As we headed back home to Arizona on our last day of our road trip, we made a stop at Mesa Verde National Park near Cortez, Colorado.
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Yankee Girl Mine on Red Mountain
Last year on our Colorado road trip, we saw the Yankee Girl Mine from a distance but weren’t aware that there were off road trails to reach it. This year we had a plan. It pretty much consisted of going on every off road trail that looked like it led to Red Mountain and to see where it took us.
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Ironton Ghost Town
Not far from the the Million Dollar Highway in Colorado lies the former glory of Ironton, a town that began in 1883, where workers from nearby mines would setup tents after a long day of mining silver and iron. Eventually, proper buildings were set up and the budding town received its post office in 1883, the railroad in 1889. At its peak, Ironton’s population reached 1,000. The Denver Depression of 1893 however caused the town to slowly deteriorate. In 1889, another boom occurred when gold was discovered, but the discovery came at a cost. The underground water contained such high levels of sulfuric acid that the miner’s equipment would corrode. This contaminated water could not be pumped economically so eventually the town slowly faded away. The town’s last two residents passed away in the 1960′s.
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Sneffels Ghost Town
We were bent on exploring as many ghost towns as possible on our 3rd day of our Telluride road trip. Armed with a book (Ghost Towns of Colorado by Philip Varney & John Drew) and GPS, we managed to explore plenty of abandoned buildings and drive through many questionable off road trails.
Our first ghost town of that day is the mining town of Sneffels, which I cannot think of without thinking of Mr. Snuffleupagus…
Founded in 1875, this mining town peaked at a population of 2,000 between the 1880′s to early 1890′s. The town was named after Mount Sneffels, the mountain it lies on, which was named for the peak in Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. The town of Sneffels, formerly called Porters, serviced the nearby Virginius Mine. This mine employed over 600 men and produced gold and silver worth $1 Billion today before it was closed. It was recently reopened by the Star Mining Company.
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