8-31-16

Along the Durango to Silverton narrow-gage excursion train, Colorado. The river's name is shortened from the Spanish original: El Río de las Animas Perdidas , "The River of Lost Souls." The story is that several members of a Spanish expedition in the 1700s were swept away and drowned while trying to cross the river. Note the rust staining along the river banks. It's from acid-mine drainage, due to sulfide oxidation making sulfuric acid that in turn mobilized metals. Not all of it is a result of mining, but mining certainly exacerbated it! The stain is harmless--it's literally just rust (iron oxides and hydroxides), but it doesn't add to the esthetic experience--

Colorado, USA, looking south along Main Street. Silverton is an old mining town in the Colorado Rockies that has a new lease on life as a tourist attraction. They've deliberately tried to keep the "Old West" motifs with the architecture. It's also the northern terminus of the Durango-Silverton narrow-gage line, a highly popular excursion train, and one of the last surviving relics of what was once a huge network of narrow-gage lines in this area. US highway 550, the "Million Dollar Highway" (of obscure origin--it cost a _lot_ more than that!) is visible crossing the forested slope near the base. It's the automobile route to Durango (to the south) and Ouray (to the north). The sign at lower left says "State Law--Yield to Pedestrians in Crosswalk." I'm in the crosswalk, but maybe I should have stepped forward a bit to miss the sign. Or maybe it gives foreground interest ;)