Re: Silverton Northern overlay

This first overlay shows the 343' spur adjacent to the present Silverton Lakes Campground. I'll have to check some Sanborn maps, but I believe this was the site of a privately run power plant that received coal on this spur. The town fathers weren't at all pleased with this piece of private enterprise, perhaps excessive rates or erratic service, and built their own coal fired plant in town on the D&RG, and put the private plant out of business. And in turn, the arrival of much cheaper hydro power from Tacoma in about 1906 put the town's plant out of business. The town continued to own the distribution system within the town into the late 1960s when it was finally sold to the Western Colorado Power Co.

Then the new power system needed a substation and the large brick substation that shows up on Dave's second overlay came on line in 1906--it is still there and has at least 2 industrial tenants at the moment. The power company used a spur, and that shows up on the overlay, for unloading poles and there was an adjacent pole yard. A few pieces of this lasted until the 1980s when the Sunnyside mine used that area for a temporary tailings pond. The spur appears to have a short stub extending past the second sitch. I had always thought the pole spur was on the other side of the mainline, but this map clearly shows it on the substation side. I'm presently writing this about 50' from the location of the first switch on the Silverton side.

It is interesting to see a 200' wide right of way that crosses onto a patented mining claim where the substation is located and the right-of way shrinks down to 25' wide. On the first map, upper right, where the "No. 21" is written (and I think the numbers refer to land parcel numbers), there is presently an electrical substation, so we'll have to do some realignment of the track to get past that and on across the road. The second map shows Tailings Pond #4 where "Black Loam" is written under "Good Level Pasture." This parcel is still under a reclamation bond for cleanup and is still owned by Sunnyside Mining. Since we can't tunnel through things we can't imagine (the town dump is buried there along with other unmentionable things), we'll have to skirt around the edge of the pond slope and the county road, the former state highway 110 and then cross the road a second time. Pond is a mining term as this is a huge pile, some 35 to 40 feet high of mining tailings. The core of the pond is liquid, and though the top appears solid, I wouldn't drive anything heavy across it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/2010 06:35PM by Fritz Klinke.