Photo: Animas City 1897

In the center of this 1897 photo is the 32nd Street Bridge. Two buildings seen here still exist. The white building with a black roof and two vertical black window-type features in its middle is an old storage building in the alley, just to the south of north City Market. Its sandstone blocks are now covered with ivy. The “Joy Cabin” sits on the corner of Main Avenue and today’s 31st Street. It is visible along Main, just to the south of the previously mentioned building. Today, it is next to the Animas Museum at 31st Street and West Second Avenue – having been moved twice from its original location. The larger building at the bottom right was the 1880 version of the Animas School, located just east of the present location of the Animas Museum; Mountain Middle School is now in this location. Both the boys and girls outhouses are south across the schoolyard, near the photo’s edge. This photo as been attributed to both C.W. Cross and A.P. Spencer. One of them climbed Animas Mountain on a November day in 1897 and snapped this photograph.