Bachelor Syracuse Mine Tour

The Bachelor Syracuse Mine is an operating mine-turned-tourist-attraction on the mountain above Ouray, reached by a narrow switchback road 4 kilometers north of town. Tours enter the actual mine tunnel in an ore cart pulled by a small electric locomotive, going about 500 meters into the mountain before dismounting for a walking tour of the ore-processing area.

The guides are former miners, and the tours have a different character from sanitized historical exhibits — the explanations of ore extraction, the dust, the equipment, and the conditions are delivered by people with direct experience of what industrial mining involves. The mine sits at about 2,700 meters and the tunnel is cold year-round (about 5°C inside regardless of the outside temperature), so bring a layer. The road to the mine is suitable for ordinary cars in summer; call ahead in early spring and late fall to confirm conditions.

things to do museum sight
A story
The Bachelor Syracuse Mine produced silver and gold from 1884 until 1984 — exactly a century of operations. At its peak in the 1890s, miners drove mules into the tunnels to haul ore cars; the animals lived underground for years at a time, hauled down into the mine as foals and emerging blinded by the daylight when they were finally brought up for replacement. The mine employed hundreds of men from Cornish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrant communities.