The Congress mine was located at an
elevation of 11,400 feet just south of the Ouray-San Juan County line.
Patented Mining Claims Plat Map
1972 Topo Map
1904 Topo Map
The Congress, Carbon Lake and Salem mining
claims overlap. After their initial locations in 1881, their
operations were
consolidated (together with the St. Paul and
Senate) into one operation subsequently referred to as the "Congress".
Believed to be Congress Mine -
date unknown Congress 1998. Arrow: Carbon Lake Mining Marker
1998 looking west over Salem to Congress
Looking north over Salem. Note in
photo on left, date unknown, there does not appear to be a second
building beyond dining and lodging
building on the right, as appears in the photo below. Photo on right
taken in 1998.
Salem mine, date unknown but believed to
be around 1885, was part of the Congress complex. The
"Congress" continued to ship ore as
late as 1918. Note tall stove pipe on roof of building on far left in left
photo above. This building was
probably newer than the dining/lodging building, far right in back. It
does
not appear in the much earlier photo
above it.
1998 Salem 1998 Salem two-story dining and lodging building
1987 looking south at remaining Salem
buildings 1998 looking
south at remaining Salem buildings
2001 looking west from Salem 2001 looking west from Salem at Congress
2001 looking west
at Congress 2001 looking west at Congress
2001 looking west over Salem at Congress 2001 looking west over Salem at Congress
2001 looking west from Salem 2001 looking east at Salem lodging/dining building
rom Salem mine
"In 1881, due to extensive
prospecting activity in the area, the Red Mountain Mining District was
officially formed. A significant
number of patented claims would now
be governed by their owners' own rules and regulations. It was also
recognition that the
district contained a large amount of
mineralization. Although its exact geographic boundaries were never defined,
the district has
always included much more territory
than just the Red Mountains proper-usually including McMillan Peak (12,804
feet), Trico
Peak (13,321 feet), Telluride Peak
(13,508 feet), and the long ridges down each side of Ironton Peak (Hayden
Mountain on the
west and Brown Mountain on the east).
Later, the district was often extended south to the base of Red Mountain
Divide at
Chattanooga. However, it was just as often defined as ending at the
Ouray-San Juan county line. A few mining men extended
the Red Mountain district to cover
the eastern Red Mountain slopes that drain into Cement Creek. But to most
geologists, the
Red Mountain district was defined as
extending from Ironton Park on the north to
Chattanooga on the south, and east and west
to the ridge lines of the neighboring
mountains -an area about eight miles long and not quite that wide.
"Because of the severity of the
winters, the inaccessibility of the location, and the lack of adequate roads
or trails, the
prospectors continued to flow slowly
into the Red Mountain country. In San Juan County, J. G. Haines, Adams, and
Craves
located the
Congress Mine in July 1881. History would only later prove it to
be one of the great mines of the district. That
summer, the men at the
Congress sank a shaft some thirty-five feet
deep, and the entire seven-by-nine-foot hole was found to be
solid in minerals. Unfortunately, the
owners of the Congress were unfamiliar
with the character of the low-grade copper and silver
ore and didn't realize that it also
contained a fair amount of gold. As was common at the time, they assayed the
ore for silver
alone and believing it to be only
low-grade, they discontinued work for the rest of the year. Although gold
wasn't present in
sizeable quantities, if it had been
detected, the ore would have been found to be worth shipping. The
Senate, Salem,
St. Paul,
and Carbon
Lake claims were also located in the summer of 1881, and they
eventually came to be worked with the Congress
as a recognized mining group located
on the southern slopes of Red Mountain No. 3. But they, too, caused no great
excitement.
As far as their owners were aware,
their group was basically composed of low-grade ores.
"In August 1881, the Denver and Rio
Grande Railroad had reached Durango and construction had immediately
continued due
north toward Silverton. The arrival
of the railroad at Silverton in the summer of 1882 meant that some of the
lower-grade ore, which
had been piling up on the Red
Mountain dumps, could be shipped inexpensively to the smelters and mills.
Perhaps the freight
charges would be low enough for the
mines to make a profit, even with the moderate silver prices of the time.
"The first real excitement of the
summer of 1882 came when tests done in June showed that the
Congress ore was, in fact,
valuable enough to ship. Two men were
hired to continually work its main shaft, which they quickly deepened to
fifty feet through
a solid, although low-grade, ore.
"With the prospect of relatively
cheap transportation imminent, some of the Red Mountain ore seemed to have
economic value.
By July 1882, the
Congress Mine had been sold for twenty-one
thousand dollars and then was sold again to Silverton parties.
Drifts were run out from the main
Congress shaft, and the new owners learned
that what had previously been thought to be low-
grade ore was, in fact, a richer
copper ore that contained from one-half to two ounces of gold and up to
fifty ounces of silver per
ton. The
Congress's main shaft was immediately deepened to eighty feet,
but at that point the workers hit foul air, making it
necessary for them to stop work until
additional machinery could be brought to the site and a tunnel driven into
the side of the
shaft to improve the ventilation. The
Congress ore realized a little more than
sixty dollars per ton in Silverton, which made it
profitable to work, but with the high
transportation costs from Red Mountain, the
Congress still fell far short of being considered
a bonanza.
"One of the biggest events in the
history of San Juan mining was the arrival of the Denver and Rio Grande
Railroad in Silverton
on July 8, 1882. The railroad's
shipping rate from Silverton to the smelters in Pueblo was only twelve
dollars per ton. Most of the
Red Mountain ore appeared to be
low-grade, and the apparent location of the majority of the ore was on the
Silverton side of
Red Mountain Pass. Silverton seemed
to be the town that would supply the Red Mountain Mining District. However,
unforeseen
events were about to occur that would
change forever the attitude of mining men toward what looked like an
extensive but
unimpressive supply of low-grade ore
at Red Mountain.
"In September 1882, the owners of the
Hudson were confident enough of their future that they built living quarters
near the mine
so that their miners could work all
winter. In that same month, the Congress Mine
shipped ore that now assayed at eighty to
one hundred dollars per ton and that
on occasion contained ore that ran sixty percent copper, three and one-half
ounces of gold,
and eighty ounces of silver. Every
time the ore of the Congress Mine was
assayed, it contained ever larger and richer amounts
of copper ore. An eighteen-foot-wide
deposit of its rich ore had been exposed, and a shaft, drifts, and crosscuts
were being
driven. The
Congress became the first of the Red Mountain mines to start
making regular daily shipments of ore, each and every
day sending to Silverton about five
tons of ore that by late summer contained a steady value of about one
hundred dollars per ton.
"Back in the midsummer of 1882, Red
Mountain's worth had hardly even been recognized. By October, only sixty
days after the
big discoveries, it was obvious that
the region would become one of the major mining districts in the San Juans-
perhaps in the
entire United States. By November,
the La Plata Miner pronounced the Red Mountain Mining District "officially
open" and
predicted a half-million dollars in
ore would be produced during the winter of 1882-1883. In December, the same
paper
acknowledged that "people are in a
habit of making a most liberal allowance for exaggerated newspaper reports
as well as any
verbal reports which come to them in
reference to the mineral wealth of a country. The Red Mountain district has
not been
exaggerated, nor has it been puffed
to the extent which its merits warrant.
"South of the divide, the
Congress temporarily stopped shipping ore
because of the problems connected with freighting in the
winter. It did, however, continue to
do development work, operations needed to make it easier to mine the ore but
that didn't
produce ore. In this case the
development work was a tunnel that, it was hoped, would solve many problems.
This "adit" would
drain water from the original
vertical shaft, provide better ventilation throughout the mine, and make it
easier to get the ore out.
The Senate,
St. Paul,
Carbon Lake, and Salem claims
were all now worked in connection with the Congress.
In October,
the Hudson Mine came into prominence
only two thousand feet north of the Congress
but on the other side of the divide. Its
owners had developed a forty-six-foot
shaft that produced ore that averaged thirty-two percent copper, twenty-nine
ounces of
silver, and half an ounce of gold per
ton. The Hudson was one of the first of the Red Mountain mines to make the
decision to
stockpile ore during the harsh winter
and ship only in the summer. The move was a wise one, because it saved up to
seven
dollars per ton in shipping costs.
"In December 1882, the
Salem became the first of the Red Mountain
mines to actually shut down because of water flooding
its shaft. Nonetheless, by the second
week of January 1883, a force pump had been brought in by sled through the
deep snow,
and the mine was put into operation
again.
"Soon the
Congress Mine was also reported as having trouble with water
seepage. The owners ordered a pump that was four
times larger than their first one,
which had itself only been put into operation a few months before. The
problem that was to
plague most Red Mountain mines was
becoming apparent. Their shafts followed the rich ore chimneys straight down
into the
earth-there was no way for the water
to naturally flow from the workings. This necessitated the use of huge
boilers that
produced steam to activate the large
pumps used to get the water out of the shafts. The boilers used massive
amounts of wood
and coal, which had to be brought in
over large distances. All of this was expensive, and the operation got even
more costly as
the shaft got deeper. Nevertheless,
the owners of the Congress were
optimistic, and the mine was soon back in operation.
It continued to produce two and a
half tons of valuable galena ore each day.
"In February, the
Congress, the
Salem, and Carbon Lake became
the first Red Mountain mines to apply for their patents,
which officially transferred
ownership of the mine from the United States to the new owners. The next
month, the Silver Crown
Mine was proclaimed to be developing
"an immense body of mineral," and the owners of the nearby
Silver Ledge Mine
announced that they had discovered
one of the largest bodies of ore yet. Meanwhile, because of the problems
they had with
winter production, even the Yankee
Girl was forced to reduce its work force to two men. Even so, the mine had
already
produced and shipped galena ore
containing 32,000 ounces of silver and 408,000 pounds of lead.
"The activity in those mines that did
continue during the winter of 1882-1883 was remarkable because, in light of
the harsh
and bitter conditions, most Red
Mountain mines couldn't produce or ship any ore at all. It was simply too
hard to work in the
deep snow, too hard to transport the
ore out or to ship in supplies. Only the local newspapers didn't seem to be
affected by
the deep snow. Their articles became
more and more glorious as they reported the mineral wonders of the Red
Mountain
region. Especially vocal were the Red
Mountain Review at Red Mountain Town and The Red Mountain Pilot at Red
Mountain
City. The papers on the Ouray side of
the divide announced that "the Hudson is visited daily by many people who
come away
astonished at its richness and the
amount of ore in sight. The Silverton press boasted that "the
Congress ... is one of the
wonders of Red Mountain and with the
coming season will develop into one of the richest mines of Colorado ...
Recent
developments have proven that the ore
increases in richness and quantity as the shafts are extended, a fact that,
as a natural
consequence, greatly enhanced the
value of the Congress, and one, too,
that will continue to increase its intrinsic worth." It
was reported that the
Congress ore needed no sorting and was
shipped just as fast as it came out of the shaft. However,
despite the glowing reports of the
Red Mountain newspapers, the actual statistics reveal that at the time the
stories were
printed, the
Congress had only shipped ore worth
$15,674.40, and the Hudson Mine hadn't done any better.
"Although it was difficult to work in
the winter, development resumed quickly at all of the mines as the first
signs of spring
appeared in 1883. By late April, the
Congress's drainage tunnel had
intersected its shaft, but the tunnel was now eight feet
higher than the bottom of the
eighty-foot-deep shaft, since work had also continued there. It was reported
that the adit went
through solid ore the last eight feet
before it hit the shaft, which indicated that the ore body could be twenty
to thirty feet wide.
Its ore contained about twenty to
thirty ounces of silver, three-eighths to one and one-half ounces of gold,
and was at least
twenty-five percent copper-an average
value of one hundred dollars per ton.
"Even at the
Salem Mine, near
Congress (its thirty-foot shaft was discouraging in production
and its forty-foot tunnel wasn't
much better), a workman who was
shoveling what was thought to be plain dirt discovered a small vein of
copper ore near the
main shaft. Although limited in
quantity, selected portions of this ore were reported to contain twenty-five
ounces of gold and
two thousand ounces of silver.
"During the summer and fall of 1883,
the Congress worked fifteen men and
shipped about twenty tons of rich ore daily. Enough
activity was going on in the Red
Mountain district that by September the Red Mountain Review could boast that
"Red Mountain
already has forty producing mines and
prospects, fifteen of them shipping. How's that for a camp scarcely one year
old. Oh!
we're a gitten thar. In the
summer of 1883, the Congress Mine sent a large pack train daily to Silverton
via Del Mino.
"Once again the newspapers let their
optimism get the best of them. Only a month later it was obvious that,
because of adverse
weather conditions, the Red Mountain
mines would have to shut down or at least severely curtail production for
the winter. The Senate
announced it would buck the trend and attempt to work three men all winter.
The Hudson stopped mining but made the
decision to continue to ship its
stockpiled ore for as long as possible into the winter. The owners of the
Congress concentrated
on bringing in lumber and timber to
be used later to build additions to its boardinghouse and to construct ore
sheds and a new
hoisting apparatus. In an attempt to
get ahead of the winter snows, the Congress
shipped 850 tons of ore in August and
September.
"Even in the face of all the mines
shutting down for the winter, the Red Mountain Review still optimistically
proclaimed that
certain Iowa and Nebraska capitalists
who had visited Red Mountain that fall had returned home to gather five
million dollars to
develop various Red Mountain claims
the next spring. All together, it was estimated that the Red Mountain
mines produced
fifty-five hundred tons of very rich
ore in August and September alone. In its wrap-up for the year 1883, Ouray's
Solid Muldoon
figured that the Yankee Girl had
shipped 3,000 tons of ore worth $450,000; the National Belle 980 tons worth
$69,600; and the Congress
2,500 tons worth $220,000.
"In October 1883 spur road to the
Congress Mine from Mear’s road was
completed and in the fall of 1883, the owners of the Congress
Mine finished their rough road to a point just outside of
Chattanooga and announced that during the
winter they
hoped to sled ore all the way to
Silverton.
"In retrospect, it is easy to discern
that the great Red Mountain strikes were made at an incredibly bad time in
mining history.
For hundreds of years, the secret to
mining success seemed simple-find the ore, dig it out, and, if it is
valuable enough, send it
on to the smelters. But during the
1880s the economics of mining changed radically, and to complicate matters
further, many
unique production problems cropped up
in the Red Mountain Mining District. At the beginning of 1884, the Red
Mountain
economy was sound enough that the
number of men working in the mines had begun to grow dramatically.
Development work
was being done as rapidly as
possible, and ore of all types and values seemed to be everywhere. For
example, in January 1884,
the Congress
Mine hit a high-grade ore in one of the few volcanic pipes on the
south side of the divide. A tunnel was driven to
connect with the mine's main shaft,
and the workers hit good ore while still twenty feet away. The tunnel had
therefore provided
ventilation, drainage, and, best of
all, given an indication of a large ore body in the mine
"All told, the Red Mountain Mining
District from 1871 to 1900 produced at least fifteen million dollars in ore
-some authorities
would claim a figure as high as
thirty-five million dollars. Later operations (mainly during and after World
War 11) added many
more millions to that total. At
today's metal prices the total output of the district would come dose to a
quarter of a billion dollars.
Many of the Red Mountain mine owners
couldn't believe the end had come. They attempted to keep producing- even at
a loss if
necessary. Other mines hit rich
pockets of silver ore that allowed production to continue for short periods
of time. Some
operations were kept alive by mining
small amounts of gold that had always been in the ore but that had been
ignored until this
time (at one time a find of less than
one ounce of gold was not even paid for by the mills). Gold actually began
to appear in
greater amounts in the deeper Red
Mountain ores, although it certainly was not plentiful. Some Red Mountain
mines struck other
minerals, such as fluorspar, that
allowed profitable short-term production. Base metals such as copper, zinc,
and lead
experienced an increase in price due
to an expanding American industrial economy. Whole new markets opened up a
demand
for metals such as copper for use in
electric wire and lead for automobile batteries. All metals were recovered
more efficiently in
the twentieth century, when better
milling and smelting procedures were developed.
"Even though the year 1898 brought a
rise in metal prices (and by July 1898 the Congress
and the Silver Bell regularly shipped
a wagon full of ore to Red Mountain
Town each day to be loaded on the train), the glory days were over for the
Red Mountain
Mining District. A strike at the
Durango smelter in late 1898 completely shut down the few mines that had
remained open. On
November 16, 1898, the Guston post
office was closed. The winter of 1898-1899 was especially harsh; the January
6, 1899
Silverton Plaindealer reported five
feet of snow on the ground at Red Mountain Town. Only ten men and two women
lived in
"The Town" that winter, and only nine
families were at Ironton. At the turn of the century only the
Silver Ledge,
Congress, and
Silver Bell were being worked, and
they would not have been in operation if it hadn't been for the recent
discovery of small
pockets of rich ores in them. The
1900 census gave Ironton a population of seventy-one in the summer, but it
was just too much
hassle for most families to try to
spend all winter on the Red Mountain Divide.
"For ten years, work continued on the
joker Tunnel at a constant but slow pace; the ore shrunk in both quality and
quantity at
the bottoms of the old mines.
Originally, the tunnel was to run all the way to the workings of the
National Belle, Hudson, and Congress,
but it never got past the Genessee. The tunnel eventually saw periods of
disuse and occasional activity into the
1940s. Even though it was near
the joker Tunnel, Ironton's population fell to forty-eight in 1910. Red
Mountain Town dwindled
to twenty-six inhabitants, and on
February 28, 1913 its post office closed. After the joker Tunnel closed in
1914, the Silver Ledge
and Congress were the only major Red
Mountain mines that continued to operate. The
Congress shipped about one
hundred carloads of low-grade ore
each year from 1912 to 1918. Zinc, copper, lead, and other base metals were
in great
demand during World War I, and a few
of the Red Mountain mines made small shipments during that period. The
Silverton Railroad
continued to operate at a loss. its deficit in 1917 alone was over
twenty-five thousand dollars.
"In 1919, the
Silver Ledge Mine shut down when its mill
burned, eliminating the only local milling facilities designed to process
the Red Mountain districts ore.
Ironton was the last active town in the district. Its post office dosed on
August 7, 1920, but
Ironton continued to have a saloon
even after that time. The old way of life had changed forever. It was too
easy for miners to
live in Ouray or Silverton and
commute to Red Mountain. New roads, electricity, and telephones had all
helped bring the
transformation. In 1921, regular
operations ceased on the Silverton Railroad, and
on June 17, 1922, a hearing was held before
the Interstate Commerce Commission to
determine if the Silverton Railroad could be
abandoned. Although attorneys for the
mines and the town of Silverton all
protested vehemently, the ICC allowed the request." 1
