Colorado : ‘THE MINING TOWN THAT WOULDN’T QUIT’

The sky darkened and thunder rolled through the valley as the last train to Durango moved slowly out of Silverton.

While raindrops spattered against Victorian buildings, smoke black as the sky itself poured from the steam locomotive and passengers waved as the little narrow-gauge train gained speed, its whistle sounding a mournful farewell.

As the train disappeared, lightning streaked through the San Juan Mountains and another clap of thunder shook the wet earth and the fragile shacks that line Blair Street.

Although barely 4 o’clock on this stormy afternoon, already the merchants of Silverton were locking up. Bearded Al Denmonk sat behind his team of horses, counting the coin he’d earned delivering passengers through town aboard his new $30,000 stagecoach.

Doors were slamming shut at the High Noon Hamburger Emporium, the Cookie Mine, the Silver Bullet Souvenir Store and the Fudge Factory. A few customers lingered at Smedleys Ice Cream Parlor on Main Street, and locals were gathering for the weekly Monday night bingo binge at the French Bakery.

Known as “the mining town that wouldn’t quit,” Silverton survives on loot spent by summer visitors who arrive daily on the wheezing little Durango & Silverton narrow-gauge railroad. Operating since 1882, the D&S; does a three-hour run out of Durango with a 2 1/2-hour layover in Silverton before returning to Durango.

En route the train passes meadows choked with columbine, the rail cars clinging tenaciously to ledges hundreds of feet above the Animas River where it rampages through rapids and mist-filled gorges. Conductors in bib overalls stroll through the cars, while a fireman shovels coal and passengers focus cameras on deer and elk watching from the forest.

In Silverton, passengers crowd stores stocked with Indian jewelry, concho belts and handbags, afghans, quilts, kachinas, knickknacks and T-shirts. Without the train, Silverton would be another abandoned mining town.

Earlier, after ore was discovered in the 1860s, thousands arrived to work the mines. Bordellos flourished. Saloons stayed open ‘round the clock. Silverton was wild and wicked and lusty.

Prospectors swarmed through the hills. Some grew wealthy; others disappeared into obscurity. Today for miles around the ghostly remains of the bonanza days are visible: boarded-up mines and windowless cabins recalling a time when Silverton roared.

In the 1800s more than 5,000 miners crowded saloons up and down Blair Street. Silverton never slept. Dance-hall girls entertained and camp followers strolled the streets. Silverton survived on sin and silver, with more than $400 million in ore taken from the earth. Then came the crash of 1893 and the exodus began. Saloonkeepers closed their doors. Dance halls were boarded up. Abandoned shacks toppled in winter gales.

Although miners still work the Sunny Side Gold and a couple of others, Silverton’s boom days ended years ago. Without the train and its summer tourists, only a Rocky Mountain ghost town would remain.

Sprightly 71-year-old Effie Andreatta sits daylong in her Bent Elbow restaurant-saloon, listening to ex-miner Bob Scott bang away on a piano that’s as out of tune with the times as the Bentley parked at the door. A thunder mug makes do as a kitty and walls are hung with 19th-Century prints.

As the train chugs into town, wave after wave of passengers make a run for the Bent Elbow and its $4.95 buffet. During Silverton’s bonanza days the Bent Elbow did business as the Tremont Saloon & Sporting House under the watchful eye of a firebrand known as Big Tilly. Others crowded Lola’s, Denver Kate’s, Big Molley’s, the Bon Ton and the Sage Hen. And spilling from the mountains came the silver and gold that kept the fury going. Ore wagons arrived from the Royal Tiger and other mines. Bat Masterson patrolled the boardwalks, keeping the peace.

Blair Street still resembles the shoot-out scene in that classic film, “High Noon.” James Stewart did a shoot-’em-up Western in Silverton, Barbara Stanwyck appeared in “Maverick Queen” and James Cagney starred in “Run for Cover.”

Facing the Bent Elbow is an old-time photo studio operated by Tommy Wipf, a Jesse James look-alike and Vietnam veteran who arrived in Silverton 14 years ago with his 1908 box camera and $10,000 worth of Victorian duds that his customers don.

With fellow merchants, Wipf shoots up Silverton each afternoon in a mock gun battle, and with the stage set at 9,318 feet, Wipf claims it’s a breathtaking performance.

After the rest of the town shuts down for the evening, the action gets under way at Romeros on Main Street. Featuring the “best chile rellenos and the most explosive margaritas in the Rockies,” Romeros is a laid-back Mexican cantina with a jukebox that blares out “La Bamba,” “Guadalajara,” “La Paloma” and “Baja El Cielo Morelio.”

On a lively evening Romeros sometimes rocks till after midnight, walls lined with license plates, miners’ tools and a bugle that sounded reveille for a forgotten generation.

If Romeros seems a trifle riotous, the tenderfoot can make tracks for Smedleys Ice Cream Parlor. Smedleys (“we make our own ice cream”) turns out mile-high cones, banana splits, shakes, sundaes and cherry Cokes, along with rock candy and jawbreakers.

Fourteen restaurants do business in a four-square-block slice of Silverton. Besides pastries and breads, the French Bakery serves a “mining camp breakfast” along with lunch and dinner. A few doors away the Pickle Barrel does business in an ex-saloon that once bottled bootleg booze in its basement. Others crowd Natalia’s 1912 Family restaurant, Drost’s Soda Fountain, and Zhivago’s, where the menu is tuned to European specialties.

Like the Bent Elbow, the opulent Grand Imperial Hotel (circa 1882) does a busy buffet business ($5.95) in its Gold King Dining Room. Proprietors Ken and Mary Marlin of Newport Beach, Calif., spent a bundle renovating the Grand Imperial’s 40 guest rooms. All feature Victorian brass beds; a few provide pull-chain toilets and oak water tanks.

Facing Main Street, the handsome old hotel is a stereotype of the Victorian splendors produced in Colorado’s mining towns a century ago. Guests gather inside the Grand Imperial’s Hub Saloon with its pressed-tin ceiling and immense cherry-wood bar that came around the Horn and was hauled to Silverton by train and covered wagon.

The bar bears testimony to Silverton’s tumultuous past. Lodged in the scrimshaw paneling is a bullet fired by the jealous suitor of party girl Rosie Steward. Rosie survived, but the bar took a hell of a hit.

Rinky-tink piano tunes drift out the lobby of the Grand Imperial with its crystal chandeliers and red Victorian wallpaper. Of an evening, classical melodies set another mood.

Those remaining when the train returns to Durango seek shelter in several hotels and a nifty bed and breakfast that proprietress Ann-Marie Wallace calls Fool’s Gold. Anchored to a hillside a couple of blocks off Main Street, Fool’s Gold provides a splendid view of Silverton with service to match. Wallace does a class act, transporting guests between the train and her B&B; by stagecoach.

Her cheery, two-story Victorian, built by a state senator for his childhood sweetheart, is as warm as plum pudding. The lithesome Wallace, who packed herself off to Silverton several years ago from Maine, says she has no desire to go home again.

Three rooms upstairs share a single bath, while guests of a fourth room downstairs use Wallace’s tub.

She fusses over guests, sharing her secrets of peaceful hiking trails and hidden fishing holes. She provides fresh-baked pastries, homemade chocolates and “firm beds and fresh flowers,” packs picnic lunches and serves candlelight dinners. Says she: “Your comfort and satisfaction and return visits are my primary concerns.”

Open year-round, Fool’s Gold is a base for cross-country skiers and families searching for old-fashioned Victorian Christmas.

Next door, the Wingate House B&B; (circa 1886) features three rooms, one suite and a couple of baths. But there’s a hitch: Guests must hoof it to town for breakfast at the Pickle Barrel.

At Christopher’s B&B; on Empire Street, proprietors Eileen and Howard Swonger whip up an Irish breakfast that conjures up memories of a farm holiday in County Mayo. Christopher’s, the former home of Silverton’s boom days Mayor Nat Ballou, welcomes guests with mints, fresh flowers, coffee, tea and home-baked cookies.

Books and games line shelves in the parlor, and a no-smoking rule keeps Rocky Mountain breezes as fresh as flowers in the three guest rooms.

Other accommodations are up for grabs at a B&B; over Smedleys Ice Cream Parlor and the Teller House Hotel over the French Bakery.

At the snug little Wyman Hotel, proprietors Don and Jolene Stott offer gratis use of hundreds of movie videos whose titles range from “Birth of a Nation” and “The African Queen” to “Down and Out in Beverly Hills.” Besides videos, the Stotts provide 11 rooms with private baths, antique dressers, brass ceiling fans and queen-size beds. They also operate the restored 10-room Alma House, a one-time home for miners and railroaders.

With the population at a near-steady 820, the peace that existed before the mining boom has returned to Silverton. Winter winds shriek, but springtime, along with summer and autumn, is a season to behold. By July, meadows are alive with columbine, chiming bells, Indian paintbrush, lupine and golden buttercups.

In the San Juan Mountains nearly 100 peaks rise above the 10,000-foot mark. Thirteen others tower 14,000 feet or more; they’re Colorado’s answer to Europe’s Alps. High snows remain eternally. Shepherds tend sheep and Jeeps carry vacationers to meadows alongside cliffs that fall away hundreds of feet to canyons below. White water rushes in a steaming torrent, and sundown is as peaceful as the moon glow on this starry night.

By morning the mournful whistle of the little train from Durango will echo once more through the San Juans. Tonight, though, locals are playing bingo at the French Bakery, and Main Street is alive with the strains of “La Bamba” and “Baja El Cielo Morelio.”

Hotels and B&Bs;:

--Grand Imperial Hotel, P.O. Box 57, Silverton, Colo. 81433. Telephone (303) 387-5527. Rates: $40/$110.

--Fool’s Gold, 1069 Snowden, Silverton, Colo. 81433. Telephone (303) 387-5879. Rates: $35/$50.

--Wingate House, 1031 Snowden, Silverton, Colo. 81433. Telephone (303) 387-5423. Rates: $45.

--Christopher House, P.O. Box 241, Silverton, Colo. 81433. Telephone (303) 387-5857. Rates: $35/$45.

--Smedleys Bed & Breakfast, 1314 Greene, Silverton, Colo. 81433. Telephone (303) 387-5423. Rates: $36/$47.

--Teller House Hotel, 1250 Greene, Silverton, Colo. 81433. Telephone (303) 387-5423. Rates: $22/$45 (dormitory bunks, $8.50/$12).

--The Wyman Hotel, P.O. Box 780, Silverton, Colo. 81433. Telephone (303) 387-5372. Rates: $49.

--The Alma House, P.O. Box 780, Silverton, Colo. 81433. Telephone (303) 387-5336. Rates: $35.

--Molas Lake Campground, P.O. Box 776, Silverton, Colo. 81433. Telephone (303) 387-5410. Rates: $7 (campsites), $20 (cabin or tent).