In the latter 19th century prospectors staked hundreds of 10-acre hardrock mining claims across the Red Mountain Mining District in southwestern Colorado and could patent preferred parcels after five years. Visible relics include abandoned houses, mining structures, a faint railroad bed and orange waste rock piles, but maps reveal thousands of long rectangular private claims scattered across U.S. Forest Service and BLM lands. Those parcels pose development risks—vacation cabins, trophy homes or small resorts—that can fragment wildlife habitat, mar views along the Million Dollar Highway and impede public access. Local volunteers and partners used about $14 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund to acquire and return roughly 9,000 acres to federal ownership through the Red Mountain Project, one of many LWCF-supported conservation and recreation efforts over six decades.
In the latter part of the 19th century, prospectors flocked to the Red Mountain Mining District in southwestern Colorado, staking hundreds of 10-acre claims alongside streambeds, on aspen-covered slopes and just about anywhere else in the "public domain" they thought might hold gold or silver. After five years, federal mining laws would allow them to patent, or take title to, the claims they wanted.
A century and a half later, the only visible remnants of that hardrock mining boom are a handful of abandoned houses and mining structures, the faint line of a railroad bed and dozens of orange waste rock piles. But land ownership maps show another legacy: Thousands of acres of private land in the form of long rectangular mining claims scattered haphazardly across U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land.
In response, volunteers from the nearby towns of Ouray and Silverton worked with historic preservationists, local and federal land managers and representatives of the Trust for Public Land to buy more than 10,000 acres of parcels and return them to the public domain from which they were carved. It took nearly a decade, but by 2007, some 9,000 acres had been acquired and returned to federal ownership with about $14 million from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.
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