Re: Silverton Explosion...

There is extensive coverage of this dynamiting in the Silverton Standard in '76. The depot was owned by the San Juan County Historical Society and the baggage end was used as storage of the society's artifacts. There were several suspects, but no one was ever charged. The BATF folks were on the scene rather quickly and the dynamite was traced to some stolen from the Sunnyside mine.
The society was in quite a quandry about whether to restore or chop off the extensively damaged end. I was on the board of directors at the time and we eventually decided on a full restoration, and it about bankrupted the society as insurance covered only part of the cost. Much of what you see today was salvaged from the ruins. We picked out all the brackets, window frames, baggage end doors, etc., and they were reused. For many years I had the original station signs that say "Silverton" stored in my house. John Coker later painted new ones based on the originals.
At the same time we located a tenant, Sundance Publications, to occupy the space. Dell moved his entire operation from Denver to Silverton and helped in the additional cost to put a concrete floor in the baggage end that became his pressroom. They did extensive work to the inside, including living quarters in the former attic, and a darkroom setup over the baggage end.
After Dell returned to Denver, we leased the station to Charlie Bradshaw who asked for an option to buy, which several years later he was forced to exercise, and thus the D&S bought the station for $50,000. The negotions we had with Charlie were quite interesting to say the least.