Beverly Rich was born in Silverton in 1950 and has been involved with the local Historical Society since she was 14 — making her one of the most dedicated keepers of San Juan County’s storied past. In her article, Rescuing Relics: Extreme Preservation and the Old Hundred Boarding House, she reflects on what made Silverton remarkable from the very beginning. Few people realize that Silverton is nearly ten years older than Durango, and that without Silverton, Durango wouldn’t exist. In its heyday, this remote mountain town was the Silicon Valley of its era — a hub of technological innovation, incredible wealth, and relentless ambition. But like all mining towns, Silverton rode a cycle of boom and bust, its fortunes tied closely to World Wars and commodity prices. The hardest blow came in 1991 when the Sunny Side Mine shut down, taking half the town’s population with it. What followed was a period of honest reckoning — and visioning. Silverton leaned into its two greatest assets: spectacular scenery and fascinating history. Today, for the first time ever, Silverton is no longer primarily a mining town. It has become a thriving high-mountain destination, with a booming recreation industry, rising property values, and a new generation discovering what Beverly Rich has known her whole life — this place is something special.
The Power of Place Magazine is a special initiative of the Colorado 150 Southwest organizing committee, featuring 20 articles by professional historians and local writers exploring Southwest Colorado’s rich and complex heritage.
This story is sponsored by Alpine Bank, Sky Ute Casino and Strater Hotel
Watch the full series, Voices of the Past: Southwest Colorado.
Transcript
I was born in Silverton on December 8th, 1950, and I’ve been involved with the Historical Society since I was about 14. This article is by me, Beverly Rich, and it’s called Rescuing Relics, an Extreme Preservation, the old hundred boarding House. It’s iconic. It really is iconic and it is way heck up on the side of a mountain and a pretty good hike until the last little bit. And then it’s scary as heck to get down to it. It is something that needed to be saved. It’s a piece of architecture that is unreal, really. And it was, it’s also a very storied mine. People poured a lot more in money into it than ever was taken out. A lot of people don’t realize this, but Silverton’s almost 10 years older than Durango. Durango wouldn’t be there without Silverton. This was the Silicon Valley of its time. Technology was so developed up here. There was incredible wealth and it was a boom and bust thing. A lot of mining had to do with World Wars. So when you had a pretty good World War, then you had a very busy mining town, and when the war ended, you had a B bust and people had to move. We, we saw that more than once over our history. In 1991, when the Sunny Side mine shut down, it was wrenching because we lost half of our population and we had to spend hours visioning about what we were going to become. We had a couple of things really going for us. One was our spectacular scenery, and the other was our fascinating history. And so we decided to use that as what we were going to become. And just in the last probably, I would say 10 or so years, we’d become one of the high mountain mining towns that has been discovered. We’re getting more population and our property values are shooting through the roof. And it’s been interesting nowadays. We have a large, large recreation industry, and for the first time in our history, we weren’t a mining town to read this story, visit colorado150southwest.org Alpine Bank, committed to Colorado and you.
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