I ended up in Leadville and drove this cool rout that took you past many abandoned silver mines. The Route of the Silver Kings.
http://coloradoinfo.com/leadvilletwinlakes/silverkings
This is the marker at the crest of the Venir Shaft.
Here I am going from south from the Venir Shaft towards the Lower Printer Boy mine and Oro City on a four wheel drive only road. It was not too bad and never had any white knuckles.
This is what greeted me as I finished my 4X4 descent, an old air compressor that was used to power machinery or provide ventilation inside the mine.
Here I am standing at the edge of the tailing pile where ore cars were pushed and the waste rock was just dumped off the end. You can see the road to the right and further right is the town of Leadville.
When I was finished with my driving adventure I stopped in at the Leadville National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum, well worth the $7 admission. The only other museum that comes close is the museum in Golden that is ran by the Colorado School of Mines which has the most impressive mineral collection I have ever seen, even better than the Smithsonian.
This was a coal mining display that you walked through as though you were inside the mine.
Here two coal miners eating their lunch. Notice the yellow canary in the wooden cage above the miner on the left.
Here is a good sample of Malachite and Azurite taken from the Copper Queen mine in Bisbee Arizona, a mine I visited quite often during my four year stay in Arizona.
The only thing left of a town that was moved to Leadville to make room for mine expansion, the town of Climax and it is no longer on the map.
The Denver & Rio Grand provided valuable supplies to the townsfolk and miners.
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