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An Empire Of Silver By Robert Brown SIGNED #213 Hard Cover with plastic covering
An Empire Of Silver By Robert Brown
Marked display copy on front page Notice the corner damage
Hard Cover
Copyright 1984 SECOND PRINTING 1986
224 pages
Contents
Chapter
1.Mountain Building - How They Got That Way 13
2. Early Exploration 17
3. Indian Country 23
4. The Rush Begins 27
5. Life Among the Miners 37
6.Crime and Justice 51
7.From Here to There - The Story of Transportation 61
8. From Lake City to Silverton 75
9. The Red Mountain Camps 99
10. South of Red Mountain 111
11. Ouray and Its Western Environs 123
12.Telluride and Its Neighbors 143
13.Creede - The Final Curtain 163
14.And This Too Shall Pass Away 191
THE SAN JUAN COUNTRY is among the most spectacularly beautiful areas in all of Colorado. Its history. since earliest times, is a particularly fascinating and colorful one. Long before the founding of Jamestown, Spanish Conquistadores searched its rivers and their tributaries for gold. Intrepid fur trappers explored its streams and valleys in their relentless quest for beaver and other fur-bearing animals during the first half of the nineteenth century. Optimistic Anglo-Saxon gold seekers once more penetrated its vertical topography a full two decades prior to discovery of the white metal that brought its greatest fame, and ultimately its decline in 1893. Last of all came the permanent settlers who brought their families into the region, established lasting communities, and introduced agriculture.
The San Juans are located near the southwestern corner of Colorado. Here one finds the headwaters of innumerable well-known rivers, as well as the most startling mountain vistas in the West. But the silver seekers had little time for enjoying scenery. Their job was the often difficult task of survival in a strange environment where nothing worked according to the rules that had applied back East. In this cold, arid, and intensely vertical world. it was necessary to learn how to conquer the long, steep, and rocky trails as well as how to build log towns from peculiar materials. What is more, they had to seek out alpine passes above timberline at twelve thousand feet and more, over the highest and most confusing topography in Colorado, wheezing and blinking every step of the way because of the altitude and the intensely bright light.
Since precious metals rarely occur at low altitudes, by far the largest number of paying mines were located high up among the peaks and in the alpine valleys, making access difficult. Wherever there was a mine, a town of sorts somehow evolved to shelter those who toiled there.
Wherever there was a rumor and a hole in the ground, men built a ramshackle settlement around it. They were christened with names like Corkscrew, Mineral Point, Burro Bridge. Smuggler, Matterhorn, Beartown, Eureka, and Red Mountain. With displays of almost unbelievable civic pride, each settlement claimed it was built exactly on the top of the mother lode and that its mud-encrusted streets would soon be paved with silver nuggets. Most believed that the San Juans were so rich that the combined rushes to California and Nevada were not even contestants in the same horse race.
Each new rumor sent hundreds of men up nameless creeks to wash away nameless mountains, a pound at a time. Consequently, most of the communities that were established during the silver excitement were situated far off the beaten tracks of today. One of the most striking comparisons that can be made between the San Juans, then and now, has to do with this disparity between where the population centers and roads were at that time, as contrasted with where they are at present. More often than not these out-of-the-way places are not even shown on contemporary maps. Finding some of these formerly important locations requires not only research but physical labor as well, since the old wagon roads and trails have seen little or no use, to say nothing of maintenance, since the turn of the present century.
Roughly three decades ago a close friend was kind enough to invite me to accompany him on a three-day Jeep expedition that penetrated just deeply enough into the back trails of the San Juan country to excite my curiosity. This simple, uncomplicated introduction constituted the beginning of my fascination with this area, an interest that still persists. Since then, excuses have been found, or made. for much additional time to be spent in the San Juans each summer. In duration these visits have ranged from only a few days at a time to a full week on two separate occasions. Numerous interviews have also been pursued with persons who actually experienced the silver rush during the later days, in an effort to gather as much first-hand information as possible. Old manuscripts, newspaper files, documents, personal letters, business directories, and other kindred materials have likewise helped immeasurably to fill out the story.
In this book my purpose has been to bring together this diversity of information and to form a cohesive record of the area from earliest times through its period of optimum greatness.
Since I sincerely feel that photographs, like no other media, can parallel and supplement the printed page and are capable of conveying meanings far beyond the potential of mere words alone, matched pairs of old and contemporary pictures have been included to further the reader's comprehension and, I hope, enjoyment.
For the leader who is interested in photography, my contemporary pictures were made with a Leica, a RoIleiflex, and a Pentax "K" equipped with lenses of varied focal lengths. An occasional K-2 filter was used and the film was either X-L Pan or Plus X. Since many early photographers used lenses of relatively short focal lengths in order to include as much as possible in their pictures, wide-angle lenses, including one of twenty-eight millimeters focal length, were used far more than the so-called normal optics. It has often been difficult to correlate exact distances with long or short focal lengths in attempting to achieve identical perspectives with the older pictures. To further complicate things, trees seem to have a habit of growing up in such a way as to obscure the viewpoint from which the original picture had been taken.
On more than one occasion, after diligent research, comparison of old maps and herding our Jeep up some steep. rocky, half-forgotten trail, disappointment was our reward. Many of the towns are gone now, and nature is in the process of reclaiming its own. Only the mountains will look the same and inadvertently reveal the community's former location.
To the memory of all the pioneers, of whatever stripe, who braved the wilderness and hacked out some semblance of a civilization in the San Juans, go my heartfelt thanks for providing these conditions that have truly turned this piece of research into a real labor of love. This book is an attempt to tell their story.
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