Unlike the mining camps perched higher on Red Mountain, Ironton sat on relatively flat ground about 1,500 feet lower below Guston and Red Mountain Town. Its location made it an ideal supply, staging, and transportation center for the sounding mines. Ironton was becoming more than a mining camp. It was becoming a town.

More than a century ago, several hundred people made homes more than 10,000 feet above sea level in Colorado's San Juan Mountains. But Guston was different from the mining towns we're accustomed to imagining. There was no neat Main Street lined with stores and homes. The mines came first, and the community simply grew around them.

More than a century ago, hundreds of people climbed into Colorado's San Juan Mountains and tried to build a town at nearly 11,000 feet. Today my husband and I are taking our Jeep up the mountain to see what they left behind--and to answer the question I can't stop asking: Why would anyone choose to make a home here?