Laserfiche WebLink
SILVERTON GOLD <br /> FOREWARD <br /> The Sunnyside Mine, the little town of Silverton, <br /> Colorado--what's special about yet another mine and yet <br /> another town? The libraries are full of historical accounts of <br /> mining towns and the famous people who were the main i <br /> actors in the rather unique theater of mining. These books are <br /> researched and written by historians. Is it possible for a <br /> historian to capture the real experience of mining or can only <br /> those intimately associated with the every-day operation of an <br /> active mine feel it? My background is not of a writer or <br /> historian but of a training geologist and past mine manager of <br /> one of Colorado's great mines. The story of the Sunnyside <br /> Mine and the towns of Eureka and Silverton is not the story of <br /> tunnels and buildings but the story of men, of gold, of <br /> exhileration that can only be experienced by actually seeing <br /> that beautiful metal imbedded in the snow-white quartz A <br /> story of unspeakable agony and human suffering, of death,- <br /> but above all, a story of the supremacy of man over one of <br /> nature's insurmountable obstacles--the cold, hard, isolated <br /> rocks of the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. <br /> One hundred and thirteen years after its discovery, the <br /> Sunnyside Mine is again on the road to supremacy as <br /> Colorado's largest producer of yellow gold. Its ascension has <br /> not been without periods of total despair and failure. Through <br /> two recent bankruptcies this "old girl" has managed to <br /> somehow struggle back and help Silverton keep its' motto as <br /> the"Mining town that never quit." <br /> Allan G.Bird <br />