Mineral Point

Staking a 60-foot vein below Engineer Pass

Sixty feet is taller than most barns. Now picture that barn lying on its side and running for several miles through a mountain. That's the target McIntyre and Burrows found.

The catch is where it is. This is high, cold ground that sits under snow for much of the year. Getting ore out of here is going to be the whole problem, and it stays the whole problem.

Mineral City was already taken

In 1875 the camp applies for a post office as Mineral City and learns there's already a Mineral City somewhere else in Colorado. So it becomes Mineral Point. One trail history says the first camp was called Burrow Camp instead, so the original name depends on who you ask.

Things move anyway. McIntyre's Dakota & San Juan Mining Company sets up headquarters, and the Buffalo & San Juan Mining Company builds offices. By 1876 about 75 people live here. Henry Ketchum and John Dowling open a supply store. Ehrenfried Steinbach runs an assay shop (where you pay someone to test your rock and tell you what it's worth). B. F. Weeks and H. B. Perry run the Forest House, a restaurant, saloon and hotel.

Here's my favorite detail. The town sat on a bog, so the streets were corduroy roads, which means logs laid side by side over the mud. If you've ever crossed a county fair parking field after a wet week on a path of plywood somebody threw down, you get it. Now do that at 11,000 feet.

Three dollars to Lake City by stage

In August 1877, Otto Mears finishes the Engineer Pass road. That same year a sawmill starts up, and work begins on the Bonanza Tunnel through Houghton Mountain from California Gulch. The plan is a straight shot of more than three miles to reach the mines around the San Juan Chief Mill.

Ore goes out to Animas Forks, or over Engineer Pass and down a 19-mile stage route to Lake City. The stage costs $3 from Lake City and 50 cents from Animas Forks, and in summer Lake City sends mail every day.

Mineral Point keeps building like it plans to stay. In 1880 the Forest House is replaced by a 40-by-60-foot building, and the Rocky Mountain Stage and Express Company runs daily stages between Lake City and Animas Forks over the pass. In 1882 the 24-by-70-foot Mineral Point Hotel opens south of town.

The mines had names like the San Juan Chief, the Polar Star, the Red Cloud, the Mastodon and my personal favorite, the Old Lout. That's the name you give the one calf that won't come in from the field. Most people only lived here part of the year, because the winters were too harsh to stay.

Empty by the 1890s

Work on the Bonanza Tunnel stops in 1884, short of its goal. Speculative mining slows in the mid-1880s, and by the 1890s Mineral Point is completely abandoned.

How big did it get? One history says "several hundred" people at its peak. I couldn't find a census number to back that up. The sources also disagree on when the slide started. One says production slowed around 1877 because hauling ore out was so hard, while another has new hotels going up in 1880 and 1882. I can't settle that one, so I'm giving you both.

Visiting Mineral Point today

Mineral Point is on the Engineer Pass road, part of the Alpine Loop, just south of the summit. There's an overlook with an interpretive sign and a restroom. A side road past the overlook parking drops down to the San Juan Chief and through the old townsite, then rejoins the main road below the overlook.

Don't expect a town. The townsite is gone. What you'll find is the San Juan Chief Mill ruins south of County Road 17 and Mineral Creek. Photos from 2020 show a fallen stamp mill (a machine that crushed ore with heavy iron weights), water tanks, the mine front and a boarding house.

Plan for late July through September, because early October snow can block the top. Up there you're on the same patch of ground two prospectors bet on in 1873, and the snow still sets the calendar.