The Durango Smelter
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The Durango Smelter
The San Juan and New York Smelting Company, (later on merged into the American Smelting & Refining Company, but commonly referred to as the "Durango Smelter") was a mineral smelter located below Smelter Mountain right in front of Durango, Colorado, operating from 1882 to 1930, processing Coke, Lead, Copper, Silver, and Gold from mines all over La Plata County, San Juan County, and elsewhere in the Southwestern Colorado Region generally serviced by railroad. It was later reinstated during World War II by the U. S. Vanadium Corporation for production of large amounts of Uranium that would be utilized in the Manhattan Project. From 1963 on the smelter sat dormant until the U.S. Department of Energy cleaned up the site from 1985 to 1987 due to concerns regarding toxic mineral tailings/radioactive waste, as well as the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment suing ASARCO (the successor to the American Smelting and Refining Company) or damages to natural resources in 1983. ...
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DISTANT VIEW OF SMELTER STACK AND LARGE TAILINGS PILE, LOOKING WEST - San Juan And New York Mining And Smelting Company, Smelter Stack, State Route 160, Durango, La Plata County, HAER COLO,33-DUR,1A-1
Distant may refer to: * Distant (band) is a deathcore band from Europe * Distant (album), ''Distant'' (album), an album by Sarge, or the title track * ''Distant (film)'', the North American title of a Turkish film released as ''Uzak'' * William Lucas Distant (1845–1922), an English entomologist * Distant signal in railway signalling * "Distant", a 2018 song by Jaden Smith from ''The Sunset Tapes: A Cool Tape Story'' * ''Distant (2023 film), Distant'', an upcoming film directed by Will Speck and Josh Gordon. {{disambig ...
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Colorado Department Of Public Health And Environment
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) is the principal department of the Colorado state government responsible for public health and environment Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, all living and non-living things occurring naturally * Biophysical environment, the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or ...al regulation. History In 1876, the Territorial Board of Health was created when the Governor John L. Routt, signed legislation into law creating the nine-member board of physicians across the state. Their charter was to investigate public health issues and recommend resolutions. It had an annual budget of $500,000. The president was Dr. Frederick J. Bancroft and the secretary was Harrison A. Lemen. Other physicians on the board were William H. Williams, A.V. Small, Thomas G. Horn, William Edmondson, Russell J. Collins, Timothy M. Smith, and Thomas N. Metcalf. ...
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Historic American Engineering Record In Colorado
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. History is not complete and still has debatable mysteries. History is also an academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians often debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the nature of history as an end in itself, as well as its usefulness to give perspective on the problems of the p ...
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Smelting
Smelting is a process of applying heat to ore, to extract a base metal. It is a form of extractive metallurgy. It is used to extract many metals from their ores, including silver, iron, copper, and other base metals. Smelting uses heat and a chemical reducing agent to decompose the ore, driving off other elements as gases or slag and leaving the metal base behind. The reducing agent is commonly a fossil fuel source of carbon, such as coke—or, in earlier times, charcoal. The oxygen in the ore binds to carbon at high temperatures due to the lower potential energy of the bonds in carbon dioxide (). Smelting most prominently takes place in a blast furnace to produce pig iron, which is converted into steel. The carbon source acts as a chemical reactant to remove oxygen from the ore, yielding the purified metal element as a product. The carbon source is oxidized in two stages. First, the carbon (C) combusts with oxygen (O2) in the air to produce carbon monoxide (CO). Second, the ...
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Buildings And Structures In La Plata County, Colorado
A building, or edifice, is an enclosed structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently in one place, such as a house or factory (although there's also portable buildings). Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and functions, and have been adapted throughout history for a wide number of factors, from building materials available, to weather conditions, land prices, ground conditions, specific uses, prestige, and aesthetic reasons. To better understand the term ''building'' compare the list of nonbuilding structures. Buildings serve several societal needs – primarily as shelter from weather, security, living space, privacy, to store belongings, and to comfortably live and work. A building as a shelter represents a physical division of the human habitat (a place of comfort and safety) and the ''outside'' (a place that at times may be harsh and harmful). Ever since the first cave paintings, buildings have also become objects or canvasses of much artistic ...
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Demolished Buildings And Structures In Colorado
Demolition (also known as razing, cartage, and wrecking) is the science and engineering in safely and efficiently tearing down of buildings and other artificial structures. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a building apart while carefully preserving valuable elements for reuse purposes. For small buildings, such as houses, that are only two or three stories high, demolition is a rather simple process. The building is pulled down either manually or mechanically using large hydraulic equipment: elevated work platforms, cranes, excavators or bulldozers. Larger buildings may require the use of a wrecking ball, a heavy weight on a cable that is swung by a crane into the side of the buildings. Wrecking balls are especially effective against masonry, but are less easily controlled and often less efficient than other methods. Newer methods may use rotational hydraulic shears and silenced rock-breakers attached to excavators to cut or break thro ...
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Historic American Engineering Record
Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) is a division of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) responsible for administering the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). These programs were established to document historic places in the United States. Records consist of measured drawings, archival photographs, and written reports, and are archived in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. Historic American Buildings Survey In 1933, NPS established the Historic American Buildings Survey following a proposal by Charles E. Peterson, a young landscape architect in the agency. It was founded as a constructive make-work program for architects, draftsmen and photographers left jobless by the Great Depression. It was supported through the Historic Sites Act of 1935. Guided by field instructions from Washington, D.C., the first HABS recorders were tasked with docume ...
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Colorado Labor Wars
The Colorado Labor Wars were a series of labor strikes in 1903 and 1904 in the U.S. state of Colorado, by gold and silver miners and mill workers represented by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). Opposing the WFM were associations of mine owners and businessmen at each location, supported by the Colorado state government. The strikes were notable and controversial for the accompanying violence, and the imposition of martial law by the Colorado National Guard in order to put down the strikes. A nearly simultaneous strike in Colorado's northern and southern coal fields was also met with a military response by the Colorado National Guard. Colorado's most significant battles between labor and capital occurred between miners and mine operators. In these battles the state government, with one exception, sided with the mine operators. Additional participants have included the National Guard, often informally called the militia; private contractors such as the Pinkertons, Ba ...
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William Jackson Palmer
William Jackson Palmer (September 18, 1836 – March 13, 1909) was an American civil engineer, veteran of the Civil War, industrialist, and philanthropist. During the American Civil War, he was promoted to brevet brigadier general and received a Medal of Honor for his actions. In his early career, Palmer helped develop the expanding railroads of the United States in Pennsylvania; this was interrupted by the American Civil War. He served in colorful fashion as a Union Army cavalry Colonel and was appointed to the brevet grade of Brigadier General. After the war, he contributed financially to educational efforts for the freed former slaves of the South. Heading west in 1867, Palmer helped build the Kansas Pacific Railway. He befriended a young English doctor, Dr. William Abraham Bell, who became his partner in most of his business ventures. Generally Palmer took the role of president with Bell as vice president. The two men are best known as co-founders of the Denver and Rio ...
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Denver And Rio Grande Western Railroad
The Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad , often shortened to ''Rio Grande'', D&RG or D&RGW, formerly the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, was an American Class I railroad company. The railroad started as a narrow-gauge line running south from Denver, Colorado, in 1870. It served mainly as a transcontinental bridge line between Denver, and Salt Lake City, Utah. The Rio Grande was also a major origin of coal and mineral traffic. The Rio Grande was the epitome of mountain railroading, with a motto of ''Through the Rockies, not around them'' and later ''Main line through the Rockies'', both referring to the Rocky Mountains. The D&RGW operated the highest mainline rail line in the United States, over the Tennessee Pass in Colorado, and the famed routes through the Moffat Tunnel and the Royal Gorge. At its height, in 1889, the D&RGW had the largest narrow-gauge railroad network in North America with of track interconnecting the states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. Known for ...
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Eureka, Nevada
Eureka is an unincorporated town and census-designated places in and the county seat of Eureka County, Nevada, United States. Reprint. Originally published: San Francisco : H. Keller, 1879. With a population of 480 as of the 2018 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, it is by far the largest community in Eureka County. Attractions include the Eureka Opera House (built in 1880 and restored in 1993), Raine’s Market and Wildlife Museum (built 1887), the Jackson House Hotel (built 1877), and the Eureka Sentinel Museum (housed in the 1879 ''Eureka Sentinel'' Newspaper Building). Eureka is part of the Elko Micropolitan Statistical Area. Demographics Geography and climate Eureka is located at , in the southern part of Eureka County, at in the Diamond Mountains, in a draw on the southern end of Diamond Valley, between Antelope and Newark valleys. At the 2018 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, the population of the census-designated place of Eureka was 480, while t ...
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Silverton, Colorado
Silverton is a statutory town that is the county seat, the most populous community, and the only incorporated municipality in San Juan County, Colorado, United States. The town is located in a remote part of the western San Juan Mountains, a range of the Rocky Mountains. The first mining claims were made in mountains above the Silverton in 1860, near the end of the Colorado Gold Rush and when the land was still controlled by the Utes. Silverton was established shortly after the Utes ceded the region in the 1873 Brunot Agreement, and the town boomed from silver mining until the Panic of 1893 led to a collapse of the silver market, and boomed again from gold mining until the recession caused by the Panic of 1907. The entire town is included as a federally designated National Historic Landmark District, the Silverton Historic District. Originally called "Bakers Park", Silverton sits in a flat area of the Animas River valley and is surrounded by steep peaks. Most of the peaks sur ...
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