Hellmtflies wrote:
Excellent! Great trip! Curious though. Was the train track and access to that area built for mining? Is that why that train exists? In other words, was that track built to get to the mine that ruined the Animus River?
The railroad came to the area in 1882 (and has been in operation ever since) to support the significant mining in the Silverton area. Before that supplies and ore went over Stony Pass to South Fork, then on to destinations. The wagons and teams had to be unloaded and sometimes hauled up cliff faces to get over the pass. The construction of the railroad solved that. These were some of the richest mining operations in the nation's history. The problem is that the strata that held silver, gold, and other valuable minerals also held heavy metals, arsenic and other toxins.
Back in the 70s when the EPA Superfund was set up, the residents of Silverton prevented their area from being included on this list for fear it would hurt their tourist industry. So....the abandoned Gold King Mine was used to capture and hold the toxic runoff for many years. In 2015, under EPA supervision a test drill to measure the captured water level caused a leak which resulted in 3 million gallons of toxic water to flow down Cement Creek and into the Animas River. I was up scouting for elk that day and could see the leading edge of the deluge as it came down the valley.
The Fish and Wildlife people were pretty smart and caged 100 trout from the hatchery and tossed them into the polluted river to see if they would survive...all but one did. These toxins had been seeping into the Animas for a century and as the river approaches Durango being fed by several unpolluted feeder streams, the insect life can survive as do the trout. In fact, the stretch through town is one of Colorado's few stretches of Gold Medal water. But, up high, the more fragile insects cannot survive and many miles of the river are not suitable trout habitat. In 2016, after the spill, the area was included on the Superfund Cleanup site list.
PS: Here is a video of the Cumbres-Toltec train mentioned above. I shot the video while Aurelio and I were fishing along the train's route a couple of summers ago. Note that their coal train does not have the highly effective smokestack scrubbers that are used by the Durango line to prevent soot complaints from the townspeople.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyXWpMV43Ig