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Silverton, Colorado, circa 1901 as photographed by William Henry Jackson. 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
First view on video almost identical to view in Jackson's photo.
I believe my grandfather, his brothers, and their parents still lived in Silverton in 1901 - in the 1900 census, they lived on Snowden Street. I wonder which house is theirs in this photo?
Thanks to member "seacue" for sharing this photo of Silverton as seen in 1970.
Notice how wide the streets are - at least 50 feet. No doubt they were to act as firebreaks in an emergency. Since fire fighting options were limited in a remote village, better one block should burn down than the whole town.
This could be the setting for a movie like Pale Rider. I can just see Clint Eastwood sneaking around here blowing away the bad guys.
At 10,000 feet, more or less, it would help to have a great set of lungs if you lived there.
I wish you could get better resolution out of Google Maps and Earth, but here's the approximate view today. The original was shot further up the hill behind this vantage point:
Suddenly I have this crazy urge to play SimCity, and I can't figure out why ... (shrug)
I'll always remember our drive up from Durango to Silverton on the Million Dollar Highway: the aspens, the magpies, but most of all, I'll remember the 16 foot Christ of the Mines Shrines, 500 feet above Silverton to the north.
It's interesting to note that the Denver and Rio Grande narrow gauge tracks in the foreground still exist. Silverton is now the northern terminus of the scenic railroad from Durango. The foreground tracks now make up part of a Y for turning the trains. The stub of the Y leads to the depot in town.
Silverton still looks pretty much like this.
I rode the train here with my granddad 30 years ago. We drove from his home in Arizona to Durango in his 1968 Porsche 912.
That's a well laid out, prosperous looking little town! Looks like they've even got themselves a nice little coal fired power plant.
This could be the beginning of a new housing development today including sidewalks if it weren't for the absence of driveways and the presence of outhouses. It's also interesting how, even in this small town, there is a farm side (left in this picture) and a city side.
In the farm side, there appear to be three animals stretched out on the ground but I suspect that may have something to do with the camera angle.
With the river running through it, it appears to be an altogether pleasant-looking place to live.
I stopped in Silverton for lunch on a long motorcycle ride last summer. It was a great little mountain town, much more "real," I thought, than Ouray up the road. It's not much bigger now than it is in this 109-year-old photo, and many of the buildings on the main drag are still there.
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