Colorado, Silverton: Gold Mines, Ghost Towns, Elk Jerky and Buffalo Burgers

Once the stomping ground of silver kings and railroad giants, Silverton survives today as one of Colorado’s most endearing destinations. It was necessary for us to visit the old mountain mining town when we travelled in southwestern Colorado during our road trip across the southwest United States. Before we tell you about the fantastic driving route we took to get to Silverton from Durango, Colorado, we first want to share some history about the town with you.

Miners were legally allowed to move into the Silverton district in the year 1874, once a treaty had been put in place with the Ute Indians who lived in the area. Around 2000 men moved into the region following the introduction of the treaty; they came from across the US, many parts of Europe and even China, to endure severe winters and dangerous mining conditions in their pursuit of the minerals they hoped would make them rich. Mines were eventually set up high in the mountains with the search for gold and silver being the main pursuit of the miners.

The miner's colleagues would play a joke on him by pushing the toilet cart towards the exit of the mine whilst the miner was using it

Despite so many miners inhabiting the area, not all who settled were miners. By 1875, the 100 "sturdy souls" who lived in Silverton proper worked in the post office, sawmills, blacksmith shop, mercantile, newspaper, liquor stores or other places required for a township to survive. A year later in 1876, the town's population grew to 500 as many people moved there to fill important positions. Life at the start of Silverton's existence as a town was not easy for any of the people living there; a high percentage of people died due to numerous factors including snowslides, miner’s consumption, pneumonia, influenza and mine accidents.

Before the railroad was built to run through Silverton, people came to the area on foot and astride mules until the nearby wagon road opened in 1879. Three years later, in 1882, trains were introduced and were able to travel to Silverton from other nearby towns such as Durango to the south. Ouray, our next destination on the scenic San Juan Skyway, was never connected to Silverton due to the rugged canyon between the two mountain towns.

Silverton was a town of contradictions. On Blair Street, you could find miners, on the rare occasions when they came to town, spending money in saloons and houses of ill repute; it was not uncommon for rowdy brawls and gunfights to occur right in town. Running parallel and one street over from Blair, Greene Street was the designated main street of Silverton that separated "the good from the bad". On the other side of Greene Street from Blair Street, you could find the churchgoers' area, with many churches, fraternal lodges and women's clubs; you could even find a baseball team and brass band, all of which were made up of local Silverton residents.

Throughout the years, Silverton modernised itself with the rest of the nation as water and a sewage system was put in place, as well as electricity. Mining in the area thrived throughout the first half of the 1900's but started its decline until financial and environmental setbacks, such as Lake Emma’s flooding of the Sunnyside Mine in 1978, sounded an eventual death knell to Silverton’s mining era. The Sunnyside, the last big mine in the region, closed in the early 1990s.

Today’s Silverton, with a population or 500, is a tribute to the survival of a gritty, tough community for whom quitting was never an option. The entire town has been designated a National Historic Landmark and, since it has been so well preserved, it is a favourite destination for train fans, history buffs, and outdoor enthusiasts. Silverton remains the "Silver Queen of Colorado", beloved by those who live there and those who choose to visit. We agree with that statement, which we came across during our own research of Colorado's gem of a town.

The San Juan Skyway led us to Silverton from the town of Durango. The 60 mile journey between the two towns took us about an hour and a half to drive, due to the curvy and steep mountain roads, and tempting vista points where we had to stop, in order to record our memories of the trip. We actually ended up making the drive to Silverton from Durango twice, once on that first day and once again the next day. Therefore, we won't repeat this paragraph to explain to you that the scenery during the drive was the same when we repeated it. You're happy about that, aren't you?

On what we'll call "Day 1" in Silverton, we walked around the small historic town, sticking mostly to the Greene Street and Blair Street areas. It was on that day that we ate samples of venison jerky and we bought some elk jerky. Soon after making our purchase, we passed a cafe selling elk burgers and we decided together, right then and there, to return to Silverton the next day, so we could try one of the tempting burgers. We had also found out about a gold mine tour at Old Hundred Gold Mine, which was something that we did not want to pass up during our road trip in gold and silver mine country. We managed to do one of the anticipated activities on the next day, but partially failed on the other one.

We partially failed on the burger because the restaurant serving elk burgers was closed on Mondays; therefore, we had to find another place that served them. Luck was not with us that day, none of the other places open had the specialty burgers on the menu. The closest thing we found was buffalo burgers at Handlebars Food & Saloon and that was mighty fine for us, since we also wanted to try buffalo meat. We shared a bacon and cheese buffalo burger since it was very large, and it came with salad on the side - delicious! We each also ordered iced tea to drink and left Handlebars extremely full whilst taking our time walking out of the place, glancing at the plethora of stuffed animals mounted on the walls inside the restaurant.

There was no failure on our part when we went to see the Old Hundred Gold Mine tour; we even made it just as a new tour was about to start. Since the tours only ran once an hour, we would have had to wait an hour to join the next one, had Kyle not sped along the gravel road to get there on time. As he did at Acoma Pueblo when we were racing against the clock to make a tour there, Dan once again sprinted inside to ensure we could join the one that was leaving just as we arrived. Otherwise, it would have messed up the rest of the day's planned activities.

Success was granted, he bought tickets and both he and Kyle managed to grab hard hats and miner jackets before going outside and climbing into a small mine tram, which was scheduled to take the next tour group into the mine inside Galena Mountain. Our tour guide, Dan (a former miner from Silverton, not Dan Wills from Essex), had already started his speech about the mine, and was giving his attentive crowd many historical facts to chew on, as well as the rules once we were inside. We squeezed passed our guide and found two seats, ready and eager to enter the dark tunnel.

Once Miner Dan had finished his speech, he told us to keep our hands in the car as the narrow, yellow cart that we were sitting in, with fellow tourists who had also joined the tour, began chugging its way along the small track, deep down into the mine. Excitement was in the air when the train started to pull inside the dark tunnel. Water began dripping everywhere from the roof of the tunnel, through seep springs in the rock; thank goodness we had donned waterproof miner jackets and hard hats to keep us dry. The tunnel rain shower ended a few moments after we entered the tunnel and we then found ourselves one third of a mile inside the mountain. The entrance we had come through was only a small bright dot off in the distance at that point!

Everyone got out of their carts when the mine tram stopped inside the mountain. Our first stop on the tour inside the gold mine was to learn about various drilling machinery that was used back when the mine was in operation. The machines and tools didn't look like much and we were amazed at how the miners managed to using such tiny equipment to drill through the walls of the mountain. Instantly, we realised what a difficult and unpleasant job the miners had.

Originally, miners only used primitive tools resembling a hammer and chisel to cut through the stone walls inside the mountain to make holes for dynamite, but as technology advanced, those hand-powered drills turned into electric-powered drills. Miner Dan gave us an excellent demonstration of how a power drill was used and as soon as it was switched on, the noise emitted by the machine echoed all around us and was completely deafening. He had only turned the drill on for several seconds, but everyone who had joined the tour had ringing ears and was supremely happy when the drill was switched off again. Again, we were shocked to experience first-hand the horrible conditions in which the miners had to work every day.

The next stop on our mine tour was to see how miners were transported to different levels of the mine, as well as into or out of the mine from a higher level of the mountain than where the mine tram entrance was located. A small metal lift, nicknamed "the coffin" because of its size and shape, was used to carry men up and down shafts that were put in place between different levels of the mine. To instruct the mine shaft elevator operator on the appropriate floor a miner needed to travel to, the miner would signal the operator through the use of a ringing bell located on every level.

The bell was a signal to warn other miners when someone was either going up or down, and each ring of the bell indicated at what level the miner would exit. Miner Dan gave us a demonstration of a ringing bell and explained what the code, which was sort of like a stylised and customised form of Morse code, meant. He said that over time, people got to know the style of everyone else's ringing, so the bell system became a way of communicating with each other, since it was impossible to talk over the loud din of the drills and dynamite blasts. We were told that accidents had happened where a miner had been struck or sliced by "the coffin" as it whittled up and down the mine shaft, another horrible reminder of how dangerous that underground world really was to people making a living there.

Next, our guide took us further into the tunnel network, past leaky ceilings and damp, moist walls, to show us the techniques used when the miners blasted rock walls with dynamite, to create new tunnels or to create slabs of rock from the mountain that would be inspected for important minerals. Further along the tunnel, we came to more machinery that was used to transport broken rubble from the dynamite blasts out of the mine so it could be disposed of appropriately.

There were small tractor like machines called "air-powered mucking machines"; Miner Dan took the time to show us how they operated, and again the noise was deafening. It didn't help being stuck in an enclosed space because the engine noise was amplified and echoed around the small tunnels. To add a little humour to his tour, Dan pointed out a portable toilet that was used in the mine; we were told that the miners would sit on a wooden seat above a cart, which was mounted on wheels on the track to ease disposal of the byproduct.

As soon as the miner was in place on the seat, he would turn out his hat light whilst taking care of business. Occasionally, one of the miner's colleagues would play a joke on him by pushing the toilet cart towards the exit to the mine whilst the miner was using the toilet, thus scaring the miner in the dark, with his underpants down around his ankles, knowing that he would soon burst into the open for all of the world outside the mine to see him caught with his pants down.

After the tour was over, we saw a chipmunk walking around in the rocks outside the gold mine, one of the many cute critters we ended up seeing over the next couple of weeks. We then left and drove around 12 miles to Animas Forks, a ghost town set back further in the mountains from Silverton and Old Hundred Gold Mine. As we started to make our way there, we passed a group of llamas on the side of the road and we spent time watching them and taking photos. We saw another couple of chipmunks nearby the llamas and then a few more driving to the ghost town, where we saw a large deer grazing in the grass.

The road to Animas Forks after we left the llamas was very bumpy and made up of gravel and dirt, for the most part. It took almost an hour to drive there because we had to take the road as slowly as possible to avoid damaging our rental SUV. There were around ten or so buildings left standing in Animas Forks, a town that sat at 11,200 feet in altitude, and we couldn't imagine how the residents of the small village would have been able to survive the cold and harsh winters in such an isolated part of the region.

Once our tour of Animas Forks was complete, we headed back to Silverton and then back to Durango. We only passed through Durango that time because we had plans to go to Mesa Verde National Park that evening, where we would be camping for the first time during our road trip, using the tent that Kyle's dad (Leon) bought for us, as well as the camping supplies given to us by Kyle's mum (Judy).