Just a Ghost of a Chance : Lifestyle: Undermined by a dropping metals market, Silverton, a one-time Colorado boom town, is fighting long economic odds to survive.
Things are so bad economically in this high mountain town that the Pride of the West Saloon, the locals’ favorite, will close soon for the winter. Both the waitresses are leaving, as are most of the bar’s customers.
“It’s not going to be the wide-open, hell-raiser town it was,” predicts bar owner Ben Barnes. “This town really used to be a lot of fun.”
After more than a century, the Sunnyside Mine-- The Company in this one-company town, pop. 700--is ceasing operation this week. The last of a breed of booming hard-rock mines, Sunnyside faces a dropping metals market and diminishing ore reserves. Its operator, the San Juan Mining Venture, is laying off 137 of its 148 workers--or 37% of tiny San Juan County’s work force.
In few places across the country has the economic downturn hit with such force; Silverton expects to lose a third of its residents in the next few months. It will have to struggle against the ghostly fate of countless other boom-and-bust Western towns.
Most of the laid-off miners say they are heading for the gold-filled hills of Nevada or Oregon, where the mining is still good.
Even the mayor may have to move. “My husband has worked in the mine 40 years,” says Wanda Miller, mayor since last year. “He had only two years to go till retirement. We’ll probably leave, too.”
Nestled high in the snowy San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado, Silverton is the only town left in the county. The others--including Howardsville and Eureka--stand only as weathered testimony to more prosperous times.
Gold was discovered here in 1860. But since the turn of the century, when prospecting was booming in these mountains, Silverton has steadily lost population.
“Clear back in the 1800s, we had a reputable population of over 5,000,” says school Superintendent Dan Salfisberg, a third-generation Silvertonian. “This was once a real Western community, with brothels and the whole bit.”
The effects of the mine’s closing are wide-ranging: With only four firefighters left, Silverton has had to cancel its order for a new fire truck. The librarian will have to double as the janitor. The town will plow only one street this winter, and the school has laid off a third of its teachers.
Next year’s senior class will have only two pupils. “We’ve projected we’ll lose up to 100 of 150 students,” Salfisberg says. “We might have to look into the one-room schoolhouse concept.”
Science teacher Janet O’Leary says she fears that the school may close altogether. If that happens, she says, the few remaining students will have to be bused over two mountain passes to Durango, 50 miles south, or over one of the most avalanche-prone passes in the nation to Ouray, 24 miles north.
“I wouldn’t stay here if my son had to go over that pass every day,” O’Leary says.
But Miller is determined to keep the town alive, as is the Save Silverton Committee, of which she is chairwoman.
Silverton already has a booming summer tourist economy, with 2,000 visitors a day riding the popular Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. Committee members are exploring ways to attract more tourists, as well as residents and businesses, to the picturesque area.
The community has applied for a grant from Colorado’s Department of Local Affairs to refurbish the downtown with a cobblestoned street and antique street lights.
“We need to cutesy it up a little,” says Assistant Mayor Bill MacDougall. “Let’s face it, if we lose our tourists, then we’ll just be a drive-through town.”
Not everyone thinks more tourism is a good idea, however. For skilled hard-rock miners used to a wage of more than $25 an hour, a $6-an-hour tourist-based economy doesn’t cut it. And, as miner Mike Luther says: “Not everyone can sell rubber tomahawks.”
Others worry that the town could lose its soul by catering to wealthy outsiders while the old-time working class is forced to emigrate.
It won’t be easy getting people to visit the isolated community, at an elevation of 9,318 feet, during its notorious winters. Silverton gets about 200 inches of snow each year and has a growing season of about 14 days. Not one arable acre of land exists in San Juan County.
“Winters are harsh,” concedes Jon Denious, editor of the 116-year-old weekly Silverton Standard and the Miner. “It gets cold here. I like it, but it isn’t for everybody. It snows a lot.”
The one paved street in town is lined with souvenir shops and restaurants; most others close in October, when the historic train ends its season. Now, even the businesses serving the locals will shut down. Only a handful of stores, if that, will stay open.
“There will be a serious problem with the year-round economy,” says MacDougall. “If you can’t buy gas or groceries in Silverton . . . it’s gonna be tough to want to live here in the winter.”
“This is going to be a ghost town in the winter, all right,” says miner and County Commissioner Rich Perino, 67. “You can’t stay if you can’t work. It’s been dead to start with. Now, it’s gonna be deader.”
Silverton is already so small that it has no doctor and no traffic light. Local phone numbers are only four digits, and the gas pumps look as if they sprang from an Edward Hopper painting.
Still, the mayor says hopefully, perhaps Silverton’s winters can be turned into an asset.
“We have such a lovely town Christmas tree in the winter,” she says. “And there’s plenty of snow for cross-country skiing. We’re going to start advertising Silverton as a winter wonderland.”
The Save Silverton Committee has tossed around lots of ideas in recent weeks, including starting a dandelion winery. A more controversial idea is hosting limited-stakes gambling, picked up by other Colorado bust towns desperate for visitors, like Cripple Creek and Central City.
Says Zeke Zanoni, a retired third-generation miner: “Gambling is one of our only hopes that could conceivably give us a year-round population--at least enough to where you can say you still have a town.”
Many of the town’s residents say they hope Silverton can survive its impending bust. “This town will do what it’s always done,” miner Guy Lewis vows. “The folks that can stay here, they’ll pick themselves up by the bootstraps and just keep going. We’re not going to dry up and blow away.”
