Milky Way taken in the ghost town of Ironton, which is between Ouray and Silverton in the Red Mountain Mining District. Ironton was founded in 1883 and about a dozen old homesteads still remain. And if you like ghost stories...we lit the inside of the house with a small flashlight with my baseball cap on top of it to diffuse the light, and after about 25 photos, a very loud bang came out of the house. We were the only ones around at about 10pm. My friend was 15 feet away, helping me light paint the exterior of the house. "Did you hear that?" she said loudly. Um, yeah, I heard that. Not sure if it was a critter, or a ghost of Ironton, but we finished up, collected our light from inside, and called it a night.
The Last Dollar Mine began operation in 1896 and was up the mountain from this location. The ore came out of the mine and down the mountain on a conveyor, and then was dropped into these bins. The rock that was discarded by the sorters fell directly below and behind cribbing on the other side of this structure. Then, ore chutes came out of the bins and into the railroad cars, which took it to the mill for processing. This is only a portion of the complex that was there at the turn of the century, and looking at this from the other side would reveal a 3-story structure built into the hillside.
