Silverton

About Silverton

The Town of Silverton was established on September 15, 1874, and is the county seat of, and the only incorporated municipality in San Juan County, Colorado. Silverton is a former silver mining camp, most or all of which is now included in the federally designated Silverton Historic District. Silverton is one of the highest towns in elevation in the United States, at 9,318 feet (2,836 meters) above sea level. The town’s population reached its low point of only 531 people in the U.S. Census 2000. In 2022, it was reported that it’s population rebounded a bit, to 713 people. 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 surrounding Silverton are thirteeners. But the town is less than 15 miles from 7 of Colorado’s 53 fourteeners, too, and is known as one of the premier gateways into the Colorado backcountry. Silverton has an alpine subarctic climate with very cold, snowy winters and cool to warm summers with adequate precipitation year-round. The warmest temperature ever recorded here was actually very hot for a mountain town so high in elevation, when the thermometer reached 96°F / 36°C, on June 26, 1929. The coldest ever reading was -39°F / -39.4°C on February 1, 1985. Silverton sees a lot of snow, with its average being around 180 inches / 457.2 centimeters of snowfall per snow season, with the most snow in a single snow season being 550 inches / 1,397 centimeters, set back in the winter of 2007-2008.