Ouray

We leave the kids with the grand-parents and split for Ouray which is in the San Juan Mountains and 40 miles south of Montrose. Ouray's rocky splendor and mineral hot springs offered mystic healings for the Ute Indians who lived in southwest Colorado for 1000s of years. Then the white man arrived in the 1840s in search of San Francisco and gold. Ouray's inhospitable terrain was not colonised until the discovery of ore and silver in the 1860s and in 1877, the Chief Ute Ouray was forced to sign papers turning over the land otherwise shared peacefully in and outside his tribe. In 1887, the Denver & Rio Grande Railway arrived and the town grew to 2,600. Within five years, however, silver's value crashed and the town would have disappeared - if not for Tom Walsh, who discovered gold. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Sonnet and I stay at the recently redone Beaumont Hotel, which was built in 1886 and hosted Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Hoover. We are up in time for a morning hike along the Uncompaghre then head to the Hot Springs for a 5-star message and spiritual soak.

I learn that in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged the protagonist's secret headquarters in "Galt's Gulch" was inspired by Ouray.