Durango Southwest Colorado

“What's that smell?” she asked one crisp fall morning standing on a corner in historic downtown Durango as the world-renowned Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, laden with giddy tourists bound north into the rugged fold of the spectacular San Juan Mountains, chugged by. With a toot of its horn that woke the guests at the Strater and Palmer hotels, Old Ironsides belched a thick, black column of smoke and coal cinders that stuck to the roof of my mouth and clogged my nostrils with a 19th century industrial stench, which, like the earthy aroma of horse manure, some people grow fond of. “Money,” I said, holding a copy of “Chasing Sovereignty” in one hand, and with the other waving to Mabel and her camera peering out of the yellow box car that rolled past in a noisy procession that has been huffing and puffing, back and forth and up and down the verdant Animas River Valley for 130 years and counting. “Lots and lots of money.”