Scenic
      Silverton

Story by Samantha Tisdel Wright
Photographs © Carolyn Wilcox

Silverton, Colorado [2005]

IT HAPPENS LIKE THIS: You’re driving down from Molas Pass, never been here before. One eye is glued to the jagged horizon, the other to the narrow snake of road before you. Suddenly the view opens up, and there, down below, encircled by mountains, is the town of Silverton. “It’s tiny,” you think. “Like a jewel,” you think. The thin mountain air works its magic. “I could live there,” you think…. And the next thing you know, you do.

Silverton is synonymous with mountains—San Juan County boasts the highest mean elevation of any county in the United States! The mountains are why we’re here. They give us our livelihood, they challenge us in countless ways, they offer beauty beyond reason.

The atmosphere of the old west is palpable around Silverton—you can catch a whiff of it in the heartrending wail of a steam engine announcing 
its presence in Animas Canyon, a dust devil whirling its way up “Notorious Blair Street,” the mute mining ruins balanced astonishingly on the mountainsides.

Once the stomping grounds of soiled doves, silver kings, and railroad giants, Silverton reveals a glimpse of her rowdy, magnificent youth within the historic structures that still stand all around town—some with original furnishings and fixtures. Sense the past looming doggedly about these buildings as you explore the unique shops, hotels and restaurants that now inhabit them. 

There’s a strange sort of schism about this place. First, the larger-than-life storybook legends about the honest-to-goodness people who ripped this town and its wherewithal out of the earth, as fiercely as a dog yanks a bone from an unsuspecting hand. The railroaders, road-makers, miners, masons, madams. Then, the community as it now stands and continues to evolve, its tiny-ness delightful, yet sometimes crushing. 

Finally, the vast, gorgeous wildness that surrounds, humbles and inspires us, as it must have done a century and indeed a millennia ago.