An explanation may be in order for those in 2005 who have no idea why the smelter was so important. It offered a process to reduce raw ore to gold and silver profitably. Without it, mining would not be remunerative. John Porter, metallurgist and mining man, who was also involved with the oncoming Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, saw the advantages of building a smelter in Durango, rather than near the mines at Silverton. Porter had the dream; the railroad made that dream reality, aided by the nearby coal deposits.
It proved easier to haul ore downhill than coal uphill; there were more outlets at Durango to tap other mining districts; the climate was milder; and a larger mixture of ores was available to make the smelting process work successfully. Thus, Durango became a regional smelting center, and Porter actually purchased Silverton's smelter and hauled it to its down-mountain rival. Some Silvertonians never forgave him.
Meanwhile, Durangoans did not care what they thought. The smelter was "blown in," as the saying went, in the late spring of 1881. By August, the railroad arrived and their cup overflowed. Durango raced on its way. Eventually ore would arrive from Silverton's mines, the Red Mountain district, La Plata Canyon, Rico, and, occasionally, from as far away as Telluride
Production grew steadily, smelting more than a million dollars' worth of silver, lead, gold and copper by 1887. The largest smelter in the San Juans, it ranked as the ninth largest in the state. Porter and others continually worked on improvements and "modernization" to keep their plant on the cutting edge of the day's technology.
Located at the base of Smelter Mountain, Porter's smelter, with modifications, would be active into 1963 with the post-World War II years as a uranium mill. That last era left behind a "hot" tailings pile that the EPA finally cleaned up in the late 1980s.
The smelter was Durango's largest employer until 1930 (at its peak, employing some 350 men) when the depression shut it down for the next dozen years. It would reopen under secrecy during the war to produce some of the uranium ore used in the atomic bombs that ended the conflict.
Certainly today, Durangoans would object to the smoke that hovered over the town, a smoke that smelled like rotten eggs, joined by the crescendo of noise from the stamps crushing the ore. A hundred years ago all that was put up with for the sake of the jobs and money that poured into the community. Indeed, if one did not hear the noise or smell the hydrogen sulfide, it meant that the smelter had shut down, a bad omen for Durango.
There must have been some objections about the smoke, however. Author John Canfield in his 1893 Mines and Mining Men made a point of assuring his readers that the smelters "are at the extreme southern end of the city." The air currents, "formed by canons and the river, carry the smoke away from the business and residence portion of the city."
As Canfield pointed out, more than one smelter operated south of Durango. The Standard Smelter opened in 1892 about a half mile down river from its older rival. It lasted a year before the 1893 depression and crash in silver mining, due to the collapse of the metals price, ended its independent existence. It merged with the now-named San Juan Smelter. Briefly, too, there had been a smelter in Animas City, Durango's rival two miles north.
Work at the smelter was hard, long, and sometimes dangerous. A 10-hour day for $1.50 in the 1890s might not have been accepted except for the hard times of the depression which hung on until nearly the turn of the century.
Like Durango, the smelter was not immune to what was transpiring in the larger world. The depression of the 1890s closed operations in 1894 and nearly bankrupted the company before it reopened. The San Juan Smelter did not weather the storm, however, and in 1895 Denver's Omaha and Grant Smelting Company purchased it. They in turn were swallowed up by the gigantic, monopolistic American Smelting and Refining Company.
Durango's home smelter was now just a small fish in a corporation that spread throughout the western United States and into Mexico. Production continued high until World War I when the gradual decline of the San Juan mining district became a growing concern. The 1920s saw operations slow before the depression set in after the 1929 stock market crash.
Durango's smelter had lived up to the early expectations of its boosters. It had helped make the town become southwestern Colorado's largest and most significant. Today only the site remains with a statue across the river in Santa Rita Park commemorating what once had been.
