacred mountains in a prayer bundle that we call dah nidiilyeeh.  Because of this bundle, we gain possessions and things of value turquoise, necklaces, and bracelets.  With this we speak, with this we pray.  This is where the prayers begin.”

First Man and First Woman built the sacred mountains of the present Navajo land.  According to author Raymond Locke, “They made them all of earth which they had brought from similar mountains in the Fourth World.”  The sacred mountain of the north was named Dibentsaa or Mount Hesperus.  Shonto Begay recalls a part of the Navajo creation story often told around the fire of his hogan.  He explains, “The hero twins . . . were born for their mother Changing Woman, and their father, the sun . . . Monsters of great size and power roamed the land making life miserable . . . the hero twins were to save the people . . . in a great battle mountain ranges fell, lakes dried up and the earth trembled.  One by one, the great giants were felled.  After the people of the Fourth World were saved . . . they were given the four sacred mountains as guardians of our holy land, Dine tali.”

According to legend, the sacred mountains were the pillars that held up the sky and so as pillars they had to be fastened down.  The sacred north mountain, or Hesperus, was tied down with a rainbow, black beads, mist, and many plants and animals were added.  A dish of black beads, paszini, held two blackbird eggs under a cover of darkness, and on Dibentsaa lived Pollen Boy and Grasshopper Girl.  Because of the sacred nature of Hesperus, “sacred mountains should not be climbed unless it is done in a proper way through prayer and song, and they should be returned to by medicine men every twelve years to renew their Blessingway prayers,” wrote Robert S. McPherson.

Peggy Beck, Anna L. Waters and Nia Francisco in The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life explain, “There were four Holy Boys.  These beings First Man called to him.  He told the White Bead Boy to enter the Mountain of the East, Sisnajini (Blanca Peak in the San Luis Valley of south central Colorado).  The Turquoise boy he told to go into the mountain of the South, Tsodzil (Mt. Taylor near Grants, New Mexico).  The Abalone Shell Boy entered the mountain of the West, Dook’oslid (San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, Arizona).  And in the Mountain of the North, Dibe’nsta (La Plata Mountains near Durango) went Jet Boy.”

The authors explain that the Holy Beings “fastened the mountain of the North, Dibe’nsta, to the earth with a rainbow.  Over it they spread a blanket of darkness.  They decorated it with bash’zhini, obsidian, black vapors, and different plants and animals.  The lightning was sent to guard the Jet Boy’s doorway to the north.”  Part of the sacred nature of Mt. Hesperus comes from the sacred nature of all four of the Navajo boundary mountains.  They are visited by medicine men because “all the sacred mountains have their prayers and chants which are called Dressing the Mountains.  All the corner posts have their prayers and chants, as have the stars and markings in the sky and on the earth.  It is their custom to keep the sky and the earth and the day and the night beautiful.  The belief is that if this is done, living among the people of earth will be good.”  This knowledge is learned and practiced among the Navajo to maintain hozho or beauty.

Hesperus Peak is also known as “Big Sheep Mountain” because it was “made of sheep—both rams and ewes.”  The Holy Beings provided riches in the form of livestock so herders petitioned Big Sheep Mountain for assistance to grow and bless their herds.  Navajos believe “The mountains were put here for our continuing existence . . . All of the living creatures, like sheep, horses, cows, etc. said we will help with furthering man’s existence.”

The soil Navajos gather at Hesperus Peak, or dzillezh, is brought home to protect families and livestock.  Blessing animals with prayers and special soil brings rain and more animals to the herds.  An elder explained, “livestock is what life is about, so people ask for this blessing through dzillezh.  From the sheep and cattle, life renews itself.  Who would give birth in a dry place?  This does not happen.  You get many lambs and calves from the plants around here.  On the tip of these plants are horses, cattle, and sheep.  They are made of plants which are sheep.”  Just as in accounts described in the book The Ecological Indian, the belief that there is a relationship among spirits, livestock, and plants is not unique to the Navajo.  Authors Aton and McPherson add, “Navajo expansion north (of the San Juan River) and the use of natural resources were based in religious faith not scientific practice.  For this reason, Navajos believed the more sheep there were, the more rain and plants would be available to feed them.”  Hence, the religious aspect of Hesperus Peak takes on even deeper meaning.

Hesperus Peak Traditional Cultural Property Sources

George Blue Eyes quoted in Robert S. McPherson, Sacred Land, Sacred View: Navajo Perceptions of the Four Corners Region (Provo: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies of Brigham Young University, 1992) ; Raymond Friday Locke, The Book of the Navajo, 5^th edition, (Los Angeles: Mankind Publishing Co., 1992); Shonto Begay, Navajo, Visions and Voices Across the Mesa (New York: Scholastic Books, 1995); Klara B. Kelley and Harris Francis, Navajo Sacred Places (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994) Andrew Gulliford, Sacred Objects and Sacred Places: Preserving Tribal Traditions (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000); Peggy Beck, Anna Lee Walters and Nia Francisco, The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life (Tsaile, Arizona: Navajo Community College Press, 1996); and James M. Aton and Robert S. McPherson, River Flowing From the Sunrise: An Environmental History of the Lower San Juan (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2000).

EuroAmericans:

SOUTHWEST COLORADO HISTORIC OVERVIEW

Traditional cultural sites have usually been found along trails or routes that represent linear corridors between natural resource areas and the 94 natural lakes and 10 reservoirs found in the area.  Because of the rich tri-ethnic roots of the San Juan Mountains, different ethnic groups would have used the same access routes at different times.  Both the Utes and the Navajos knew the southern edge of the San Juans and traveled widely throughout the area.  Historically the current U.S. Highway 160 between Cortez and Durango was known as the Navajo Trail.

Key access routes into the San Juans include what became known as the La Garita Stock Driveway used by Hispanic sheepherders who brought thousands of sheep west from the San Luis Valley in the spring to the high mountains near Silverton in the summer.  They traveled westward from the mouth of La Garita Canyon following La Garita Creek and moved on horseback up into the high country.  Herders gathered herbs and high altitude plants and watched carefully over their sheep.  Other routes the herders took followed some of the same trails used by the first miners and prospectors who came into Silverton via Cunningham Gulch after they followed the Rio Grande to its headwaters north from Del Norte.

The Baker prospecting party, varying in number from 100-300 people, arrived in Baker’s Park, the town site of Silverton, in 1860, having ridden north from Santa Fe upon hearing of gold discoveries in Colorado territory near Pikes Peak.  Further developments waited until after the Civil War when military veterans returned to the San Juans and began prospecting in earnest in the 1870s.  Those prospectors would have followed Indian trails and noted Native American cairns and well-used Indian springs and water sources.  Because the land had been designated Ute land based on the 1868 treaty, a second treaty had to be written to exclude the mineral-rich San Juans.  Known as the San Juan Cession, or Brunot Agreement of 1873, originally Utes had opposed signing the treaty but Ouray finally agreed because the government promised to locate his lost son—a promise that was never kept. Utes reluctantly signed the treaty but agreed to give up only the mountaintops where the minerals were, not the excellent hunting in the valleys of the Animas, La Plata, and Los Pinos rivers.

Despite the misunderstanding (or fraud) in which the Utes thought they were only selling the mountains peaks and the Anglos thought they were buying the entire San Juans including deep mountain parks and valleys, the Utes ceded all of the San Juans and were then forced on to a reservation considerably south of their traditional summer hunting ranges.  Further restrictions came after the Meeker incident of 1879, which resulted in the complete expulsion of the northern bands from the Colorado and White River valleys.  Because of difficult relations with miners and settlers, Utes seeking to move north probably switched their access routes away from the Rio Grande Valley and instead moved north of Hesperus and up the La Plata River to Indian Trail Ridge or the Highline Trail which begins near Kennebec Pass and goes north for miles.

AREA MILITARY HISTORY

The role of the United States Army is an often-neglected but important part of the San Juan region’s development.  As the number of farmers and ranchers, prospectors, and entrepreneurs began to grow east of the Continental Divide in the 1840s, the Army had established forts in New Mexico and in what soon became Colorado Territory.  The principal function of most of these forts was the control and punishment of recalcitrant Native Americans, beginning in the early 1850s.  As reservations were created, another function was control of white intruders on Indian reservations.  At the time when newcomers began entering the San Juan region, the nearest fort in Colorado was Fort Garland in the San Luis Valley, although a small post, Fort Plummer, also existed at Tierra Amarilla on New Mexico’s Chama River.  Personnel at the posts included both infantry and cavalry units, with cavalry being better adapted to duty in the far-flung region.

After the Brunot Agreement in 1873 opened mining on the Ute Indian Reservation in the San Juans, tension arose because of intrusions by miners and resentments of Native Americans.  Also, in the area around Pagosa Springs, the presence of squatters was a source of contention.  Cavalry patrols from Fort Garland were frequent, but without a short, easy route to the San Juans, they were not very effective.  Typically, troops had to travel southwest across the San Luis Valley, thence to New Mexico’s Chama River, and finally northwest into the area around Pagosa Springs, the Animas River, and so on.

Beginning in 1876, some of the companies at Fort Garland consisted of black cavalrymen, popularly called “buffalo soldiers.”  One well-known company was Company D, Ninth Regiment, which served under Captain F. S. Dodge, a much-admired white officer.  This was a well-disciplined “crack” outfit with high esprit de corps, earning honors in the Battle of Milk Creek at the time of the Meeker Massacre.  (Following the Civil War, “buffalo soldiers” participated in the Indian Wars elsewhere in the West in the segregated Ninth and Tenth Cavalry Regiments and the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry Regiments, always with white officers.  Black soldiers also served in other integrated units at Fort Garland and elsewhere, but the races of troopers were not officially recorded.  Neither the Tenth Cavalry nor either of the two all-black infantry regiments served at Fort Garland or in the San Juans.)

In 1876 the Ninth’s Company D and other units were sent to patrol the San Juan region.  In October of 1878 a camp was established at Pagosa Springs on an elevation on the north side of the hot springs and occupied what now is the commercial core of the town site.  Buildings were constructed of logs, as the local pine forest made this material plentiful.  The original garrison consisted of Company D of the Ninth Regiment and three other companies.  With land purchased from the Ute Indians, the military reservation of six square miles encompassed a one square mile town site centered around the hot springs.  Originally called Camp Lewis, the name was changed to Fort Lewis on December 30, 1878.  Regardless of size, a military installation normally brought jobs for civilians, adding to the local population.  These civilian employees might include a storekeeper, wagon master and teamsters, herder, cook, blacksmith, wheelwright, and saddler.  At Fort Lewis, a blacksmith was one of the first to be hired.

When the Meeker Massacre of 1879 in northwestern Colorado led to removal of all Ute Indians in Colorado to reservations in 1881, Fort Lewis was moved to a new location on the La Plata River, six miles south of Hesperus and midway across the Southern Ute Indian Reservation, which at the time was a long, narrow strip extending west of Utah.  Some military personnel remained at Pagosa Springs until 1882.  Black companies of buffalo soldiers were not assigned to the new fort, and, in fact, none served in Colorado after 1886.  A few soldiers, black and white, remained as civilians after they mustered out, however, and they became part of the San Juan’s life.

Meanwhile, from its new location on the La Plata, Fort Lewis’s troops were sent to locations in southwestern Colorado when settlers were being threatened by Indians or vice versa, rustlers were stealing livestock, and various other incidents were causing alarm.  After the military fort closed in 1891, under an Act of Congress sponsored by Sen. Henry M. Teller in 1911, the property became an Indian boarding school, bearing the name of Fort Lewis.

The Fort Lewis Indian School served Ute children and a few Navajos, with the highest enrollment being about 400.  Like others, the school was not popular with Native American pupils and several died while there.  Emphasis was on agricultural and domestic training.  The boarding school evolved into a public high school, then into a junior college under the auspices of the Colorado State Board of Agriculture, and finally into a four-year college in 1964 offering free tuition for federally enrolled Native American and Native Alaskan students.  This is the college’s sacred trust to American Indians.

A military wagon road, called Soldiers’ Road, across Ellwood Pass (also spelled Elwood) was constructed by personnel from Fort Garland to Fort Lewis at Pagosa Springs in 1878-1879.  It was in an area surveyed by Hayden’s men in 1873. Early wagon traffic into the San Juan region had come from the south, by way of the Chama River, while mule or burro trains across the mountains used trails established by game and Indians, such as  Summit Pass.  Summit Pass became known as Ellwood Pass after the creation of a town called Ellwood, named for prospector T. L. Woodvale (L-wood) in 1879 on the west side of Ellwood Pass.  (An Ellwood post office, established in 1882, is said to have been the first in what later became Archuleta County in 1885.)  Construction of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad to Durango in 1881 and the removal of Fort Lewis from Pagosa Springs to the La Plata River, soon made the military road nearly obsolete, although hardy travelers still used it.

An area on the east side, near the summit where the military camped, was known then and now as Government Park.  Nearby Schinzel Flats was the wildflower-bedecked site where A. J. Flynn was inspired to write “Where the Columbines Grow,” Colorado’s state song.  Because of  boggy areas on the east side near the Divide and because of the twenty-five-degree grade on the west side, this location was not chosen for the automobile highway that was constructed instead at Wolf Creek Pass in 1913-1917.  Also, a major flood in 1911 washed out parts of the Ellwood Pass road and most of Ellwood town, although the road is traveled by intrepid travelers with four-wheel-drive vehicles.

The following description of the military road’s construction is from The Denver Daily Tribune, December 10, 1878.  It describes the difficulties of road building in the mountains, even with a small federal appropriation and the military’s resources.

Congress at its last session appropriated $5,000 “for the construction of a military wagon road from Ojo Caliente, New Mexico, to Fort Wingate, New Mexico, and from a point on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad [in 1878 at Alamosa, Colorado] to Parrott City, Colorado.” This sum was assigned to Lt. Earnest [sic] H. Ruffner, Corps of Engineers, Chief Engineer of the Department of Missouri. A plan for its expenditure was submitted, approved by Department Commander, General John Pope, and work began September 1.

The line chosen was one running in a nearly due west direction from Alamosa to Pagosa Springs, where the new road would intersect the wagon road leading from Tierra Amarilla to the Animas River and west. . . . In passing up the Alamosa [River], a natural and easy water grade was followed with at no place very heavy work, but a considerable expenditure of time and patience. Open parks alternate with bits of wood, and occasional bluffs requiring some grading, and points and cliffs where blasting was necessary or a timber crib work to pass the obstructions. At Clifford’s cabin, nineteen miles from the new saw mill and at an elevation of ten thousand feet, began the ascent of the pass. The grade up the mountain side and through the woods is everywhere easy and gradual, and when the passage of the peat bogs on the summit is secured by corduroying in the spring, the ascent of the 1,550 feet to the Divide [Ellwood Pass, 11,775'] in five miles will be found easy for heavy freight. The grading from the summit for a mile to the west has been completed, and at this point and for some four miles beyond, uncompleted work will probably mark the season’s close and the exhaustion of the appropriation. The road is not completed at any point, but wagons can be driven over the newly opened road, for about thirty miles, twenty-four to the summit and six beyond.

Throughout the distance much remains to be done to make it safe, easy and wide to travel. Grading, clearing and retification [reticulation?] of the line, besides corduroying are still required. There remains on the Western Slope and down the East Fork of the San Juan some twenty-three miles of road to open. At the junction of the Forks is met a practicable wagon road down which twelve miles distant are found the Springs [Pagosa Springs]. The road leading down the East Fork of the San Juan will require more work than was met on the Alamosa, and will be steeper. This will not be objectionable, the heavier traffic passing west probably for some time to come. The establishment of a cantonment at Pagosa Springs, and the probability that there will, before long, be a permanent post in that vicinity, will make a change in the prospects. Easy communication across the mountains to Alamosa, only ninety miles distant; security against the Indians and natural advantages of the place will undoubtedly before long draw a large population to this vicinity.

 

B.    Durango, Parrott City and Fort Lewis Toll Road

When Fort Lewis moved from Pagosa Springs to the La Plata River in 1881, Otto Mears quickly incorporated and built the Durango, Parrott City and Fort Lewis Toll Road during the winter of 1881-1882.  The route lay on an old road that Mears purchased for his toll road.  It has been said that Mears even selected the site for the new fort, and such a theory might be in keeping with his other activities elsewhere.  Mears’s road to Fort Lewis charged tolls from the U.S. Army as well as from civilians.  Consequently, most traffic adopted a different route that circumvented the toll gate, and Mears’s Durango, Parrott City and Fort Lewis Toll Road failed in 1882.

The Durango, Parrott City and Fort Lewis Toll Road was the third road incorporated by Mears and partners in the San Juans in 1881, following rapidly on the heels of Ute removal.  The first two were the Dallas and San Miguel Toll Road, and the second was the San Miguel and Rico Toll Road.  His plan was to link the Animas Valley and the Uncompahgre Valley.  In 1879 he also had incorporated a proposed road from San Miguel to Dolores.  In 1890 his grand plan was achieved with the building of the Rio Grande Southern Railroad. Black buffalo soldiers stationed at Fort Lewis south of Hesperus patrolled the area on horseback and sought to minimize disputes between Indians and settlers.  At least one cavalryman, John Taylor, stayed in the area, and he married into a Southern Ute family.

SOUTHWESTERN MINING

By the mid-1700s, or even earlier, Spanish explorers were aware of precious minerals in the San Juan Mountains.  A catalyst for Juan María Antonio Rivera’s expedition in 1765 appears to have been a piece of silver, brought to Abiquiú by a Ute to trade. The journal of Rivera’s first expedition has an entry, dated August 5, 1765, with a reference to an old “Yuta” {Ute} woman in the area of the La Plata River who knew about silver outcroppings.  The Escalante journal, eleven years later, includes the name of the La Plata River (plata, sp.: silver).  In the 1840s United States Army personnel, including Colorado Territory’s future Governor William Gilpin who was stationed at Abiquiú, was publicizing the San Juan’s riches.  In the mid-1850s California’s forty-niners also were returning on this route and  exploring for minerals as they went.  One such party was led by “Captain” John Moss in 1856.  Soon a wave of prospectors and miners flooded the Rockies in the Pikes Peak or Bust gold excitement, heading for Cherry Creek (at Denver) in 1859 and  into the mountains west of Denver in 1860.  It would only be a matter of time, depending in large part on resolution of  Indian occupation in the San Juan Mountains, before mining west of the Continental Divide would transform the San Juans from a wilderness into hive of human activity. 

In addition to threats from unfriendly Indians, legal title to mining claims could not be obtained on Indian lands.  The latter obstacle was removed with the signing of the Brunot Agreement of 1873, which excluded mining areas in the San Juan Mountains from the Ute Indian Reservation.  The delineation of the mining region provided boundaries that were not always respected by either faction, however.  New opportunities arose rapidly after the summer of 1881, when Ute Indians were confined to smaller reservations in southwestern Colorado and northeastern Utah, following the Meeker Massacre in northwestern Colorado of 1879.  The expanded mining region and transportation routes serving it occupied land that later became part of several counties and three national forests.  Within this area were hundreds of silver veins, gold lodes, and placers.  The silver belt, which accounted for the fame of the “silvery San Juans,” was estimated to be about twenty to forty miles wide and about eighty miles long, although the value of gold production actually exceeded that of silver in the long run.   With dogged persistence and ingenuity, Otto Mears opened much of the area with his toll roads and narrow-gauge railroads, but the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, which preceded Mears, played the decisive role in the region’s development.                                                                                     

A.  Baker Expedition (1860-1861)
In July 1860 “Captain” Charles Baker organized an expedition to “Sierra La Plata,” in land occupied by Ute Indians but not yet designated as a reservation.  He and associates organized the Abiquiú, Pagosa, and Baker City Road Company that year. In October, twenty-one fellow prospectors  traveled to the Dolores, Mancos, and Animas Rivers. Several other parties also were on their way to the San Juan Mountains by October, and Baker reported that there were “from three to five hundred men” present at “Anamos City,” which was established as a supply center.  That winter two of his companions, Thomas Pollock and B. H. Eaton, a future governor of Colorado, were quoted in the Rocky Mountain News as saying that “the main field was in Baker’s Park [Silverton] and its environs, where eleven districts, each containing two hundred claims, were organized.” Perhaps these figures were exaggerated.  Nevertheless, in response to Baker’s promotion, an optimistic expedition, including women and children, left Denver on December 14, 1860, for the San Juans despite winter’s snow and reports that Ute Indians were unfriendly to prospectors.  This party, led by Thomas Pollock, seems to have varied in size from 100 to 300, as people joined or left it along the way.  With eleven wagons loaded with provisions, most of the party traveled from Denver to the San Luis Valley, south to the Chama River, where many San Juan promoters and prospectors assembled, thence northeast to the Animas River.  From there, Baker and company  proceeded north, crossing the Animas River at Baker’s Bridge, thence past the Hermosa Cliffs and Cascade Creek, Coal Hill and Molas Passes into the basin called Baker’s Park.

Dissatisfied with their mineral discoveries, running short of supplies, splintered by interpersonal conflict, and threatened by Ute Indians, the expedition broke up in the spring of 1861.  One group took with them four Navajo captive children, who had been traded to them by Utes.  Some departed across the mountains via Cinnamon and Stony Passes.  At Wagon Wheel Gap, it was said, the latter contingent left a broken wagon wheel, although travel at the time was so arduous that any traveler might have left a broken wheel.  Disappointed by the results of their adventure and resentful of Baker, some members of the expedition publicly criticized him for promoting what they called a humbug, as had Denver’s newspaper all along.  Disillusionment contributed to the departure of almost all prospecting in the San Juans during the remainder of the 1860s, and the outbreak of the Civil War and a wave of excitement in Idaho’s mining country also played a role in cooling ardor for southwestern Colorado Territory for a few years.   

B.   Parrott City
On August 9, 1776, the Domínguez-Escalante expedition ascended from the Animas River (El Río de las Ánimas) to the La Plata River (El Río de San Joaquín—de la Plata), “in which there are said to be veins and outcroppings of metallic ore.  However, although years ago certain individuals from New Mexico came to inspect them by order of the governor, who at the time was Don Tomás Vález Cachupín, and carried back metal-bearing ore, it was not ascertained for sure what kind of metal they consisted of.  The opinion which some formed previously, from the accounts of various Indians and from some citizens of the kingdom, that they were silver ore, furnished the sierra with this name.”

The Treaty of 1868 supposedly ensured that Ute Indians could claim Colorado Territory west of the Continental Divide as their reservation, but a few miners prospected and worked mines in the San Juans illegally.  A notable exception was a mining venture that began near the mouth of La Plata Canyon when “Captain” John Moss made a private agreement with Ute Chief Ouray in 1873 to allow placers in a district occupying thirty-six square miles.  Its first settlement was the town of Parrott City, which became the county seat of La Plata County from 1874 to 1881.  (Described by Clarence Jackson, as “courtly,”  “witty,” and “well-educated,” Moss had a manner with which Ouray would have been familiar, for he already was experienced in dealing with government officials, politicians, and promoters.)  The source of Parrott City’s name and Ouray’s reward were Moss’s investors, Parrott and Company in San Francisco, which donated 100 horses and blankets to the cause.  Moss’s boomlet faded within a few years, as did many later mining efforts in the La Plata Mountains, although Parrott City continued to have a post office until 1896, after coal mining had replaced placer mining as the principal activity southeast of the La Platas along Lightner Creek.  Some gold mining did revive near the town of Mayday, just south of Parrott City, and at another community, called La Plata, as late as the 1960s, however.

C.  Silverton area
Baker’s Park, the six-mile-long basin where Silverton came into existence, was not entirely forgotten during the decade after the Baker party’s disappointments in 1860-1861.  Interest in the area revived after the Civil War.  At the time, the economy of the United States was still primarily agricultural, which left few choices for adventurous young men other than to settle down as farmers, store clerks, teachers, or preachers back in Iowa or Illinois.  At first sight in the early 1860s, some had been smitten with the wild, scenic San Juans, the unfettered life of the wilderness, the dream of striking it rich, and they returned. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, most trespassers on the Utes’ reservation were active in the area of Baker’s Park.

Several prospectors in 1870 and 1871 head-quartered around Howardsville, at the foot of Cunningham Gulch.  This gulch was the western end of the infamous Stony Pass (el. 12,594') an extremely steep, rough route. Stony Pass was just north of  Cunningham Pass, also called Rio Grande Pass.   Like other trails across the Continental Divide, these too had been originally used by game which left traces, followed in turn by Indians. Cunningham Pass became a  heavily-used pack trail, declining in importance after Stony Pass boasted a rudimentary wagon road in 1872.  Whichever  pass was used, the route from the east followed the Rio Grande to its headwaters, passing Wagon Wheel Gap and Antelope Springs before climbing to the Continental Divide and then descending steeply toward Howardsville.

When the San Juan Division of the Hayden Survey were in this area in 1874, Franklin Rhoda gave this description of the old Cunningham pack trail his party took from Howardsville, although Rhoda erred in calling the route Stony Pass: 

[A] well-marked trail leads over to the Rio Grande. After passing the main bend, which is about two miles east of Howardsville, the side-slopes become steeper and steeper, and finally end altogether in becoming nearly vertical bluffs. . . .A number of mines are located high up the slopes wherever they are not too steep to be ascended. . . . Near the head of the gulch,  the trail is very muddy and badly cut up. . . .  It now leaves the creek and ascends the east slope. The grade may be appreciated by calling to mind the fact that from the bed of the stream to the pass the rise is about one thousand feet in one-and-a-half miles.  The incessant travel over this trail by miners with their horses, mules and burros keeps it in a bad condition.  The really bad part is only a small part of the whole distance.  On the summit the ground is gently rolling. . . . The elevation of the pass above the sea, as determined by a single reading of  the mercurial barometer, is 12,090 feet.

As conflicts between Indians and miners in the San Juan country increased, efforts had begun in 1872 to exclude mining lands from the reservation in the San Juan Mountains. After much wrangling, the Brunot Agreement, also called the San Juan Cession, was signed in September 1873, and mining claims thereafter had legal titles, and the race had begun in earnest.

By 1874, activity had increased not only around Howardsville and, soon, Silverton too, but also at other important mining centers.  When prospectors found mines on the east side of the Divide at Summitville several miles to the south of Stony Pass and fairly close to Ellwood Pass, a thriving supply and freighting center sprang up at Del Norte on the Rio Grande in 1871.  This town was founded by a few of Howardsville’s former prospectors.  A member of the Baker expedition, Thomas Pollock, also became a resident.  Del Norte would soon become a center for wagon traffic en route to the Silverton area via Stony Pass.  When a separate State of San Juan was promoted by optimists in southern Colorado, whose designs included the San Juan mines, Del Norte aspired in vain to be its capital.

Other centers of activity were at Lake City and Ouray.  Otto Mears had previously built a toll road from his hometown of Saguache to the first Los Pinos Indian Agency.  When this agency was moved to the Uncompahgre Valley, Mears provided another road to the new agency, and when the Brunot Agreement was signed, with Mears’s assistance, he promoted the new town of Lake City, reached by his Saguache and San Juan Toll Road.  The location of Lake City and its neighboring mines also benefited from access along the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River to and from the Gunnison Valley, where D&RG rails arrived in 1880.  In the meantime, Mears built the Antelope Park and Lake City Toll Road to connect Del Norte and Lake City, despite competition it gave to his base at Saguache.  This route later was taken over by Barlow & Sanderson’s stage line.  With the establishment of the town of Lake City, trails from Lake City came over the Continental Divide by way of Engineer and Cinnamon Passes to tap into the headwaters of the Animas River and the Silverton area.  Nevertheless, when Franklin Rhoda examined these passes in August 1874 for the Hayden Survey, he declared that he could not understand how the Saguache people (meaning Mears) ever hoped to bring a wagon road over them.  Besides difficulty of terrain, the season for such travel was limited to mid-May until mid-October, although some hardy souls carried mail and supplies during winter on ten- or twelve-foot-long Norwegian skidors, called “snowshoes.”  Toll roads were built over Engineer and Cinnamon Passes, and a stage line operated over the latter.  Mears contracted to deliver mail and supplies to Silverton and Ouray, in addition.  Travelers also entered the area from the south, by way of Animas City.  The map accompanying Crofutt’s Grip-Sack Guide of Colorado, 1885 shows the routes of roads in the 1880s.

The competition from other passes did not significantly reduce traffic on the Stony Pass route between Baker’s Park and Del Norte (90 miles from Del Norte to Silverton).  Stony Pass was the principal route from 1872 until 1882 into the San Juan mining country.  As early as 1872, before the San Juan Cession was consummated, an attempt had been made to build a wagon road over Stony Pass and traffic over the pass had increased after the Cession.  Attempts were made to improve sections of the road, with construction taking place as late as 1879.  Most surprising about Stony Pass’s popularity is the fact that the topography was so difficult that wagons and stages often ran only to various stations and ranches on the east side, where freight and passengers were transferred to smaller conveyances or pack animals for the remainder of the journey.  Gilmer & Salisbury; Greene, Juhle & Company; and the Brewster Stage Line operated freight or transportation services at various times.

The western side dropped a thousand feet per mile, requiring ropes to hold back wagons that were heavily laden with machinery and supplies, and wagons or pack trains going upgrade from the mines also had a severe task.  Oxen sometimes were used to pull wagons on this route.  Meanwhile, many travelers on foot or with burro trains continued to use nearby Cunningham Pass, which is about 500 feet lower than Stony Pass. By 1882, after the D&RG’s railroad arrived at Silverton, Stony Pass’s heyday ended.  Nevertheless, in the 1880s mail still was being carried to Howardsville over Stony Pass three times a week as well as to and from Animas Forks, eight miles north, twice a week.  A frequent complaint was the irregularity of mail service, which understandably was delayed by weather.  One mail carrier died from hypothermia during a winter-time transit, and other travelers suffered severe frostbite. It is said that a woman gave birth atop the pass. 

Mining camps and towns that sprang up shortly before and after the San Juan Cession were occupied by individualists who lived in tents or small log cabins during the summer with maybe a store and a saloon for bodily comforts, while they devoted their energies to striking it rich, hopefully very soon.  The majority were American-born, single men, descended from emigrants from the British Isles and Northern European countries, while women (respectable and otherwise), even children, soon were living in the camps, too.  Because of cold, snow, and the threat of snow slides, many prospectors left during the winter, to return again for the following short season when mudslides and rockslides took their turns at making life hazardous.

As small mining towns with rough-hewn amenities like hotels and saloons grew up, the first was  Howardsville.  Though never large, Howardsville became the first seat of San Juan County, when it was carved from La Plata County in 1874, and a log courthouse was built.  The cluster of log cabins at Howardsville had a post office, “suburbs” called Bullion City and Niegoldstown, and by 1876 a school. 

Mines clung to mountainsides hundreds of feet above Cunningham and Arrastra Gulches.  As at other locations, trams with ore buckets soon were conveying ore down precipitous slopes, and miners also rode the buckets.  The Highland Mary Mine was a noteworthy operation at the head of Cunningham Gulch. Staked out in 1874, its owners were spiritualists, with a medium guiding prospectors toward an underground lake of gold in King Solomon Mountain.  The lake of gold never appeared, although the miners cut through much silver before they went bankrupt.  Later the Highland Mary became one of the most valuable silver mines in the region, under different owners and guidance.

About four miles northeast of Howardsville was Eureka on the Animas River.  There, the Sunnyside Mine was located in 1873.  This great mine would yield gold until 1991, with some interruptions when it was shut down.  Besides mining, milling provided jobs, and Eureka’s population grew to about 250, while the D&RG’s Silverton Northern Railroad (1895-1942) to Eureka helped the Sunnyside to prosper.  The Sunnyside also had a tramway nearly three miles long.  Mining was on several levels, with a zigzagging burro trail connecting the levels.  

Another five miles up the Animas River lay Animas Forks, with mines scattered around this cluster of buildings.  Despite its altitude, hard winters, and the vicissitudes of mining, Animas Forks became a town with several commercial buildings and homes that were occupied until World War II.  (Reports that Thomas Walsh once lived here are incorrect.)  Animas Forks was a hub for several good mines in its neighborhood and also provided solace to passengers who dared to ride stages across the Continental Divide to and from Lake City by way of Cinnamon Pass, above 12,000 feet in elevation. 

Beyond Animas Forks were numerous camps scattered around Mineral Point.  A burro trail  headed from there down Mineral Creek and the Uncompahgre to Ouray, with mail being carried three times a week.  “This is a villainous trail,” commented George Crofutt.”  From Animas Forks, a trail over Engineer Pass, nearly 13,000 feet elevation, headed across the Divide to American Flats and Lake City on the Lake Fork of the Gunnison. Cinnamon Pass also connected this area to Lake City with a stage line.  The carriers sometimes were delayed for two or three weeks by weather.  Popular as these routes have become for four-wheel-drive fans, they offered only arduous travel for prospectors, freighters, and other hardy souls.  The good news was that from Animas Forks, the trip was downhill all the way along the Animas River to Silverton on Otto Mears’s Silverton and Animas Forks Toll Road. 

Competition existed among the camps, where stores, saloons, and dance halls vied for business.  Silverton had a unique advantage in its location at the junctions of the Animas River, Cement Creek, and Mineral Creek and made good use of ample flat land for construction.  As Silverton’s name implies, precious metals in this area were mainly silver originally, but gold production eventually surpassed silver in value, keeping many mines open.  Silverton soon dominated all the nearby camps and stole not only business but also, literally, the county’s records away from Howardsville to become the new seat of San Juan County.  The Greene Smelter was constructed with machinery and even bricks being delivered by burro train.  Smelting tipped the scale in Silverton’s favor, as milling and refining of ores was a major hurdle for the scattered mines of the region.  Howardsville also had had an early smelter, but the area’s silver ores proved difficult to process.  For the first years, most ores, and then only the best, ores had to be hauled over the Continental Divide to reduction works at Lake City, Denver, or Pueblo. 

Silverton became a real town, with streets for frame commercial buildings and houses, thanks to the presence of a sawmill. Silverton had many of the social amenities of a real community, even with church services being held from time to time, depending on the visit of a clergyman.  The first services were held in the original schoolhouse, and in 1881 the Congregational Church was built, with H. P. Roberts as its pastor.  Catholic priests in the 1870s traveled all the way to Silverton from the San Luis Valley, where the San Juan Parish had a circuit covering part of that Valley and the San Juan Mountains, too.  George Darley, a  Presyterian preacher based at Lake City, and other Protestants visited mining camps from time to time.

Silverton also became the principal center for communication between far-flung camps and towns, maintaining regular schedules for mail in all directions.  Until railroad tracks reached mines at Ophir and Telluride, some of their mail was carried from Silverton twice a week on Crofutt’s “horrid trail.”  After Otto Mears succeeded in chiseling a toll road (his “Rainbow Route” that is popularly called the Million Dollar Highway) south from Ouray by way of the Uncompahgre Gorge in 1884, Silverton had a better, if terrifying, link to the north.

[An additional note about the Million Dollar Highway and Ouray:  "In the early 1880s Otto Mears constructed a toll road over Red Mountain Pass in order to get the ore out of the valley.  The road was a major contributor to the efficiency of the mining industry in the Ouray-Silverton-Telluride District.  Today, US 550 traces much of that route from Ouray to Silverton and is known as the Million Dollar Highway.  The highway was so named for one of three reasons.  The first and most entertaining possibility is the road was paved with gravel that contained gold, the value of which was not discovered until the road was complete.  Second, the road was so steep and unstable that an early traveler stated “You couldn’t pay me a million dollars to go back over that pass.”  Third, the road cost roughly one million dollars to pave in the mid-20th century.  The early Million Dollar Highway was extremely treacherous.  There were few places that two vehicles could pass each other, so sometimes it was necessary to back up for half a mile to let another wagon or buggy through.

The original settlement of Ouray was actually called Uncompahgre, and was established in 1875 after valuable ores, such as gold and silver, were discovered in the surrounding mountains. The name of the town was soon changed to Ouray, in honor of the Southern Ute Chief Ouray..."

Source: <http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6163968805> on 3/18/05. 
Duane Smith adds, "Mears did not do it all, Ouray County built some of it."]

What the town needed most, though, was a railroad, and it had arrived in 1882 when the D&RG built north through Animas Canyon from Durango.  Silverton’s population rose to 1,500, and in 1885 a new schoolhouse was needed.  With or without a railroad, the rustic towns, camps, and mines needed large quantities of such ordinary things as hay and oats for horses and burros, so the business of freighting by wagons also would be assured for years to come.  With the need for vast amounts of timbers for mines, lumber for buildings, railroad ties, and firewood, timber-cutters would continue to denude the forests, not only around Silverton but also wherever a camp sprang up.

Silverton was able to survive the devaluation of silver in 1893, which devastated silver camps, because of the presence of gold in this area, and its population peaked at about 3,000 in the early 1900s.  A large brewery kept a supply of liquid refreshment flowing.  By the time of World II, Silverton had declined, however, until in 1959 a shrine, which stands above Silverton and honors “Christ of the Mines,” was dedicated as a votive offering, seeking God’s aid in the town’s economic revival.  Parishioners of St. Patrick’s Church (built in 1905) and other townspeople put two years’ work into building the shrine, which features a statue of Christ carved from Carrara marble, and the mining economy soon improved, for a while.

Northwest nine miles from Silverton was Chattanooga, with a population of about sixty and a post office serving several mines. Chattanooga’s prospects brightened when Otto Mears built the Silverton Railroad up Mineral Creek in 1887.  Until 1924, this railroad would connect mines at Red Mountain and other major mining areas, incl