20 ECONOMIC GPJOLOOY OF SILVERTON QUADRANGLE, [bull. 182. 
to diminish, and after the milling of a few hundred tons of ore mine 
and mill were abandoned. Several lode, had by this time been opened 
in the region and some small amounts of rich ore had been taken out, 
but it was not until 1874 that the main rush to the country began. In 
September of the previous year a treaty, known as the Brunot treaty, 
had been drawn up with the Utes, whereby the San Juan Mountains 
were thrown open to settlement. The ratification of this treaty by 
the Senate in April, 1874, was followed by a sudden influx of miners, 
chiefly from the northern camps of Colorado, but including also a few 
from the south, and some even from the far West. It is estimated 
that about 2,000 men came into the district during the summer of 1874, 
and Endlich l reports that more than this number of lodes were then 
staked out. 2 At that time La Plata, Hinsdale, and Rio Grande were 
the only counties into which the former reservation had been divided. 
The chief settlement and the county seat of La Plata County was 
Howardsville ; but in the autumn of 1874 the county seat was moved 
to Silverton, then a growing town of some dozen houses, admirably 
situated in Bakers Park. The nearest post-office at this time was Del 
Norte, about 125 miles distant. In 1876 San Juan County was formed 
from a portion of La Plata County, with Silverton as the county seat. 
At this time the town is said to have had a population of about 500 
voters. Ouray, San Miguel, and Dolores counties were subsequently 
formed by legislative enactment from the territory originally included 
in La Plata County. 
In 1874 real mining began, principally on Hazelton Mountain, and 
several hundred tons of gray copper and galena ore were taken out 
from the Aspen, Prospector, Susquehanna, and neighboring claims 
during this and the immediately succeeding years. This ore was 
treated chiefly in Greene <fc Co's. smelter, which w T as erected just 
north of Silverton in 1874, but which was not successfully blown in 
until the following year. The machinery was brought in on burros 
from Colorado Springs, then the terminus of the Denver and Rio 
Grande Railroad. The product of the entire quadrangle for 1875 was 
about $35,000, and an estimate made in 1877 places the total product 
from the beginning of mining to the close of 1876 at a little over 
$1,000,000. The Greene smelter was in intermittent operation until 
1879, and was the first successful water-jacket furnace in the State. 
Its daily capacity was about 12 tons, and it is said to have smelted 
nearly $400,000 worth of silver-lead bullion. The bullion was shipped 
by pack train and wagon to Pueblo. The cost of transporting it to 
the railway terminus was $60 per ton in 1876, $56 per ton in 1877, and 
$40 per ton in 1878. The average price for treatment was not far 
from $100 per ton. During the seventies the chief route into the 
Animas mining district was by the trail from Del Norte on the Rio 
1 U. S. Geol. and Geog. Surv. Terr., Report for 1876, pp. 120-121. 
2 According to Bancrof t, •" more than 1,000 lodes claimed. " Loc. cit., p. 501. 
