Santa Rita Park and the surrounding Animas River–Smelter Mountain corridor form one of Durango, Colorado’s most interesting combinations of recreation, history, and natural science. The 6.2-acre park lies along the Animas River on the south side of the city and provides direct access to the paved Animas River Trail as well as connections toward the nearby Smelter Mountain trail system. Visitors can use the area for walking, cycling, fishing, picnicking, river recreation, and other outdoor activities, while facilities include parking, restrooms, picnic areas, and recreational fields (City of Durango, n.d.). Because the river runs immediately beside the park, travelers can easily combine a visit with a walk along the river corridor or continue toward other sections of Durango’s extensive riverfront trail system.
One of Santa Rita Park’s most distinctive historical attractions is the restored Emma Sweeny, a full-size movie locomotive model associated with the 1950 Western A Ticket to Tomahawk. During filming in the Durango and Silverton region in 1949, the real Rio Grande Southern locomotive No. 20 portrayed Emma Sweeny for scenes requiring an operating locomotive, while a studio-built full-size model was used when the locomotive was shown away from railroad tracks. The model later appeared in other productions, including Petticoat Junction, before eventually being donated to the Durango Railroad Historical Society in 2011. The society restored it between 2011 and 2017 using surviving studio drawings, returning the locomotive to its colorful movie appearance and placing it on public display at Santa Rita Park (Durango Railroad Historical Society [DRHS], n.d.). The locomotive adds another layer to Durango’s long association with narrow-gauge railroading and with the film industry of the American West.
The landscape around Santa Rita Park also tells a much more complex industrial story. Smelter Mountain received its name from the metal-processing industry that developed along this portion of the Animas River, where a lead smelter operated before the site was later used for vanadium and uranium processing. During World War II, uranium recovered from vanadium-processing residues at the Durango site was supplied to the Manhattan Project, and uranium production later continued for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission until the facility permanently closed in 1963. Decades of processing left approximately 1.2 million cubic yards of radioactive mill tailings, which the U.S. Department of Energy subsequently removed during a major environmental cleanup; contaminated material was transferred to a disposal facility southwest of Durango (U.S. Department of Energy [DOE], n.d.). Today, the former industrial corridor and nearby recreational areas provide an unusual opportunity to consider how western mining, energy development, environmental remediation, and modern public open space have occupied the same landscape over time.
For science-minded visitors, the Animas River and Smelter Mountain reveal an especially rich geological and hydrological setting. Durango lies near the eastern margin of the Colorado Plateau and northern edge of the San Juan Basin, and the lower slopes of Smelter Mountain expose Late Cretaceous rocks including the Mancos Shale, Point Lookout Sandstone, and Menefee Formation. Along the river, gravel terraces and alluvial deposits also record episodes of Pleistocene glaciation in the San Juan Mountains, when glaciers and meltwater transported large quantities of sediment downstream toward present-day Durango (DOE, n.d.; U.S. Geological Survey [USGS], 2002). The Animas itself begins high in the San Juan Mountains and carries water, sediment, and dissolved minerals through a watershed shaped by volcanic geology, historic mining, erosion, and seasonal snowmelt. A long-running USGS monitoring station in Durango tracks variables such as discharge, water temperature, river stage, pH, and turbidity, making this river corridor not only a scenic travel destination but also an actively studied natural system (USGS, n.d.).
References:
City of Durango. (n.d.). Santa Rita Park.
City of Durango – Santa Rita Park
Durango Railroad Historical Society. (n.d.). Emma Sweeny.
Durango Railroad Historical Society – Emma Sweeny
U.S. Department of Energy. (n.d.). Atomic Legacy Discovery Guide: Colorado.
U.S. Department of Energy – Atomic Legacy Discovery Guide: Colorado
U.S. Geological Survey. (2002). Surficial geologic maps along the riparian zone of the Animas River and its headwater tributaries, Silverton to Durango, Colorado, with upper Animas River watershed gradient profiles.
U.S. Geological Survey – Animas River Surficial Geology
U.S. Geological Survey. (n.d.). Animas River at Durango, CO—USGS 09361500.
USGS Water Data – Animas River at Durango
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