There’s treasure in them hills
This week, I spent several days traipsing around the old ghost towns of the San Juan Mountains. My assignment was to document a small, hardy band of devoted people who are almost singlehandedly preserving the old mining heritage of these mountains. Some of the nation’s first mills, mines, trams, boarding houses, and prospectors’ town sites lie right in the line of fire in terms of both weather and tourists. (It’s not uncommon to see people rifling through 100-year-old houses for artifacts and even tearing off old boards to keep as souvenirs.) But this small group of people based in Silverton, Colorado, centered around the all-volunteer San Juan County Historical Society, have brought in millions of dollars of grant money to try to preserve some of these historic artifacts and structures, like this miner’s house at 11,000 feet in Animas Forks. It’s a pretty cool story of how some dedicated (one might even say obsessive) people, including the daughter of a miner, have been able to do big things with just some time and energy. Stay tuned for the full story.