Written by Aiden Krueger, as part of his internship for the Aspen Historical Society in 2024, the paper provides insights into the history of Aspen and the economy of silver from the 1870s-1890s.

Introduction:

The development, boom, and eventual bust of Aspen, Colorado, is among the great mining tragedies in Western history. The town was built on silver, and with the collapse of silver’s value in 1893 thousands of people lost their work, lost their homes, and were forced to leave in search of new opportunities. The once booming Victorian haven tucked into the Roaring Fork Valley was left largely abandoned for the remaining people to pick apart for scraps. With hindsight, it can be seen that Aspen’s silver mining industry was bound to fail from the start. The major trading nations of Europe, Britain, France, and Germany, had all turned away from silver in favor of the gold standard in the mid-nineteenth century, leaving very few silver economies to utilize an ever-growing supply of the metal. The United States tried to follow suit in 1873 but failed because a large portion of the country had become increasingly reliant on cheap money provided by silver and the greenbacks of the Civil War. What ensued was over a decade of reactionary American monetary policy, trying to control rising inflation due to overprotective western silver mines like those in Aspen. While the original inhabitants of Aspen hoped their settlement would stand the test of time, the very land the town was built upon lost its value due to the global shift away from bimetallism.