The lure of gold and silver attracted the earliest white settlers to southwest Colorado. Rumors of mineral wealth dating back to the Spanish and Mexican periods lured prospecting parties into the San Juan Mountains even before the Civil War. Members of the so-called Baker Party ventured into the area of the upper Animas River that became known as Baker's Park (the current location of Silverton) in 1860.
Sustained mining activity, however, did not occur until the Ute Indians agreed to relinquish much of southwest Colorado in the fall of 1873. What was once a trickle of miners turned into a steady stream, and by 1874 mining activities were in full swing in the western San Juans.
In the summer of 1873, John Moss had led a party of prospectors to La Plata Canyon in search of gold. Though the party left before winter settled in, many of them returned the following year. Mining for precious metals in the La Platas continued off and on until late in the twentieth century, but production from this district was never high.
The more productive mines were located to the north near Silverton, Ouray, Telluride, Lake City and Rico. Durango, never strictly a mining town, became a smelting center and railroad hub for the San Juan mining region.
The hard rock mining industry lasted for nearly 120 years in the San Juans. Initially, mining was the work of individuals or groups of men seeking to make a quick fortune. By the turn of the twentieth century, however, mining had become a highly industrialized, corporate activity.
Miners worked long hours under dangerous conditions for little pay. Their plight quite naturally caused many of them to unionize, and they formed "locals" of the Western Federation of Miners and other unions. Strikes and violence punctuated the early years of the new century, with the miners winning concessions only after great sacrifices.
Fluctuating metal prices, unionization, the increasing difficulty of extracting ore from the mountains and a changing world after World War I all contributed to the decline of the mining industry in southwest Colorado. Once the keystone of the local economy in the nineteenth century, it had all but disappeared by the end of the twentieth century.
The legacy of our mining industry, however, is readily apparent in the ghost towns and abandoned mining structures that dot the landscape of the high San Juans, as well as the charm of the mining towns that remind us of that bygone era.
Coal mining was also a key industry in southwest Colorado. Railroads, smelters, mines, mills and Durango's power plant were large consumers of coal. In addition, homes and businesses were commonly heated with coal before natural gas became commercially available in the late 1920s. Extensive coal deposits near Durango made it the logical location for ore-processing smelters and helped solidify its status as the commercial hub of the San Juan region.
