The Impossible Road: Incredible Photos of the Otto Mears Toll Road

Established in 1876, Ouray, Colorado was positioned at the north end of the rugged San Juan mountains, in a box canyon that served as the gateway to many rich mining districts. The town would have been the ideal commerce and transportation center for a large part of the region of not for one problematic detail.

The terrain that separated Ouray and the mining districts to the south was so steep and rocky, that early explorers called the route “difficult and dangerous” and even “impassible”. Early trails and toll roads that linked Ouray with important mining centers like Lake City and Silverton took long and roundabout routes that made travel in the region slow and difficult.

For years attempts were made at building a road between Ouray and Silverton, but these attempts were always a failure.

Interest in the road peaked in 1882 with the discovery of the Red Mountain Mining District, the largest mining boom the San Juan’s had experienced to that point. Building the southern road out of Ouray now became a matter of great importance.

If Ouray could not be connected to the fantastic mines of Red Mountain it would lose all the commerce and riches flowing out of the district to Silverton.

Reaching the mines of Red Mountain became a race between Ouray and Silverton. The stakes were high, with the winner being the first to benefit from the extensive freighting business that would come from the rich new district.

Ouray County took on the job and the first concerted effort was made at building Colorado’s most difficult road. Over $40,000 was spent but not much progress was being made, and the county had to concede that it did not have the resources or expertise to get the job done.

Ouray County officials then turned to famed Colorado road builder Otto Mears. Mears had built successful toll roads in the San Juans before, and was considered to be Colorado’s greatest road builder.

By the fall of 1883, Mears had completed the road from Ouray to Ironton, beating the Silverton road builders in the race to access the new mining district. As expected, freighting business boomed in Ouray, and the town entered a new era of prosperity.

Mears was a shrewd businessman and after completing the road from Ouray to the Red Mountain district, he then made an offer to county officials in Silverton to finish their end of the road. The Silverton road had been mostly built but was in such poor condition that freight wagons could not make the trip without great difficulty.

In a similar deal to the one he made with the county government at Ouray, Mears got San Juan County to pay for the road and let him collect the tolls that travelers had to pay to use it.

Mears now controlled both roads to Red Mountain, and charged high tolls in either direction. In addition to the payments he received from the county governments, Mears is said to have collected over $100,000 on tolls

It wasn’t just mines that were bringing prosperity to Ouray. The spectacular scenery of the San Juan’s attracted tourists as early as the 1880s, and the new toll road featured such breathtaking scenery that it boosted tourism in the region despite the terrifying drops and rough condition of the road.

Mear’s charter to collect tolls ended in 1887 with Ouray and San Juan counties taking over ownership. The Mears road was now public, and would continue to be one of the West’s most famous roads.

The 1916 passage of the “Good Roads Bill” provided funds that were used to improve roads throughout America. Starting in 1921, these funds were used to upgrade the Mears toll road to a highway that could accommodate automobiles.

For reasons that remain unclear, the newly upgraded automobile road became known as the “Million Dollar Highway”, which it is still known as today. Most would agree that the Million Dollar Highway is America’s most spectacular drive. 

The road remains a testament to the bravery and ingenuity of men like Otto Mears and the hundreds of laborers that blasted much of this road from the shear cliffs of the San Juan mountains.

The rugged individuals that opened the frontier West were prospecting, mining, and attempting to survive in what was a vast wilderness at the time. Many of the basics of survival had to be sourced directly from the miner’s immediate surroundings, and shelter was one of the first necessities of life that had to be addressed.

The most common form of shelter for early miners in many states was the log cabin. In forested regions, logs were readily available and enabled miners to build reliable shelter in relatively short time. The following photos show many examples of these early cabins and the proud miners that built them.

The following image depicts a very early cabin near Nevada City, California in 1852. Of interest in this photo is the massive size of the logs used to build the cabin and the half barrel used as a stand for the sluice the men are working.

Many great photos of miner’s cabin have been preserved and capture what life was like in the late 1800s for these early pioneers. The following photo depicts several of the earliest settlers of the Cripple Creek district of Colorado. Note the two seated men are posing with musical instruments.

This 1870s image from Rosita, Colorado reveals a man with a high opinion of his humble cabin. Undoubtedly many people these days would enthusiastically trade their current daily lives for a few days in the Elkhorn Palace. Dogs where a required accessory for any proper cabin.

This group of prospectors mean business outside of their Colorado log cabin. The dog is ready to do some gold digging.

This late 1800s photo is a rare view of two miners in their cabin. Note the bags and supplies hanging from the wall and the furniture made from tree limbs. This was the original tiny house movement.

This William Henry Jackson photo depicts “St. Peter – Guide and Prospector” at his cabin around 1890.

This Colorado miner sits outside his cabin with the required quota of dogs. Note the contrast between the major mining operation on the mountain behind the cabin, and the simple gold pan to the right of the miner.

A new rush occurred at Jasper, Colorado in 1897 and the following image shows one of the first cabins built at the time. These miners are ready to find some gold. The dog, as usual, is an enthusiastic sidekick.

The gold rush at Nome, Alaska presented new challenges to miners struggling to survive in a very severe climate. No trees grow at Nome, so materials for shelter had to be brought in at great expense, or scavenged from wherever they could be found.

The following photo captures an old-time miner at his cabin built of driftwood at Nome ca. 1905.

While the relatively simple life of a miner might appeal to many people today, after spending a winter scavenging materials for shelter in Alaska, or spending a winter in this Colorado cabin….

….they may want to instead spend their time at this cabin – Miner’s Cabin Saloon at Baker City Oregon. This 1890s photo illustrates that the miner’s cabin captured the imagination of the public at a time when miners were still building cabins in newer districts.

While most miner’s cabins have been lost to weather, fire, vandalism, and the relentless march of time, we can still enjoy photos of these fascinating structures, the miners that built them, and the dogs that kept them warm thanks to the following institutions.

Denver Public Library Digital Collections

UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

University of Washington Digital Collections

Baker County Library

The first decade of the 1900s was an exciting time for the state of Nevada. Most mining rushes were over in the West, but Nevada had numerous new discoveries during this time. Mining booms occurred that resembled the great excitements of the 1860s and 1870s, and mining camps quickly developed into fantastic cities.

The greatest of these rushes were at Goldfield, Tonopah, Rawhide, and Rhyolite. The following are some before and after photos that illustrate the dramatic rise and fall of these great camps.

Goldfield, Nevada ca. 1907

Goldfield, Nevada was founded in 1902 after rich gold discoveries. The town grew from a tent camp to Nevada’s largest city in just a few years. The following photo illustrates the explosive growth that Goldfield experienced by 1907.

The next photo shows what Goldfield looked like just four years earlier in 1903. What was built in just a few years is almost impossible to believe.

Tonopah, Nevada 1903

Tonopah, Nevada was the site of a major silver discovery in 1900. The town became Nevada’s largest silver producer in the first decade of the 1900s. Thousands of people poured into the area in the first few years, making Tonopah Nevada’s first boom town of the new century.

Just a couple years earlier, Tonopah was a modest tent camp as shown in the following photo.

Rawhide, Nevada 1908

Discovery of gold in 1907 resulted in a mad rush to the new town of Rawhide, Nevada. The following photo was sent to us by William Redak who included the following text with the image:

“The inscription on the upper left was put there by my great uncle Arthur Sweet. Uncle Arch was a mining engineer who spent most of his life in mining towns in Nevada and Colorado, with a little time in Arizona and Mexico for good measure”

Not long after the photo above was taken, a fire devastated Rawhide.

As with most mining boom towns, fire was merely a temporary setback and Rawhide was quickly rebuilt.

Rhyolite, Nevada 1908

Rhyolite, Nevada was the location of a gold rush starting in 1905. By 1908, when the following photo was taken, Rhyolite had become a city of several thousand people.

Prosperity was short-lived for Rhyolite and by 1920 it was a ghost town. This 1923 photo shows the ruin of the Cook Bank building, Rhyolite’s most prominent structure (seen in the center of the photo above).

The Cook Bank building is one of the West’s most photographed ghost town structures. The following photo is a rare view of what the bank interior looked like during the boom years.

Today a few empty buildings and many ruins are all that is left of Rhyolite. The ghost town is a popular tourist destination.

The discovery of gold or silver in the West was usually followed by a rush of people attempting to arrive at the new district first to get established in mining or business. New mining camps were hastily constructed out of materials that could be easily transported over great distances and on difficult terrain. The most common early structure in these camps was the canvas tent.

Tents were used for both shelter and to operate early businesses in the camps. The entrepreneur with the tent could be in business weeks before his rivals who attempted to build a more elaborate structure, and those first few weeks were a lucrative time to be selling goods or services to the hundreds or even thousands of people pouring into a new camp.

One of the most popular businesses that were run out of tents were saloons and restaurants. Boom towns would have hundreds of new arrivals that were traveling with few supplies, and inevitably they would need food and entertainment.

Restaurants in tents were a common sight in early camps. The following image depicts the “Ja-Ha-Bich” restaurant in Jarbidge, Nevada. The sign on the establishment reads “Home made bread, pie, cake, and doughnuts.”

Although restaurants and saloons were the most common businesses run out of tents, just about every kind of business was run out of tents at one point or another. The following photo shows “Hawley Puckett Attorney at Law, Notary Public” ca. 1903 in Thunder Mountain, Idaho.

Another advantage of tents is that they could be packed up and moved to the next camp in the event that the rush to the current camp turned out to be a bust. Many mining rushes were the result of misinformation or outright fraud. People who’s only investment in the camp was a tent on the ground could pack up and move on to the next rush with little trouble.

Tent cities usually didn’t last more than a year. Any camp that proved to have rich enough mines to last longer than a season would usually transition to wood buildings fairly quickly. The following photo shows Rawhide, Nevada in transition from a large tent camp to a more permanent town with wood construction.

The 1920’s were the final days of the great mining era in the West. New discoveries were rare during this decade, but a few were made nonetheless. Even in 1927, at Nevada’s last rush at Weepah, the tent was the defining feature of the new camp.

Although often overlooked, the white canvas tent was an important tool in the settlement of new mining districts in the West. Luckily many photos of early tent camps were preserved so that we can witness the earliest development of these iconic camps.