A Smokestack from Yesteryear

There’s a little (little by Denver standards) town just down the road from Monarch Pass that I’ve always enjoyed stopping in anytime I get the chance. Founded in 1880, Salida grew up with the mining industry in Colorado and was home to a massive smelter (smelting is a process of applying heat to ore to extract a metal such as silver, iron, or copper) that operated until 1920. Today Salida is a bustling tourist town as it’s close to all sorts of recreational activities such as whitewater rafting, cycling, camping and hiking. Both the Colorado Trail and the Continental Divide Trail pass nearby and the Arkansas River runs through downtown. Salida sits in a relative sunbelt featuring warm but not too hot summers and fairly mild winters.

Today’s population is just around 5,800 folks which is about double what it was in the early 1880’s. In its heyday though, thousands of workers from the area worked for the Ohio-Colorado Smelting and Refining Company which operated from 1902 to 1920. Smelting produces a lot of hazardous byproducts including noxious gases so as the smelter grew so did the size of its smokestacks used to carry away those gases with the wind. Three smokestacks were built at the smelter but only the last, and the tallest, remain. Today, if you let your eyes wander when you’re in Salida, you’ll see this impressive monument to the past silently standing sentinel just north of town. When the smelter ceased operating in 1920 - just three years after the last smokestack was built - the town eventually took over the property and sold it for back taxes. Concern grew that the last smokestack was a liability and the town threatened to demolish this relic of a bygone era. However, local citizens rallied  to save their smokestack and today the site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

I had a chance this last weekend, before the recent snow, to visit Salida and it’s smokestack. The following short video gives an aerial view of all that’s left of the smelter. As you’ll see I was blessed with a calm, sunny day just perfect for visiting the area. The smokestack was constructed in just 4 or 5 months and used 264 train car loads of brick as it rose 365 feet into the clear, blue Colorado sky. There is a ladder on the southern side by which maintenance was conducted on the smokestack and of course people have continued to try to climb the structure through the years with some doing it in the dead of night. Today you’d be hard pressed to reach the ladder as the lower rungs up to a considerable height have been cut off but standing at the bottom staring straight up, up, and up some more one can only wonder what it must have been like to climb to the very top. Fortunately, my video saves you the effort!