One of the many Red Mountain Mining District towns, Guston, Colorado, was located at Champion Gulch’s foot on the Silverton Railroad line. The mining camp began as a scattering of buildings around several mines, including the Guston, Robinson, Genesee, Vanderbilt, and the famous Yankee Girl.

Prospectors John Robinson, A. Meldrum, A.E. Long, and A. Deitlaf found the first ore in the summer of 1881. They called their claim the Guston Mine but felt the surface ore was not valuable enough to warrant shipping to market. That changed the following year when D.C. Hartwell, an agent for the Pueblo Smelting and Refining Company in Ouray, convinced them to develop the Guston.

In August 1882, while hunting game in the valley below Red Mountain Pass, John Robinson found a large chunk of lead and silver ore about 300 yards from the Guston Mine. With several partners, he soon claimed the Robinson, Yankee Girl, and Orphan Boy Mines.

The partners quickly dug out 4,500 pounds of ore and took it by pack train to a smelter in Ouray. The ore yielded 88 ounces of silver per ton. Just a month later, when the partners had dug the Yankee Girl shaft only about 20 feet deep, they sold it for $125,000 (worth more than $3 million today) and used the profits to finance the development of their other claims. The Orphan Boy and Robinson Mines became good silver producers, but the Yankee Girl would generate more profitable ore for longer.

The Yankee Girl quickly drew public attention, and the boom began in the Red Mountain District.

Jasper Brown and Adelbert Parsell also discovered the Genesee Mine in 1882. It would later merge with the Vanderbilt Mine in 1889.

A camp was formed around the mines, and the name Missouri City was proposed in 1883. Instead, the camp was named Guston after the district’s first mine. An official town was never laid out, nor was there ever a defined business district. Instead, people built businesses and homes wherever there was space.

In 1883, the Yankee Girl was joined with the Robinson and Orphan Boy mines by interconnecting tunnels. Eventually, these tunnels reached 25 miles in length. A boarding house was constructed at the Yankee Girl for all miners.

In August 1884, T.E. Schwarts, a prominent mining engineer, became superintendent of the Yankee Girl Mine, which had been opened only to a depth of 100 feet. Over the next five years, he developed it to a depth of about 1,000 feet, erected a sizeable hoisting plant, and made surface improvements. Under his direction, the mine became so profitable that the company could pay dividends of nearly $1,000,000. He also developed the adjoining Robinson Mine to the point of productiveness. In 1888, he also began to manage the Guston Mine and made it productive, operating with a net profit of $400,000 while he was in charge.

With this increased productivity, the Guston mining camp grew to a population of about 300 and boasted most of the amenities of a burgeoning town, including a schoolhouse.

During this time, the Yankee Girl Mine produced ten tons of ore daily, and a train of 75 mules carried 250 pounds of ore South to the railroad in Silverton.

In 1889, the Silverton Railroad was completed from Silverton over Red Mountain Pass through Red Mountain Town, Guston, and Ironton. The railroad dramatically reduced ore shipping costs, making the mines more profitable. A depot was built here, and though it was little more than a small passenger shelter, it was the only depot on Red Mountain.

In the summer of 1891, the Home Missionary Board of the Congregational Church sent the Reverend William Davis from Denver to the Red Mountain District to establish a house of worship. Davis first traveled to Red Mountain Town, the district’s largest community. However, residents had no interest in a church, mainly because saloon and brothel owners thought it would hurt business.

However, when Reverend Davis approached Guston’s mining camp about a mile North, he got a different response. They welcomed him, and one of the mine owners gave him a small plot of land to build a church and a cabin for his family. The community pitched in, raising $300 for the church, and donated lumber. Davis, a carpenter in his younger years, built the church with area residents. The church opened in 1892, and on the day it was dedicated, the business district at Red Mountain Town burned to the ground, prompting Reverend Davis to say: “You can’t fight God and prosper.”

The church didn’t have a bell at first, so the mining company piped compressed air to a whistle in a little cupola. Later, the miners insisted on a bell and raised the money, so they added a belfry to the small church. It was the only church established in the Red Mountain Mining District. The small church survived several fires and still stood in 1945, but all traces are gone today.

Though the “town” of Guston had the usual amenities, it lacked a post office for many years. It finally gained one on January 26, 1892. But it was a little too late for the community, as it began to decline almost immediately a year later with the Silver Panic of 1893. Most of the mines were closed then, and others consolidated as other metals were mined. Guston’s post office closed in November 1898.

Ironically, mining activity picked up again in 1898, when gold was discovered in nearly the same ores as silver, and many of the mines, including the Yankee Girl, American Girl, Colorado Boy, Treasury, Genesee-Vanderbilt, and others, reopened. Some of these mines did well for the next few decades, but Guston’s mining camp was already abandoned.

The Yankee Girl Mine produced $8,000,000 in silver, copper, and gold ore in its lifetime.

In 1904, the Joker Tunnel project undercuts the Genesee-Vanderbilt, Yankee Girl, Robinson, and Guston mines. By 1907, the tunnel was nearly a mile long and intersected the mine workings 600 feet below the surface. The tunnel drained the mines of the water that had caused their closure. This last-ditch effort continued to produce ore until 1914, when they closed the tunnel.

Today, all traces of the town of Guston are gone, but the headframe of the Yankee Girl Mine and a few remains of the Guston-Robinson Mine still stand. The Yankee Girl Mine remains are among the most photographed sites in Colorado.

The old town and its mines are about 11 miles South of Ouray. You can see them along County Road 31, off the Million Dollar Highway (U.S. 550), as it winds through the Red Mountain Mining District.

 

©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated September 2026.

Also See:

Colorado Ghost Towns & Mining Camps

Million Dollar Highway

Ouray – Switzerland of America

Red Mountain Mining District

Sources:

4×4 Explore
Hall, Frank; History of the State of Colorado, Blakely Print Co., 1895
The San Juans
U.S. Forest Service