Telluride

About Telluride

Telluride is the county seat and most populous town of San Miguel County. As of the census of 2020, there were 2,607 people living in Telluride. It is located at an elevation of 8,750 feet (2,670 meters) in an isolated spot in Southwest Colorado. The town is a former silver mining camp on the San Miguel River in the western San Juan Mountains. Telluride sits in a box canyon, with Bridal Veil Falls (Colorado’s tallest free-falling waterfall, plunging 365 feet/111 meters) being situated at the head of the canyon. Known today for its ski resort, as well as an extensive festival schedule during the summer. The town’s historic district houses landmarks like the Sheridan Opera House, a performing-arts venue originally built in 1913, and the Telluride Historical Museum, which showcases local history in a converted hospital built in 1896. Telluride was a dying town in the 1960s, with mining it’s only industry until 1972 when the first ski lift was installed by the Telluride Ski Resort. After that, everything started to change. Mining families were replaced by what locals referred to as “hippies”, young people with a 1960s counter culture view that often clashed with the values of Telluride’s old-timers. My wife, kids and I were among such people who moved there, yet we got along fine with the old-timers we got to know. Many of the newcomers were drawn to the town for a casual lifestyle and outdoor excitements such as hang gliding, hiking, mountain climbing, and kayaking. Some of the new population opposed town growth and economic expansion, including growth due to tourism and even skiing. But the town’s new music and film festivals were a major success. In turn, the festivals brought in even more newcomers in time, thousands by the 1990s, including elite entertainers who moved into town. I recall many folks saying often “We don’t want Telluride to become like Aspen”, but as early as the mid to late 1980s, that’s what was happening and by then there was mainly only poor people and the super rich living there, as most of us newcomers of the ’70s, moved away. Today, Telluride is noted as being both the third and fourth most expensive towns in the Colorado to live in, thanks to the startup of the nearby Mountain Village, in the mid 1980s. Telluride sees a lot of snow, on average 200 inches of snow falls there each year up on the ski area above town. The town is officially noted as having a humid continental climate. The coldest month is January, with a average daytime temperature of 18.2 °F (−7.7 °C), and the hottest is July, averages 58.7°F (14.8°C). Telluride gets moderate precipitation all year due to its altitude, averaging 20.37 inches (517.4 mm) of water equivalent precipitation. In town, average snowfall is 131 inches (332 centimeters) annually. The coldest ever temperature was -34°F (−37°C) set on February 1, 1985 (I totally recall that morning!), but the surrounding high-altitude peaks experience far colder temperatures than the town itself, with a reported -45°F (-43°C) reading in 1937. The warmest temperature ever in Telluride was 94°F (34°C), reached on July 5, 1989. For the most snow, the record is 353 inches (897 centimeters) in a single season, set during the 2007-08 winter.