Photograph by bigweasel. Cropped and color-corrected by Daniel Case prior to upload, CC BY 2.0. Via
Wikimedia Commons.
Smuggler Mine
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
From the record
“The Smuggler Mine is located on the slopes of Smuggler Mountain, on the north edge of Aspen, Colorado, United States. It is the oldest operating silver mine in the Aspen mining district, and one of the few still operating from Aspen's early boom years.”
Wikipedia article Smuggler Mine, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 38 National Register listings published here for Pitkin County · listed in 1987 · category: Site.
National Register reference number.87000194- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Fires near this property
32 since 1994
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 32 fires within 5 miles of Smuggler Mine
between 1994 and 2020, burning about 3 acres in total. 10 started naturally. None was recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
18
Natural
10
Recreation and ceremony
2
Equipment and vehicle use
1
Misuse of fire by a minor
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
160 workings within 5 miles of Smuggler Mine: 151 past producers, 5 producers, 3 occurrences, 1 unknown.
5 still produce. What was taken out: Silver, Lead, Silver, Lead, Zinc, Zinc. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Aspen, the town this property stands in, in 12 storm reports between 1997 and 2023: 4 lightning, 4 flash flood, 2 debris flow, 1 thunderstorm wind.
The reports record 1 death and 3 injuries. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
A family of five from Idaho were all struck by lightning while hiking on the American Lake Trail, about 9.5 miles south of Aspen. A 15-year-old girl was revived after being administered CPR. A 17-year-old boy was burned on the soles of his feet. The other three family members did not receive any significant injuries.
Heavy rain caused water and debris to flow down a normally dry drainage running through the Maroon Creek Day Use Area provided by the USFS. The water and debris average depth was 5 feet with a width of 30 feet. The flash flood hit the Maroon Creek Road and a trailhead parking lot where it spread out about 100 feet wide, clogging culverts and burying the road and day-use area under 1 to 2 feet of debris. Improved trails were destroyed and tons of debris had to be removed from the road and day-use area. Additionally, hailstones up to 1/2 inch diameter accompanied the heavy rain. There were people camping nearby in tents when the event occurred.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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