Old Hundred Gold Mine Tour - Silverton, CO
Sept 9, 2022
Written By: H.Couch
While we were on our Ouray tour, Steve told us about the best mine tour in the nearby town of Silverton, Colorado. After a google search of the tour, times and location, I talked Jon into adventuring off our path to check out the Old Hundred Gold Mine Tour. I mean, we are so close why not and when are we going to be so close again? I was excited but Jon looked on the map and stated it was a ways off the main road. Ugh, I really wanted to go, so Jon said “ok, let’s go.” With the trailer in tow, Old Hundred Gold Mine, The Wandering Couchs are heading your way. We passed through the town of Silverton and headed straight to the mine. We will come back and venture through town afterwards. Luckily once we reached the town of Silverton the sign only said 5 miles, that’s not so far off the path, well until the road turns from pavement to gravel. I started to panic a little as the road narrowed and we began winding into the foothills of the mountain. Luckily right about the time I was going to say, maybe this is too much, we could see the mine in front of us. Thankfully they did have enough room to park the trailer, just like advertised.
We checked in for the noon tour and while you wait, they have a few troughs that you can pan for colored gems and silver pellets that are hidden in the sandy dirt at the bottom. I really had fun with this, but I kind of cheated and found it easier to ditch the pan and just start using my hands to dig through the cold sandy troughs. You get small bags to fill up and take with you when you go. Jon found quite a few little silver pellets and gemstones to fill the bag, while I had fun filling the bag with colored stones. The tour was getting ready to start and we had to get a provided rain jacket and hard hat before we went into the mine.
They have a small train cart that we all loaded into and off we went into the side of the mountain. Once you are about 50 to 100 feet in, it gets very dark and wet. The ceiling is dripping water all along the tunnel as we go. The train takes you ⅓ of a mile into the side of the Galena Mountain. We stopped at a junction in the tunnel that has a shoot that goes off to the south. We all piled out and Bob, our tour guide, starts to tell us about the history of the mine and his experience working mines most of his life. He was a great tour guide and we really enjoyed him. He showed us the tools that they used to bore the holes into the rocks to set the dynamite. He even turns them on to hear how loud they are in the tunnels and how the men that used to work this tunnel must have experienced it. We walked around in the tunnels that go in a circle, this is just level one of 7 levels. They actually go up from here not down. There were tunnels that go up to the upper levels but we stayed on the main level. There were a lot of little streams of water coming down the walls and a few of the tunnels that we saw looked flooded and could not be accessed without walking in the water.
The tour ended and we all piled back into the train car to head back out to daylight. Once we were back out, I wanted to pan for more gems, so while I dug for treasures Jon went out to look at the old boarding house located about 1000 feet above the mine entrance. The miners accessed the boarding house from the upper level of the mine. Jon finally drug me away from the panning and we headed back towards Silverton.
Most of the visitors to Silverton arrive via the scenic Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Train, so everything seems set up like a quick stop destination, kind of like travelling by cruise ship. There are a lot of souvenir shops that sell everything from t-shirts to sterling silver jewelry. A few art galleries and antique stores mix in the with the joining restaurants. We thought Silverton was a cute old west town founded by prosperous miners but was discouraged by the tourist trap setting.
Thanks for wandering with us,
The Wandering Couchs
