Silverton Historic District

Author's Comments

Silverton sits in a bowl of mountains, and the first thing you notice when you arrive is that the peaks are not behind the town so much as around it, on every side, leaning in. The Victorian storefronts on Greene Street are painted in colors that would feel almost too much in a flatter landscape and feel exactly right here, against all that gray stone and high-altitude sky. The photograph I keep trying to make is the long view down Greene Street with the mountains rising at the end of it. It is harder than it looks. Mid-day flattens everything and the train brings a steady current of visitors from late morning until afternoon. I have learned to be there before seven, when the street is genuinely empty and the light is just beginning to come over the eastern ridge. The colors of the buildings hold better in soft light than in full sun. September is my season. The aspen on the surrounding slopes turn while the town is still accessible, and the contrast of yellow hillsides against painted clapboard is a gift. Winter is the other argument. Snow piles on the false fronts and the awnings, the streets go quiet in a way that summer never allows, and the Grand Imperial looks like something from a painting you half-remember. Work in close as well as wide. The hardware on the doors, the hand-painted signs, the way the porch posts have weathered through a hundred and forty winters. The town rewards a slow walk more than a sweep. Stay the night if you can. The light at 9,318 feet does things in the last twenty minutes before sunset that no amount of post-processing will replicate.

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