Road Trip: Silverton

Way back in the olden days of 2010, I took a road trip to Colorado with some friends from college. On that trip we made a quick visit to Silverton, and I thought it was the coolest little mountain town. It is surrounded on all sides by the towering San Juan Mountains, and it contains an impressive amount of historic old buildings. It's the kind of place that made me want to pack everything up and move there (without really taking into consideration things like jobs or real estate or Colorado winters).

So fourteen years later, I was excited to make another visit to Silverton. Things were a little different than my last visit. In 2010, we made our trip in April and it was still cold and snowing. Someone at the town's visitor center said the weather, which dumped several inches of fresh snow on us during the drive up there, was just a "typical Spring day in the Rockies."

This was the view of Silverton back then:



But on our recent visit, the weather was nice and pleasant (the temperature when we were there was 61 degrees). All the snow had melted, and the town was full of other tourists.



Silverton was founded in 1876 as a mining town (hence the silver in the town name). The mountains around Silverton were heavily mined for silver and gold all the way until the 1990s.



The town has a population of about 600 people now, and sits at an elevation of 9,302 feet. This is the Silverton City Hall, which was built in 1908:



Silverton is the county seat of San Juan County, which is the least populated county in Colorado with a population of about 700 people. Besides being the county seat, Silverton is actually the only incorporated town in the entire county. The reason for that is probably because the terrain is so mountainous. San Juan County actually holds the title for being the "highest county" in the US. And that's not a reference to the large number of dispensaries in Colorado - the average elevation in San Juan County is 11,240 feet.



This is St. Patrick's Catholic Church, which was built in 1905.



After the mines shut down, the town's economy turned to tourism instead. It's the end point of the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, a popular train that runs through the mountains and along the Animas River. While we were in Silverton, the train arrived and deposited hundreds of tourists in a wave that swept through the town's restaurants, ice cream parlors and souvenir shops.

We walked by the old train station, which was built in 1882 and is now a museum.



The station has an interesting collection of old rail cars sitting nearby.







For a comparison, this is what the area around the train station looked like way back in 2010:



And on the last visit in 2010, the snow around the station was still knee-deep. It was much easier to walk around the station this year. Hopefully it won't be another 14 years before I get to visit Silverton again.