by Duane A. Smith
photographs by John L. Ninnemann
Published in 2009 by University of New Mexico Press
ISBN 978-0-8263-4650-6
Reviewed by Ed Quillen
The Sawatch Range is the highest in the Rockies, the Sangre de Cristo Range is the longest, and the Mosquito Range is the richest in overall Colorado mineral production. But it is the San Juan Mountains that provide the quintessential Colorado mining-camp imagery and lore: soaring jagged peaks, frothing streams in narrow gorges, steam-powered narrow-gauge trains, immense old mines in sites apparently accessible only by jaybirds, and Victorian towns in various states of preservation.
The towns, rather than the mountains or the mines, are the focus of this book, which examines daily life a century or so ago. In general, the featured towns are the survivors. There’s little about ghost towns like Animas Forks or Capitol City, but much about Silverton, Lake City, Ouray, Rico, Creede, and Telluride.
San Juan Legacy is organized by topics, not chronology or geography. In succeeding chapters, we learn about merchants and banks (“the backbone of the community”), municipal government, journalism, transportation, cooking, schools, medical care, churches, fraternal organizations, culture, and sports.
What comes across clearly is that even if we live in little mountain towns, just as they did, their lives were very different from ours in surprising ways.
For instance, we seldom need to worry that our stores will run out of necessities toward the end of winter, and jack up prices accordingly. If we want to watch a ball game, we turn on the TV, as opposed to catching the local nine facing a nearby town’s team on a rocky field. We buy life insurance to cover anticipated burial expenses; they joined lodges for that benefit, among others. We have stray dogs; they had obnoxious stray burros, too.
As a newspaperman, I much enjoyed that chapter, which gives us evil media jackals some credit for serving our communities. It has much about David F. Day of Ouray’s Solid Muldoon (what a name for a paper) and later, the Durango Democrat. Day had one of the sharpest pens known to Colorado journalism. Consider this obituary he once published:
Charlotte
Born a virgin, died a harlot
For 15 years she kept her virginity
An all-time record for this vicinity.
Like other editors of the time, Day boomed his town while putting down competitors, and other editors responded in kind. Journalism was then part promotion as it supplied some of the entertainment we seek elsewhere these days.
But little towns on the plains also had newspapers, schools, churches, doctors, and baseball teams. What distinguished the San Juan towns from, say, the farming settlements of the South Platte valley like Orchard and Kersey?
Smith explains that mining towns tended to have more single men, which meant more prostitution, gambling, and vice in general, even though there were also schools and churches and literary societies. Mining towns had more cash in circulation than farm towns. The San Juans may lead the world in avalanches, which meant towns could be suddenly cut off for weeks or even months. Transportation, especially before the railroads arrived, was more difficult and expensive. High altitude made cooking difficult, and, combined with rock dust from mine drills, created medical problems unknown in lower regions.
Smith sometimes overstates his case on altitude, though. He calls the area “the highest mining region in the United States” and later “the highest mining district in the United States.”
While the San Juans did have some high camps, like Animas Forks at 11,184 feet, the towns that endured (such as county seats) were nowhere near that high: Ouray at 7,792; Lake City, 8,661; Telluride, 8,792; Creede, 8,852; and Silverton, 9,298.
To name only county seats in other mining districts, consider Leadville at 10,108; Fairplay, 9,954; and Breckenridge, 9,600. And there were plenty of higher inhabited spots like Montezuma, 10,312; Alma, 10,301; and Climax, 11,358. By Colorado standards, anyway, the San Juan camps were not of noteworthy elevation.
But by and large, this is a solid book. As usual, Smith writes clearly, packing in plenty of information but making it flow smoothly, and even if this book has an aura of nostalgia, he doesn’t gloss over the unpleasant facts of life in the mountains:
“… mining communities were unhealthy places. Clean water remained a continual problem, often growing worse as mine dumps and outhouses polluted streams. Filth was found everywhere in the towns — from outhouses to garbage to horse and mule chips to litter carelessly thrown about. Animal carcasses were sometimes left to rot and the air became polluted in a variety of ways. Bathtubs remained a rare commodity, and overall, ‘cleanliness’ did not quite rank ‘next to godliness.’ A modern visitor would have been offended by the smells and general physical appearance of these camps and towns.”
There are dozens of pictures in the book; they’re not historical shots from days past, but modern photographs, generally of old items or modern re-enactments of events like old-style baseball and brass-band concerts. The book’s non-slick paper stock doesn’t really do them justice.
If your interest in Colorado’s past goes beyond the “Eureka” tales of mineral discovery, this is well worth reading, to give you a picture of life back then, from the financial struggles of their town governments to the adventures of traveling pastors preaching in saloons, from how towns grew with new enterprises to their fading as the veins pinched out.
