Christ of the Mines Shrine
Near Telluride, Colorado
High on the side of Anvil Mountain, a towering statue of Christ looks down on the old mining town of Silverton. It was born of desperation. In the late nineteen fifties, the town's Catholic men's club met to discuss a shrine dedicated to miners, hoping it might lift an economy that had sunk to its lowest point since Silverton's founding in eighteen seventy-four.
The biggest mine in the county had closed, and the tourist railroad from Durango was barely hanging on. The town chose Anvil Mountain. The figure was carved from Italian Carrara marble, the same quarries that gave Michelangelo the stone for his David.
Townspeople donated money, supplies, and labor. Within a few years, the Sunnyside Mine reopened and put Silverton back to work. When the Sunnyside Mine flooded in nineteen seventy-eight without a single death, many here credited the watchful figure on the mountain.
