ROAD TRIP: Eureka!

Exploring The Abandoned Mines And Towns Of Colorado’s Argentine Pass

Story and Photos by Reid Neureiter | For the GPHN

Colorado is turning 150 on Aug. 1. What better way to celebrate the state’s sesquicentennial than to spend some of the summer exploring its history?

In this case, Argentine Pass. At 13,207 feet, this high mountain pass crosses the Continental Divide between Clear Creek and Summit Counties in the Central Rockies. In addition to spectacular scenery, both the east and west approaches to the pass provide views of extraordinary relics from Colorado’s colorful mining history, including abandoned mining towns and the mill sites where fortunes were made, and lost.

If you’ve got a high clearance 4-wheel-drive vehicle, you can reach the Argentine Pass summit from the east by starting up the Guanella Pass road from Georgetown, 53 miles west of Park Hill. Turn right onto an old wagon toll road (County Road 352). This rough and rocky way climbs for eight bone-rattling miles to yellow tailing mounds at 11,666 feet, which mark the location of the former stage stop town of Waldorf.  

Founded in 1869 after the 1864 discovery of silver in the basin, Waldorf once had a population of 300 and its own post office. Just south and up the hill, standing at 12,040 feet, is the well-preserved Santiago Mill, which dates to 1899. The mill retains an extraordinary degree of historic integrity.   

A 4-wheel drive is also essential for this next stage of the adventure. Continue past Waldorf along the shelf road to the top of Argentine Pass — you’ll have views of the summits of Gray’s and Torrey’s peaks and down into the Peru Creek drainage toward Keystone. The route to the top follows the path of the former Argentine Central Railway. Established in 1906, the railway transported tourists to the summit of McClellan Mountain — which sits higher than the pass itself.

Three hotels, three saloons

Argentine Pass can be approached from the west via the Peru Creek drainage. That route is accessed by a bumpy, and pot-holed gravel road that starts five miles east of Keystone resort (on the way to Montezuma).

The Peru Creek road does not require a high-clearance vehicle (although four-wheel or all-wheel drive is a good idea), and it provides access to Chihuahua, a   mining town founded in 1880. Now reduced to barely recognizable foundations, Chihuahua once had 50 wooden structures, including three hotels and three saloons. 

Chihuahua burned down in 1889, when a forest fire swept up the mountainside. The impressive wood and metal remains of what had been the largest mine in the area — the Pennsylvania Mine and Mill — is still prominent. Initially developed in 1879, the mine produced gold, silver, copper and zinc and was active until the 1940s.  

Willpower and determination

From the west, a closed gate forbids motorized vehicles from making the final climb to the Argentine Pass summit, but strong hikers can park at the trailhead and make the climb on foot. 

The high roads to Colorado’s old mining towns and ruins are generally inaccessible in the winter months. Come summer, Park Hill residents Doug and Maureen Wulf, who also own property in nearby Montezuma, like to explore the old sites. 

During a trek up Peru Creek last summer to examine the teetering remnants of the Pennsylvania Mill, Doug Wulf contemplated the hard lives of miners working at sites well above 10,000 feet. Many of them came to Colorado before it was even a state. (The Colorado Gold Rush began with the discovery of gold near Denver in 1858. The Silver Rush followed a little more than 20 years later; Colorado was three years old.) 

“What strikes me is the magnitude of the sheer willpower and determination of those intrepid travelers who came to stake their fortune in silver mining,” Wulf said. 

“I find myself trying to imagine the brutality of the year-round work involved in such challenging conditions with weather, fires, disease and starvation always a possibility.”

Toxic legacy

Beyond the decaying wood and iron structures, the mines left another, more sinister legacy — environmental damage. Sulfuric acid and heavy metals leach from the shattered rock into the streams that feed Peru Creek, eventually running into the Snake River. There are no fish in the creek, because the acid run-off kills aquatic life. It’s a disaster that has long haunted waterways near many of Colorado’s former mining districts.  

Colorado’s Bureau of Reclamation Mining and Safety has posted a sign at the closed-off entrance to the Pennsylvania Mine. It calls the drainage of heavy-metal-laden water “one of the significant sources of water quality degradation.”

The sign describes a project to establish safe access to the underground workings of the mine so as to “provide a more comprehensive understanding of the mine hydrology and eventual remedy selection.” But any solution seems a long way off.  

Despite this toxic environmental legacy, the silver and gold rushes are what helped fuel the permanent settlement of Colorado. 

“The colorful men and women who founded these towns in this brief period of Colorado history certainly would have been fascinating people to know,” Wulf said. “But alas, we are left with nothing but the scattered remnants of their hard work, regrettably very few old photos, and the ghost towns they eventually abandoned.”

If you visit these historic sites, take care to practice “Leave No Trace” principles and be very careful near the mine sites and the remaining buildings. Do not enter the old mineshafts! The dilapidated structures and equipment appear near collapse and are obviously dangerous, with sharp metal shards and rusty nails. The mine sites are best appreciated from a safe distance.