The day after arriving in Silverton, click here for the story, I untethered my bike and rode around town. Pretty cool place. In talking to the locals, I found that until the Durango to Silverton train started to become a tourist attraction, this town was dead. Nothing but a few old miners, hangers on, and floozies frequenting the bars. The town was swiftly dying after the mines petered out.
Then a miraculous thing happened. The train got popular. And Silverton was the destination. Pretty soon, there were 2 trains a day stopping here. The town had a revival and is now looking kind of spiffy. Still has dirt and gravel roads all over but the buildings are looking pretty nice. A few blocks from where my RV is parked is the train station and I stopped there as the train just happened to be coming along at that time. The station is partially a museum too.
Here comes the train!
My RV park is off in the direction the train came from. I’d ridden my bike here and it can’t be more than 1-2 miles. That road over there on the left of the above pic heading up the side of the hill is a popular trail for both hikers and jeep people. There are jeeps for rent at my RV park. In the far distant background, you can see the main highway that winds it’s way down that mountain into town – Durango. Quite steep in places. And no guardrails.
Stops for a minute or three.
Pretty cool steam engine.
The train heads off to down town after debarking some passengers.
There she goes.
Hard to tell from the picture but that track is heading into town, just a matter of a mile of so. The train does a turn around there. Also adds cars, picks up and drops off passengers, etc.
I’d already decided to take this train ride but today wasn’t the day. This was a scouting-to-pick-up-info day. And a visit-bars-in-downtown day.
Long way to Durango.
Off in the distance on the side of a mountain outside of town, you can see a road heading up the side of the mountain. And way up on the side are several spots that the locals tell me are entrances to a silver mine. Mostly petered out now, but old timers still go up there and eke out a living mining precious metals.
Close up of the silver mine outside of town.
I did consider going up there, but I got lazy. Would have been a long haul up a hill, gravel road, on my bike so I passed on it.
Outside of town.
Really a neat little town there. Could get use to the place. The grocery store was kind of small though. And as you can imagine, expensive. No theater, which would have been fun if they had one with an old west style review show. Nothing to do here really, except hunt, drive your jeep around the hills, and drink beer in bars. Maybe try to find gold. Laugh at tourists, maybe. Hmm. Well, I might visit again, but I won’t move here and stay for months at a time.
Oh, time for the train to come back.
I like trains. So much that I’ve spent most of this year taking train trips in beautiful spots like Silverton.
And off it goes to Durango.
This shot (above) is after they got the engine backed around and put on the other end of the train. This is downtown Silverton, around a mile from the actual train station. Dirt roads, old buildings, but there is a fudge shop. And several tourist places with food and trinkets. So now that the train has left, we’ll do a little tour of the town.
Old towns main drag. Notice the style the buildings. Circa 1870’s.
The old restaurant and hotel.
Bank?
Oh, wait, I think that is the building that has the bar in it. Which would be on the lower right. Enter there, and it’s an old time bar. On the front left is the entrance to the Hotel. Old hotel/brothel upstairs. The Handlebars Bar & Restaurant, I think.
Main street.
This is the only street in town that was paved. But that wasn’t a problem as the rest of the streets were very stable, no potholes, hardly any dust. This is the state road that passes right through town from Durango on the way somewhere else.
One of the older, refurbished homes in town.
Nice wide streets laid out in a grid pattern.
My family use to have a car like that Model A shown above. Boy we had fun playing in that thing. Mom made dad sell it and just 10 years later it was worth thousands instead of the couple hundred he’d paid.
An the above picture you see one of the many tourist buses that come up from Durango. Usually the town is crowded in the middle of the day. Doesn’t last long and it’s not really annoying at all. 
The creek that passes right along the edge of town.
So, that’s the tour of Silverton. The next post will be about the train trip I took from here down to Durango. A fairly long trip, but fun.