Ironton History
Ironton was an important transportation hub and mining camp between Red Mountain Town and Ouray. While Red Mountain Town has historically been recognized as the district's center, Ironton may have been equally important.
Founded in the spring of 1883, Ironton grew with remarkable speed. The March 21, 1883 edition of the Delta Chief captured the town's early momentum:
The new town site of Ironton has 168 lots surveyed, and all are now taken save those reserved by the projectors, being every third lot. As parties filing on them must build before April 1st to hold their claim, it will readily be seen that the town will make quite a showing before the month closes. The location is one of the best in the district.
More than 100 buildings were constructed in the first year alone, and Ironton was formally incorporated in the spring of 1884.
That fall, Otto Mears completed his toll road — later celebrated as the Million Dollar Highway — connecting Ouray to Ironton and the Red Mountain mines. When the first stagecoaches arrived in the summer of 1884, optimism about the town's future ran high. That same year, the newspaper Review relocated from Red Mountain Town to Ironton, a telling sign that, at least in those early days, Ironton was considered the more promising of the two settlements.
The arrival of the railroad in 1888 further strengthened Ironton’s position in the district. With two daily trains connecting the town to Silverton, its future seemed assured. A newspaper account from September of that year painted a vivid picture:
Ironton, with its plank sidewalks and nicely graded streets, new school house, the near completion of the Silverton and Red Mountain railroad to and within its boundaries, its central location to the mines of Red and Brown Mountain with their army of miners and development of immense quantities of as fine ores as can be found in the state, is fast coming to the front.
That same year, Ironton made headlines for a darker reason. One of its citizens, George Witherell, was accused of murdering two Swedish miners while traveling with them to Silverton. After his arrest, he was linked to several additional killings. While awaiting trial at the Canon City jail, a mob stormed the facility, dragged Witherell from his cell, and hanged him from a nearby telegraph pole.
Fire struck in February 1888, destroying much of the business district. Among the losses were Lawson’s bookstore; Mittendorf & Gabier’s dry goods store; Brumberg’s clothing store; the Iron City Odd Fellows’ lodge; the Ironton Athenaeum; the newly built Masonic Opera House; and the building that housed the post office.
Ironton reached its peak between 1888 and 1890. Although the 1890 census recorded only 323 residents, the actual population was likely higher, as census enumerations rarely coincided with the peak prosperity of Western mining towns. Some sources suggest the population exceeded 1,000, though these estimates are difficult to verify.
The silver crisis of 1893 struck Ironton with particular severity. Once the most promising town in the Red Mountain district, it declined so sharply that the post office closed in September of that year. The Silverton Standard reported:
The post office at Ironton has been discontinued entirely, and people there must now get their mail at Guston, two miles away. Two years ago Ironton was one of the most promising camps in the mountains, a system of waterworks was put in, business and dwelling houses went up on every hand, a new church was erected, the mines were all running wide open and times were good.
The town recovered somewhat — the post office reopened in 1894 and remained in operation until 1920 — but Ironton never fully regained its former vitality. As mining operations steadily declined through the early twentieth century, the town gradually faded. Its last known resident, Milton Larson, died in the mid-1960s.
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