Those who journey to Durango, Colorado today most likely want to spend their time skiing or hiking, but the area has a rich history to explore as well. Shortly after the railways founded the city in 1880 Durango received its name from Colorado territorial governor A.C. Hunt, who found that the area reminded him of the city of Durango, Mexico. The word “Durango” originated from a Basque word meaning “water town.” The name fits the city as the Animas River flows through its center.

In the late nineteenth century the population of Durango experienced a boom due to the establishment of the mining industry. John Porter established a smelter in the city in order to extract minerals from the surrounding landscape, a maneuver that proved profitable for him as well as the area. The excitement of the boom town translated into the development of saloons, however, the town organized a government to counter the lawlessness and efforts were even made to make Durango the capital of Colorado.

The smelter used in the late nineteenth century became a base of operations for the Manhattan Engineering Department in the mid-twentieth century. The department revitalized the location, and brought in an outside company to facilitate the operations of extracting uranium from the vanadium mill wastes. The department then used the uranium to manufacture uranium yellow cake for the production of nuclear devices. The discovery of the dangers of radioactivity from uranium did not occur until many years after its production in Durango, and in 1978 the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency began the process of removing hazardous materials from the city’s outlying regions.