Silver Lake is one of Colorado’s most amazing places. Being a Colorado native, you might understand my indignation at having and overweight Texan ask me if I knew about it and having to answer “no.” My wife and I were living in Ouray and were running a book store. This tubby Texan walked in and saw my picture of the Tom Walsh House on the wall, then looked at my eight foot square wall map of the San Juans. He then sauntered over to the counter and looked me in the eye. “Hi, my name is Paul Stanley. Get around much?”
I said “Yeah.” “I was lookin’ at yer picture of Animas Forks there an’ thought ya might o’ heard o’ Silver Lake.” I replied no, not really giving a hoot about what this fat Texas tourist had to say, but business was slow and he knew it. I was compelled to listen as he began to talk. The more he talked, the more interested and intrigued I became. A ghost town, built at 12,000 feet on a sand bar, practically untouched by treasure hunters because of its location. Tools, clothes, plates, core samples, ore carts were all still in place and most of the buildings were still intact. Knowing the conditions of such ghost towns like Animas Forks and Tomboy, the yarn was hard to believe but alluring nonetheless.
He showed it to me on the map and then offered to take me there. One look at this guy’s towering girth (he was better than 6 feet tall) and I knew he wasn’t about to make it, even though he claimed he had been there last year. Surely he didn’t gain that weight in one year, so if he’d actually been there, I figured maybe he just moved slow. The map location really had me going crazy, so I took him up on the offer. We went to Silver Lake the following day. I left the wife to mind the store and made the trip one of my two weekly jaunts into the San Juans.
Living in the Ouray area for two years turned me into a mountain machine. I was in the best shape of my life, literally bounding across the rugged San Juans as if they were flat. I was convinced I was going to dust this Texan’s ass on the trail. Out of courtesy, I decided to hang back initially until the altitude got to him, then I would blaze on ahead and wait for him at Silver Lake.
Never underestimate a fat Texan.
Paul kept right up with me, rested when I did, and amazingly enough, never stopped talking. By the time we reached the Mayflower Mine, I was suitably impressed with this guy. We would go on to be friends for the summer, as he was staying in Ouray until the fall.
I was amazed at the condition of the Mayflower ruins. After 100 years, the trestle house was still standing, clinging to the crumbling slopes of Little Giant mountain, surrounded in a towering talus dump a thousand feet high. The ore cars and tracks were still in place. The road ended and a trail led between the tram building and the bottom of some towering cliffs. The further up we went, the more in awe I was.
The route wound through a band of cliffs as it climbed into the stunning upper basin, bathed in a canopy of colorful wild flowers. The trail eased and within minutes, I laid my eyes on the astonishing sight of a ghost town sitting on a sand bar at 12,000 feet-just as Paul had claimed.
We mountain climbers can list a number of events that were truly special and unforgettable experiences. My first ascents of Capitol, Wetterhorn and Sneffles, as well as the Rio Grande Pyramid and Holy Cross were such moments. My first visit to Silver Lake was such a moment, and interestingly enough, when it comes to repeat visits, I’ve been to Silver Lake more than any other spot in Colorado (save for Mt. Evans, which is a training ground).
As Paul had claimed, everything was there, practically in its place, as if the miners just woke up one day and left. I walked through this silent hundred year old ghost town, clearly imagining the work going on, the mill crushing ore and the mining camp’s three streets bustling with activity. Paul was a priceless guide, telling me what used to be what and where. The three story lodging structure for the miners had been lost in a fire during the camp’s operation, and the large office and mess hall had collapsed during the heavy winters in the late 70s, but everything else was still standing. The assay office, the dynamite shed on the shore, the boiler house and the core sample shack near the mine entrance were all there. The stamp mill structure had fallen down, but the machinery itself was still in place. Ore carts still sat on the tracks. Most impressive was the power house. This stout little structure was destined to outlive the rest of the town. What a solid piece of construction it was-and for good reason! Without it, Silver Lake would not be productive.
Scattered about by looters and the elements, overalls, gloves, shoes and boots lay everywhere. Broken plates and bottles, bowls and cups, all made of porcelain and aged glass were everywhere as well. Pneumatic drills, hammers, pick axes, core samples, water pumps and systems were still intact.
We walked around the lake to the Iowa Mine, a massive three story high structure. The swollen waters of Silver Lake lapped at the weathered boards, but the building was astonishingly sound. We explored it thoroughly, level by level. The heavy cable tram machinery was still suspended on the rafters, and the cables swayed gracefully across the lake, dipping into the water before reaching the tram outlet of the Royal Tiger mine five hundred feet across the lake.
After four hours, it was time to leave. As we left Silver Lake behind, we approached the outlet, buried in fallen timbers that had floated to the spot. I imagined the boarding house burning down, the miners frantically trying to save it. Something causes an explosion, sizzling timbers fly out to the water and splash and sizzle. The current carries them to here, where they rest for the next century. What a dangerous and exciting place Silver Lake must have been!
Silver Lake, late 1800s, BLM Collection
Powerhouse foreground center, messhall behind it; bunkhouse right, main mine smelter in the rear and left
But the people just left. No need to haul all that stuff down. So there it stood, as if in a time warp, waiting for the excitement to return. I passed a wheel barrow on our way out. How long had it rested there? I took some pictures to capture that tiny second in that wheel barrow’s long, lonely and quiet life. This withered and rusted tool had been around longer than most human beings. The events it must have seen, the storms it must have weathered in the lonely years that followed! I felt insignificant and awestruck. I was truly impressed with Silver Lake, just as Paul had assured. I was determined to return.
1983. With much anxiousness, I returned to Silver Lake with my partner Vern Garner and a friend of his from Wyoming that summer during a week long excursion to the San Juans. We spent two nights in the ghost town, sleeping in the leak proof assay office on a makeshift bunk previous visitors had fashioned. We had plenty of time to explore the town and I shot tons of pictures. Only a small percentage are shown here and on SummitPost.com. We were blessed with perfect weather, but changes were apparent. Things had obviously been moved around. The wheel barrow had been moved, but only about ten feet. The Iowa and Mayflower mine buildings seemed rickety so we did not enter. The biggest change was caused by the monsoons of the previous two years. Great gullies, twenty feet deep, had been carved out of the side of Little Giant Peak by the torrents of rain water carrying debris to the bottom of Arrastra Gulch. These gullies were reportedly formed in two weeks time, a shocking figure. These mountains were falling apart in our life time.
On subsequent visits I was accompanied by Vern Garner, MA, Mike Kloepfer, Ruth Ann Arfsten and Amanda Burns. Mike and I spent a harrowing night in the powerhouse, braving a leaking roof during a typical rampaging San Juan thunder party that lasted for hours. At least we were able to enjoy our meals on the beachhead using a conveniently placed table and chair. Amanda and I came upon the town in the fall, blanketed in snow and hail after a previous night’s storm, which made for dramatic pictures and video. The following year, Ruth Ann joined us in the same conditions, but the warmth of the day melted the snow before our departure. Magic moments indeed, but the elements were clearly working against Silver Lake.
Each visit brought the realization that I had been lucky to see Silver Lake back in 1981. That was clearly the time when the strength of the town began to ebb. Over the years, I’ve witnessed the crippling, agonizing, slow decay that seems to strike suddenly on a ghost town because we temporary humans wouldn’t usually notice it. Man and nature continued to gnaw at its very existence.
In 2002, Ellen Ritt, Vern Garner, Paul Kearby and Jim Lierman joined me on a somber visit to Silver Lake. The Iowa mine had collapsed. The entire tram building at the Mayflower Mine, though likely dangerous, had been thoughtlessly plowed and demolished. Silver Lake was faring, particularly the power house, but the boiler house was creaking in the breeze. Pushing on its buckling boards caused the whole two story structure to moan. I envisioned the distant future when Silver Lake would be a pile of wood and rubble save for the gigantic boiler. This behemoth, carried up the mountain and assembled here from brick and steel, would be the only thing standing in a sea of fallen man made debris. What a sad and sobering sight it would be.
The table and chair were gone and the wheel barrow was nowhere to be found. Under a gray sky, a falling mist (the first moisture for months during Colorado’s record breaking drought) seemed to weep for Silver Lake. As I walked away in a somber mood, I knew it was only a matter of years before Silver Lake would completely crumble. The end of this place was drawing nigh, and its spirit was preparing to leave.
I don’t know if I’ll ever return to Silver Lake. I might find it depressing. I don’t know if I’ll ever climb Little Giant Peak. If I did, I would prefer to climb it from Cunningham Gulch to avoid close contact with one of my favorite places. Seeing it from above would be troubling as well. I want to remember it as when I first saw it, still full of the echoes of life so rare in a ghost town back then, and even more so today.
Why be so glum about the passing of a ghost town? Such a place is considered by some to be the symbol of man’s greedy raping of the environment in the name of progress. We’re better off without it. The scars on the land are bad enough. But without this symbol…the symbol of the pioneers that first explored the American west, we couldn’t enjoy our beautiful mountains and (FAST FORWARD HERE) you wouldn’t be reading this article and there would be no SP.
Live your life to the fullest. Don’t put things off. Do what you want while you’re able to do it. Make every moment possible matter. Get all you can out of the brief time you are here.
All good things do come to an end. SP’s time will one day come. Your time and my time will also come. Silver Lake’s time is fast approaching. This magnificent ghost town was a symbol for these things, and a monument to those who built it and to an exciting time in Colorado’s history. It now serves as a reminder that in the end, man and his accomplishments matter not. In the beginning and the end, there God will be. And in the end as in the beginning, the mountains will be there too. The rest is dust.
Images
|
San Juan Range
