United States
Silverton
A narrow-gauge steam train delivers you to a mining town at 9,318 feet.
The train rounds a final bend, the whistle bounces off the canyon walls and the Victorian mining town appears at 9,318 feet, one main street of false-front buildings backed by peaks that keep snow into July. Coal smoke hangs in the thin air with pine and old timber.
Silverton is a National Historic Landmark in its entirety, a single high valley town founded in the 1874 San Juan boom with thirteen-thousand-foot peaks in every direction. The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad still works the 45-mile canyon route that once hauled the ore, and steam locomotives still lead the way up the Animas gorge. Blair Street, once the red-light district, keeps its period lettering above modern café doorways, and jeep roads climb from town to the ghost workings of Animas Forks. In winter, Silverton Mountain runs one chairlift into ungroomed expert terrain, and the cliff-hung highway over Red Mountain Pass towards Ouray stays one of the great nerve-testing drives in the country.
Friends
Arrive by steam train, jeep up to the ghost town of Animas Forks and, in winter, earn your turns on a mountain with one lift and no grooming.
Couple
The canyon train ride in is half the romance; the other half is a quiet evening street where the gas-style lamps come on under big peaks.
Family
The steam train captivates every age, you can walk the whole town in twenty minutes and the surrounding peaks make every ice cream taste earned.
- The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad still runs its historic 45-mile canyon route into town, with steam locomotives leading the way.
- The entire town is a National Historic Landmark, its false-front buildings and Blair Street lettering surviving from the 1870s boom.
- Thirteen-thousand-foot peaks stand in every direction from the one main street, with the ghost town of Animas Forks up the jeep road.
- Silverton Mountain's single chairlift serves ungroomed expert terrain that bigger resorts would never open.
Supper in the saloon of the Grand Imperial, the granite pile of 1883 once called the largest building south of Denver.
A paper bag of pastries for the train, bought on Greene Street before the morning whistle.
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