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HISTORY
Our Heritage
Telluride’s First Visitors
The Utes were most likely the first human
travelers to San Miguel Park, the enormous
valley that is now home to the Town of Telluride.
These nomadic people made their summer
camps along the San Miguel River, hunting in
the surrounding mountains and mesas for elk,
deer and Rocky Mountain bighorn. The Utes
retreated to the warmer and drier lowlands in
winter, finding shelter in the canyons of the redrock
deserts. For centuries, their way of life was
unchanged and uninterrupted.
The Explorers
During the late 1700s, while searching for
an overland route from Mexico to their
missions and landholdings in California, Spanish
explorers, led by Franciscan Friars Dominguez
and Escalante, made their way north, crossing
a southern range of the Rocky Mountains that
they named the San Juans. While it’s certain
Spanish prospectors searched for gold and silver
in the mountains near Telluride, they did not
attempt permanent settlement in the region,
leaving only the numerous place names that
bear their distinctive heritage as evidence of
their explorations.
Fur trappers and traders were likely the first
Anglos to spend time in the San Juans, but
when the popularity of top hats made from
beaver pelts decreased, the trappers moved on.
The discovery of gold in 1858 near presentday
Denver put the Colorado Territory on the
map. By the early 1860s, numerous prospecting
parties had made their way to Baker’s Park,
near what is now Silverton. That they occupied
land reserved for the Utes by treaty was of no
concern to them, it seems. Only the advent of
the Civil War deflected—at least temporarily—
these prospectors from the precious object of
their trespass. Following the war, they returned
to the San Juans, and by 1873, with the rush of
gold and silver seekers too great to restrain, the
Brunot Treaty ceded four million acres to the
United States government for an annual annuity
of $25,000. This removed the Utes, once and
for all, from much of their traditional hunting
grounds in southwestern Colorado.
The Prospectors
By most accounts, Linnard (Lon) Remine and
a few fellow prospectors from Kentucky were
the first whites to settle down, albeit illegally,
in the valley during the summer of 1872. In
1874, F.V. Hayden and his U.S.G.S survey
teams mapped and publicized the beauty and
vast potential of the region for eager eastern
U.S. audiences. One year later, John Fallon
reportedly packed out $10,000 in gold ore
from the Sheridan Mine, the richest of his five
registered claims in Marshall Basin. News of the
strike spread, and by 1876 San Miguel Park and
the surrounding hillsides were swarming with
prospectors. San Miguel City arose near the
160-acre Ohio Placer owned by Frank P. Brown,
where Mill Creek joins the San Miguel River.
The town of Columbia was platted a mile and a
half to the east (and closer to the lode mines in
Marshall Basin) in July 1878.
Renaming a Town
Because of potential confusion with another
town of the same name in California, the
Postmaster General refused to grant Columbia
a post office. A name change was in order. To
clarify (or confuse) matters, on July 26, 1880,
the Postmaster General established a post office
called “Telluride” for Columbia. Not until June
4, 1887, was the town officially and forever to
be known as Telluride.
The Mining Boom
For years, the only reasonable access to
Telluride was via Silverton by mule train over
Ophir Pass. Later the Schmek, Dave Wood and
Otto Mears’ toll roads provided oxcart and
wagon access from Ridgway and Montrose.
Otto Mears, the “Pathfinder of the San Juans,”
built his Rio Grande Southern Railroad into
Telluride, arriving on Thanksgiving weekend
in 1890, and a golden age for the town
commenced. Immigrants from Finland, Sweden,
Ireland, England, France, Italy, Germany and
China flocked to the Telluride mining district,
swelling the population to some 5,000 souls by
the turn of the century. In addition to its many
saloons, gambling halls and much-heralded
red-light district, Telluride boasted all of the
amenities of a thriving metropolis.
What’s in a Name?
The name “Telluride” probably
derived from “tellurium”
(which, ironically, is not found
here), a nonmetallic element
often associated with rich deposits
of gold. Pre-1877 maps
show a mining camp named
Tellurium in the mountains
northwest of Silverton. Another
theory is that the town was
named for the famous sendoff,
“To-hell-u-ride!,” given to
fortune-seekers heading to the
rugged, rough and avalancheprone
southern San Juans.
20 Telluride & Mountain Village Visitor Guide summer/fall 2009 Make reservations or get information online at www.VisitTelluride.com
COURTESY TELLURIDE HISTORICAL SOCIETY