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Description
Abandoned structures like this one dot the whole area.

For a little more than a decade at the end of the nineteenth century, the Red Mountain Mining District in Southwestern Colorado was one of the richest and most productive in the world. The story of Red Mountain is perhaps an amalgam of many of the western boom-and-bust mining cycles, and it took place in one of the highest and most beautiful places on the North American continent.

It was evident to even the earliest casual observer that there must be precious minerals in the three gaudy-colored Red Mountains. The colors came from iron pyrite - fool's gold - but it was an obvious clue that other richer minerals could be close by. Only low grade discoveries were made in the first few years of mining activity. But in 1882 John Robinson discovered the fabulously rich Yankee Girl Mine and the rush was on to Colorado's newest mining district. What had fooled the prospectors was that the ore was to be found in vertical chimneys rather than in lode deposits typical of the area. The Red Mountains themselves consisted almost entirely of very low grade ore except where the rich ore chimneys of some thirty to one hundred feet in width plunged into the earth. There silver could be found that contained as much as 1,000 ounces of silver per ton of ore - an unheard-of richness.

Description
Abandoned structures like this one dot the whole area.

For a little more than a decade at the end of the nineteenth century, the Red Mountain Mining District in Southwestern Colorado was one of the richest and most productive in the world. The story of Red Mountain is perhaps an amalgam of many of the western boom-and-bust mining cycles, and it took place in one of the highest and most beautiful places on the North American continent.

It was evident to even the earliest casual observer that there must be precious minerals in the three gaudy-colored Red Mountains. The colors came from iron pyrite - fool's gold - but it was an obvious clue that other richer minerals could be close by. Only low grade discoveries were made in the first few years of mining activity. But in 1882 John Robinson discovered the fabulously rich Yankee Girl Mine and the rush was on to Colorado's newest mining district. What had fooled the prospectors was that the ore was to be found in vertical chimneys rather than in lode deposits typical of the area. The Red Mountains themselves consisted almost entirely of very low grade ore except where the rich ore chimneys of some thirty to one hundred feet in width plunged into the earth. There silver could be found that contained as much as 1,000 ounces of silver per ton of ore - an unheard-of richness.