Silverton, Colorado. Labor Day celebration. Burros loaded with ore sacks in the burro-loading contest

Photographs by Russel Lee (1903-1986), show a small mining town Silverton Labor Day celebration in 1940. Ticket seller, a parade with clowns, parked cars, crowds of spectators, high school band, miners, and burro-loading contest and power drilling contest for miners. The town of Silverton was a silver mining camp, most or all of which is now included in a federally designated National Historic Landmark District, the Silverton Historic District. A group of prospectors found traces of placer gold in the San Juan Mountains in 1860. In August 1873, George Howard and R.J. McNutt discovered the Sunnyside silver vein along Hurricane Peak. Gold was then discovered in 1882. The Sunnyside Mine was shut down after the 1929 stock market crash but was acquired by Standard Metals Corp.

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