Dear Action Line,
Pray tell, what are these old structures behind the east end of the Holiday Inn parking lot on 160 as one leaves Durango going west? I’m thinking mini Stonehenge monuments like in the ’80s “Spinal Tap” movie?
– Regards, Sightseer
Dear Sightseer,
Funny you should write in about this, Sightseer – Ms. Action Line (my better half) was just asking about this – and it’s her birthday today!
I reached out to Robert McDaniel, former director at the Animas Museum, and he told me that there was a coal mine up on that side of Animas Mountain that would feed coke ovens at the bottom. As recently recounted in a Herald story about the Redstone coke ovens that have been preserved (Dec. 26), “coke” in this sense has nothing to do with soft drinks, but is the result of heating coal to 2,000 degrees in an oxygen-deprived environment, producing carbon-rich “coke” necessary to manufacturing steel and smelting ore.
There were coke ovens at the bottom of the hill, and a funicular cableway carried the coal down to the ovens.
As McDaniel explains, “the coal tipple received car loads of coal from the funicular rail system (see pics). The coal was then sent down the chute to gondola rail cars at trackside and delivered the short distance to the coke ovens. Apparently, the whole system – coal mine, funicular, tipple, etc., was owned by the American Smelting and Refining Co. Trouble is, nowhere can you see the stone piers! I’m sure they anchored the supports for the coal chute, but you can’t see them.”
What’s a “tipple”? It’s a large structure with a chute used to “tip” coal into rail cars or trucks for transport.
As for what the coke was used for, it was conveyed to the smelter that was located to the east where the dog park is now to smelt hard-rock minerals like gold, silver, copper and lead (it wasn’t until the 1940s-’60s that uranium and vanadium were processed there). All that remains at the bottom are the stone piers from the tipple – the coke ovens are gone. But apparently, the dismantled oven stones were repurposed to build Sacred Heart church in the 1930s.
Email questions and suggestions to actionline@durangoherald.com or mail them to Action Line, The Durango Herald, 1275 Main Ave., Durango, CO 81301. Today’s Fun Fact: When you might have been tippling on New Year’s Eve, were you borrowing the term from coal mining? Turns out not, as the term “tippler” goes back 600 years and initially meant a retailer of liquor or an alehouse keeper. But maybe those who named the coal tippler actually borrowed the term from drinking, as in something that tips back coal like a drinker? Sources can’t confirm, but given the lore of the habits of coal miners of yore I wouldn’t be surprised.
