A Memorial to Wolfie

This is a photograph I took high up in the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado. The town down in the valley is called Silverton. It has an elevation of over 9,300 feet (2,800 m) above sea level and an estimated population of around 630 people. It is the terminus of the Durango-Silverton Railroad which use to be used for mining but now is used exclusively for tourist.

Silverton gets about 13-feet of snow every year and is often cut off from the rest of the world because the only paved road to the town is the Million Dollar Highway (US Highway 550) with the Red Mountain Pass to the north and Coal Bank Pass to the south and both passes can become impassable during the winter.

I posted this photograph because I just found out that the town's mascot "Wolfie" had died. It has been more than a year but I just found out yesterday while looking for an old newspaper article in the Durango Herald about a bear that had broken into someone's garage.

Anyway, Wolfie was a feral wolf-dog hybrid that had been adopted by the town and lived in harmony with the town folk and their pets for nearly eleven years. I guess in many ways he represents that spirit in me where as I can live in the middle of a big city but would prefer to be out somewhere in the wild.

Here is a photograph of Wolfie I got from the article in the Durango Herald and a link to the article about his death.

https://durangoherald.com/articles/91318-silvertons-resident-wolfdog-dies#slide=0

Here is another photograph of Silverton that I took during one of my many trips through the mountains.