The old Mayflower Gold Mill above Silverton, Colorado. The mill, which today (in 2015) offers seasonal tours, began to take shape in the summer of 1925 as the dream of Charles A. Chase, who was a successful mine manager at the Liberty Bell Mine near Telluride, Colorado. The latest industrial equipment was employed in its construction, including the innovative steam shovel and dump trucks. Aware of the short mountain summer, builders of the mill completed work in six months. The Mayflower Mill would become the longest-running mill in the history of the San Juan Mountains. In its 61 year milling career from 1930 to 1991, it extracted an 9,700,500 tons of rock, produced 1,940,100 ounces of gold; 30 million ounces of silver; and 1 million tons of combined base metals -- a remarkable record for hard rock mining in the 'old' techniques seldom employed in the later mining world. Photo by Carol Highsmith.