Mining and miners! Oh, what to say?
They came to these mountains with a fanatical greed in their hearts. Natural beauty was ignored, if noticed at all. They came to tame the wilderness, to take the 'wild' out of it, and profit any and every way possible. They stole the land, built towns, trails, railroads, mills, and cabins while erasing cultures, ecosystems, forests, and wildlife populations in the process. These boomtowns brought thousands of destructives to places where only small groups of Utes had been before. These ones came to stay, to burrow deep into the mountainsides for silver, gold, lead, zinc, or whatever could be profitable, permanently scarring the mountains and streams for centuries to come.
Their determination and tenacity are admirable and still obvious today, visible every time I see a prospect hole where a mountain goat might take pause, or an overgrown road leading straight up a mountain to a tailings pile, or just every time I use a path they cut through a landscape. They brought civilization to the mountains, building the roads and buildings we still use daily, like the one I wrote this in. They extracted millions, making personal fortunes, and helped grow and drive the industrial power of this country. Others simply died in the pursuit of wealth or held on too long and lost it all to end up in a paupers' unmarked grave like the 1100 in the old Lake City Cemetery.
Many more followed just to support and profit off the mining towns and camps, to escape tragic former lives, or as immigrants from faraway lands. It was a wild period in the American West, hence its nickname most likely. While I sure like to retrospectively judge and condemn, I do also find the characters that passed through here and what they left behind endlessly fascinating. Even if now it's nothing more than some rusty metal can in the high country sun.
While I can’t tell stories that I don’t know or that are lost to time I hope I can capture the feeling of the places they built, lived in, some would say trashed, and then left behind, as they are today. After all, its just a bit of weathered wood held together by some square nails and the memories of a few that the ghosts have chosen to share their secrets with.
