Re: Montrose-Ouray ore service

That may be a popular way to look at it but the concentrates went to where the smelters were. As smelters closed down in the U.S., choices were Idaho until those closed, and then Canada and Mexico. And when the Sunnyside was in a cash pinch, the railroad was bypassed and the cons went by truck all the way to the smelter to get a faster payout, though lessened considerably by higher trucking costs. The Idarado was a larger producer than Silverton's Sunnyside but remember that there was little to nothing shipped from Silverton from 1953 to about 1960/61 when the Mayflower Mill came back into production. All the concentrate traffic to Ridgway came from the Telluride side and that traffic had nothing to do with the Silverton branch. And when the Mayflower began churning out concentrates, the trucking arrangement to Ridgway was already in place. The Silverton Branch abandonment proceedings started in 1959 and at that point the D&RGW had made sure there would be no out going shipments on the narrow gauge though the old Standard Uranium then Standard Metals had many incoming loads of freight in 1959 and 60, and then that too was killed off.