Colorado-Mining Country

• Telluride 
• Ridgeway
• Ouray
• Durango

What do these towns have in common? These are some small historic mining towns in the southwestern part of Colorado that we visited.

Telluride is now an internationally known ski resort in the winter months and a quaint popular western town in the summer. We spent one night in Telluride and two nights in Ridgeway, another small mining town. 

From Ridgeway we took a day trip to visit Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, a small, fairly unvisited park surrounding the steepest and narrowest canyon in the nation. 

This graphic below shows some silhouettes on the cliff face pictured on the right that gave scale to the vast wall of rock!

 

We moved on to Ouray, where Steve had reserved a campsite in Amphitheater Campground for one night and we had plans to look for dispersed camping for a couple of nights after that. 

We arrived at Amphitheater Campground just prior to an afternoon thunder storm and quickly headed to our site. A hairpin turn just before our booked site proved to be quite the challenge to navigate with the trailer, but Steve managed to get us through to our site.

Upon investigating we discovered that the 1/2 mile spur road from the highway to the campground is limited to a combined vehicle length of 35 feet. Our truck and trailer are closer to 50 feet long! 

And as it turned out our size rig was not supposed to drive that hairpin turn to the site we had booked online. We were unaware of that. The site was long enough for us and we had booked the site online. Clearly the Forest Service website was unclear about vehicle size restrictions and allowed us to book a site in a campground we should not have even driven to!

I think the Lord wanted us in this site though, in order to meet two young ladies from Denver who were tent camping in the site next to us. Leah shared that she wants to become a yoga instructor and she is totally into the yoga philosophy that each person is a part of the cosmic energy. Her traveling friend Chris simply said she is a Catholic. Neither of them really understood who Jesus is or what the Bible teaches. We were able to talk about Christianity and the importance of knowing Jesus, and Steve and I shared our testimonies. We are praying for them to ponder what we discussed. We left them with a Gospel of John booklet and CCFR church website invitation card, so we are praying they will read it and tune into a service online sometime soon. We know God’s Word is powerful to change hearts!

The next morning our camp hosts, Steve and Dave, were able to put us into a first-come first-served site that became available for a few nights, in the “large rig” area.The two of them helped us navigate the narrow windy roads we weren’t supposed to be on in the small-vehicle area. I felt like we were a camel going through the eye of a needle! Passing a truck and some trees we had only inches to spare! But we got settled into our new site where we were able to stay for several nights. The picture of the town below is Ouray and was taken from a viewpoint at our campground.

We learned so much of the history of the area on our visit to the Ouray County Historical Museum, housed in the original Ouray Miner’s Hospital built in 1887. They had so many well documented artifacts from the local residents whose families had lived here for decades.

Million Dollar Highway, State Route 550, is a two lane curvy roadway built to connect the towns in this silver and gold mining area of Colorado. The roadway was pioneered in 1881 by Otto Mears, who also developed the railroad which brought ore out of the mountains and down to Durango.

We drove the road for a day trip from Ouray to Silverton to enjoy the drive without pulling the trailer, and to scout out what is was like before taking our trailer through that route. The road hugs the mountain side with sheer drop offs with no guard rails, but it has a slow speed limit and had wide lanes on the switchbacks. The views are phenomenal!

 

 

We arrived in Silverton in time to watch the Durango - Silveron Narrow Gauge RR arrive with a load of tourists from Durango. Suddenly the small historic town of Silverton was very crowded! We enjoyed looking at the historic buildings and had a delicious lunch of Pizza and Salad. 

 

 

 

 

 

The high point of the spectacular, 80 mile section of US 550 through the San Juan Mountains is 11,018 foot Red Mountain Pass, named after the colorful, mineralized peaks that rise above the east side of the highway.

Red Mountain Mining District was the site of a historic silver boom from 1882 to 1893. An overlook on the highway gave a view of mine shafts, tailings and decaying wooden trestles and head structures, and a row of miner’s houses, marking a few of the many mines which produced millions of dollars of silver, and smaller amounts of copper, gold, lead and zinc.

The drive with the trailer from Ouray down to Durango on the Highway went smoothly! We took a break to enjoy a coffee shop, walk around town, and visit a Train museum at the depot in Durango. We then continued our drive to our next campground in Mesa Verde National Park.

 

 

 

In our next blog we will relate some adventures in Mesa Verde National Park and Monument Valley Tribal Park as we head south through Colorado on our way to Arizona!

 

Thanks so much for following our blog and for praying for our safety and health during our Adventures on the Road.