| US 550 through Colorado is known as the
Million Dollar Highway. |
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| One alleged reason for the nickname is
that it took a million dollars a mile to build. |
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| This was just on the side of the road.
There was nothing indicating what it was. It looks kind of like an
old garage. |
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| What more can I say about beautiful
mountains? |
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| This is the eastern end of the Idarado
Mine. As one of the San Juans' larger mines, it contains nearly one
hundred miles of underground tunnels. Miners would enter here at the
Treasury Tunnel and rid the underground trams to their work station.
The western end of the mine complex is at Pandora, about two miles
from Telluride. The Idarado Mine produced until the 1980's. |
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| Off in the distance. |
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| So, remember that rock that cracked the
windshield on Monday? Believe it or not, I caught another one two
days later on US 550. I had managed to go over forty years of
driving without a cracked windshield and here I get two inside of 48
hours. |
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| But I guess if it is going to happen,
you could not find a nicer place. |
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| I was going to try to reach what I
believe is a ghost town up this road, but it looked suspiciously
like the road I tried to traverse in Montana where I cut a tire.
Given my luck thus far, I opted not to chance it and turned around. |
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| I had not originally planned
another stop on the day, but I would have gotten into my ultimate
destination too early, so I did. |
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| This is Silverton, elevation 9,318 ft. You'll never guess
where that name came from. |
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| This is a road just off of the main
street. |
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| Most of the buildings date from the
early 1900's. |
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| The old American Legion Post and Miners
Union Hall. |
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| The main drag of Silverton. |
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| It says it is the old livery. Who am I
do argue? |
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| I don't know what the County Club was,
but it was here. |
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| The Teller House Hotel dates to 1896. |
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| It is good that old buildings are still
used for other things, like whatever this once was back in 1880.
Pretty sure it was not a t-shirt shop. |
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| I just now noticed that there is an elk
or something on the roof. |
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| Another hotel, although it was not
originally one. |
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| Silverton City Hall. |
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| I could not find anything online that
says what these buildings are, but they did have signs on them. This
one says it was built in 1876, the oldest one I noticed. |
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| The Grand Imperial Hotel was the
largest single standing structure south of Denver. |
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