Telluride, Colorado Telluride .
Website Town of Telluride Fall colors in Telluride.
A view of a mountain while driving above Telluride on one of its many trails.
The town of Telluride sits in the valley.
The town of Telluride is the governmental center of county and most crowded town of San Miguel County in the southwestern portion of the U.S.
State of Colorado. The town is a former silver quarrying camp on the San Miguel River in the San Juan Mountains.
The first gold quarrying claim was made in the mountain peaks above Telluride in 1875 and early settlement of what is now Telluride followed.
The town itself was established in 1878 as "Columbia", but due to confusion with a California town of the same name, was retitled Telluride in 1887, for the gold telluride minerals found in other parts of Colorado.
These telluride minerals were never positioned near Telluride, causing the town to be titled for a mineral which was never mined there.
Telluride sits in a box canyon.
A no-charge gondola joins the town with its companion town, Mountain Village, Colorado, at the base of the ski area.
Telluride and the encircling area have featured prominently in pop culture.
The Telluride Historic District, which includes a momentous portion of the town, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also one of Colorado's 20 National Historic Landmarks.
Historic gold specimen from Telluride The Smuggler gold vein above Telluride, and placer gold in the San Miguel River, were identified in 1875.:51,54 John Fallon made the first claim in Marshal Basin above Telluride in 1875 and early settlement of Telluride followed.
Telluride was originally titled "Columbia", but due to confusion with Columbia, California, the name was changed by the postal service in 1887.
The town was titled after valuable ore compounds of the chemical element tellurium, a metalloid element which forms natural tellurides, the most notable of which are telluride ores of gold and silver.
Although gold telluride minerals were never actually found in the mountain peaks near Telluride, the area's mines were rich in zinc, lead, copper, silver, and ores which contained gold in other forms.
In June 1889, Butch Cassidy, before becoming associated with his gang, "the wild bunch", robbed the San Miguel Valley Bank in Telluride.
In 1891, the Rio Grande Southern barns , also begun by Mears, appeared in Telluride, eventually building a two stall engine home, water facilities, a section home and a bunkhouse, sidings and a depot.
It continued further up the valley to end its Telluride branch at Pandora, serving the mines and the town until 1952.
This brought a brief but unprecedented boom to Telluride before the Panic of 1893. Bridal Veil Falls in Telluride Telluride's workforce unrest occurred against the backdrop of a statewide struggle between miners and mine owners.
The Telluride Miners' Union was led by Vincent St.
Nunn joined forces with George Westinghouse to build the Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant, an alternating current power plant, near Telluride.
This was the first prosperous demonstration of long-distance transmission of industrial-grade alternating current power and used two 100-hp Westinghouse alternators, one working as a generator producing 3000 volt, 133 Hertz, single-phase AC, and the other used as an AC motor. This hydroelectric AC power plant predated the Westinghouse plant at Niagara Falls by 4 years. Nunn and his brother Paul assembled power plants in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Mexico, and the Ontario Power plant at Niagara Falls on the Canadian side.
Nunn advanced a keen interest in education as part of his electrical power companies, and in conjunction with Cornell University assembled the Telluride House at Cornell in 1909 to educate promising students in electrical engineering.
Later, Nunn along with Charles Walcott, started the non-profit Telluride Association.
Each year, the Telluride Tech Festival honors Nunn, Tesla, and Westinghouse, along with current day technology and science leaders.
Telluride's most famous historic mines are the Tomboy, Pandora, Smuggler-Union, Nellie, and Sheridan mines.
Beginning in 1939, the hard-rock quarrying operations in the Red Mountain and Telluride quarrying districts began a lengthy consolidation under the Idarado Mining Company (Idarado), now a division of Newmont Mining.
When the mine officially closed, the snow which tormented Telluride's miners became the town's new origin of income, in the form of skiing and tourism.
Mining was Telluride's only trade until 1972, when the first ski lift was installed by Telluride Ski Resort founder Joseph T.
Zoline and his Telluride Ski Corporation (Telco).
Along with his mountain manager, Telluride native Bill "Sr." Mahoney, they slowly and thoughtfully put together a plan for sustained evolution of Telluride and the region.
Mining families fled Telluride to settle in places like Moab, Utah, where uranium quarrying offered hope of continued employment.
Mining families were replaced by what locals referred to as "hippies", young citizens with a 1960s worldview which incessantly clashed with the values of Telluride's old-timers.
A view in Telluride from the ski slopes by Mountain Village.
Meanwhile, ski region founder Joe Zoline worked to precarious one of the best mountain peaks in North America for expert skiers and created transit framework for tourism which respected Telluride's need to stay small and beautiful.
As the final ore carts were rolling out of the Pandora mine, tourists began to seriously discover Telluride for its magnificent views, expert skiing, and famous autumn color changes.
In 1978, a stake of the ski region was bought by Ron Allred and his partner Jim Wells to form the Telluride Company.
The new owners period the transit framework by adding a gondola connecting Telluride with the Mountain Village.
During the 1980s, Telluride advanced a reputation for being "Colorado's best kept secret", which paradoxically made it one of the more well-known resort communities.
In the 1980s, Telluride also became notorious in the drug counterculture for being a drop point for Mexican smugglers and a favorite place for wealthy importers to appreciate downtime.
For this time, Telluride was living up to its Wild West history.
The celebrations and Telluride's bad-boy town image thriving celebrities like Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey, and Oliver Stone.
By the mid-1990s, Telluride had shed both its quarrying personality and drug image to establish itself as a premier resort town balancing undivided culture with fascinating history.
Telluride from a gondola ascending to Mountain Village.
Telluride is positioned at an altitude of 8,750 feet (2,670 m) in an isolated spot in Southwest Colorado.
From the west, Colorado Route 145 is the most common way into Telluride; however, there are two alternate passes to enter the town, Imogene Pass and Black Bear Pass.
On the easterly side of town, there are two waterfalls: Ingram Falls, which is visible from town, and Bridal Veil Falls and the Bridal Veil Hydroelectric plant, which are just out of sight from town to the right of Ingram.
The town is served by air transit via Telluride Regional Airport (TEX), once the highest altitude commercial airport in the United States.
Telluride has a humid continental climate (Dfb).
Climate data for Telluride 4 - WNW 1981-2010, extremes 1900 to present Source: Nowdata, Telluride 4 - WNW from Grand Junction region Beyond the ski lifts, Telluride is now widely recognized as an all-season resort.
Telluride Ski Resort is definitely the chief attraction in the winter.
But when summer comes around, Telluride transforms into an outside recreation hot spot, with tourists visiting to appreciate mountain biking, hiking, river rafting, sightseeing and more.
And the 40-mile Telluride Mountain Run loops the town in a wide swathe that includes some of the most difficult and scenic trails in the area.
Telluride is served by Telluride Regional Airport.
Therefore, most of the passengers going to Telluride use Montrose Regional Airport, positioned 67 miles to the north.
The bus system, called Galloping Goose, makes a complete loop around the town and the Gondola links Telluride with Mountain Village. The Galloping Goose also has another bus that goes to Lawson hill and Norwood.
It joins Telluride to Cortez and Naturita.
Downtown Telluride amid the 3rd Annual Jazz Festival, August 1979 Telluride and the region surrounding it has had a notable effect on pop culture.
Historic Telluride figures prominently in Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day.
Telluride was the subject of an essay by Edward Abbey, and Modern Telluride is the setting of Raymond H.
Ring's 1988 detective novel Telluride Smile.
Telluride is mentioned in the song "Smuggler's Blues" by Glenn Frey, and is the subject of and eponymous music by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1985, Kate Wolf, and Tim Mc - Graw in 2001, which was re-recorded by Josh Gracin in 2008.
Local inhabitants and common visitors, some of which have shown up for The Telluride Film Festival, have encompassed John Denver, Bob Dylan, Daryl Hannah, Diablo Cody, Jerry Seinfeld, Greg Kinnear, Ed Helms, Nicolas Cage, P!nk, Jason Schwartzman, Sean Penn, Oprah Winfrey, Meg Whitman and Tom Cruise.
The short-lived early 1990s difficult modern group T-Ride took their name from a generally used contraction of Telluride.
They seem to have chosen this name at least in part because of the theory that "Telluride" is itself a contraction of "To Hell You Ride".
Originally a quarrying town, Telluride now is known for its ski resort, Telluride Ski Resort.
In the summer, there are celebrations almost every weekend, including Mountainfilm in Telluride, the Telluride Film Festival, Telluride Blues & Brews Festival, the Telluride Wine Festival, the Mushroom Festival, the Nothing Day Festival and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.
Mountainfilm in Telluride Telluride Ski Resort Telluride Bluegrass Festival Telluride Film Festival Telluride Daily Planet Telluride Sessions Live at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival "Telluride, Colorado Mile Post 45.1 Elev.
Telluride, CO: Montoya Publishing.
Historic Historic Telluride in rare photographs.
Conversations at 9,000 feet : a compilation of oral histories from Telluride, Colorado.
The mountain peaks are the story : a history of Telluride for children.
Telluride, CO: Between the Covers Bookstore.
Media related to Telluride, Colorado at Wikimedia Commons
Categories:
Towns in San Miguel County, Colorado - County seats in Colorado - Mining communities in Colorado - San Juan Mountains (Colorado)Towns in Colorado
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