The Silver Crash and Durango's Reckoning

Durango was built on silver. The mines around Silverton and throughout the San Juan Mountains produced silver ore that the smelters in Durango processed and the railroad shipped to markets in Denver and beyond. For a decade in the eighteen eighties and early eighteen nineties the system worked, and Durango grew fast.

Then came the Panic of eighteen ninety three. The United States government repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which had required the government to buy silver at a fixed price. With that price support removed, silver's value collapsed almost overnight, losing roughly a quarter of its market price within a matter of months.

Mines that had been profitable shut down. Smelters cut production. The economy of Silverton contracted sharply.

Durango, as the smelting and shipping hub, felt the blow in every sector. Hotels closed. Businesses failed.

The population shrank. Durango survived where many Colorado silver towns did not because it was a regional supply center for a larger area, not solely dependent on the mining industry, and because the railroad that connected it to the outside world remained an economic lifeline even as the ore shipments declined. Recovery was gradual.

Durango emerged from the silver crash as a more diversified town than it had entered, and that diversification proved to be its long-term advantage. The bust that nearly killed the city taught it how to live on more than one economic foundation at a time, a lesson that shaped every generation that followed.