Silverton is a statutory town that is the county seat, the most populous community, and the on your own incorporated municipality in San Juan County, Colorado, United States. The town is located in a remote part of the western San Juan Mountains, a range of the Rocky Mountains. The first mining claims were made in mountains above the Silverton in 1860, near the decrease of the Colorado Gold Rush and gone the house was still controlled by the Utes. Silverton was established hurriedly after the Utes ceded the region in the 1873 Brunot Agreement, and the town boomed from silver mining until the Panic of 1893 led to a collapse of the silver market, and boomed anew from gold mining until the recession caused by the Panic of 1907. The entire town is included as a federally designated National Historic Landmark District, the Silverton Historic District.

Originally called “Bakers Park”, Silverton sits in a flat area of the Animas River valley and is between steep peaks. Most of the peaks surrounding Silverton are thirteeners, the highest being Storm Peak, at 13,487 feet. The town is less than 15 miles from 7 of Colorado’s 53 fourteeners, and is known as one of the premier gateways into the Colorado backcountry.

Silverton’s last working mine closed in 1992, and the community now depends primarily on tourism and organization remediation and preservation projects. Silverton is capably known because of the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, a former mine train that is now a National Historic Landmark, and internationally recognized endeavors such as the Hardrock Hundred Mile Endurance Run. The town population reached 637 in the U.S. Census 2010.

Settlements in the area surrounding present-day Silverton began in 1860 after a organization of prospectors gain by Charles Baker made their mannerism into the San Juan Mountains searching for gold. The area was soon referred to as “Baker’s Park”, and the charity found traces of placer gold nearby.