[OUR EXHIBITS]

Our mission is to preserve and promote the rich and colorful history of the region. We bring history to life through interactive exhibits, programming and outreach.

Study the geology of the region, the area's Native American Ute, the discovery of gold and silver, the growth of the mining town, the hardships of the miners and their families, the arrival of the railroad and the diversity that has kept
Telluride alive through thick and thin.

You'll have an opportunity to study early technologies of precious metal extraction and the dangers of hard rock mining.

Learn how miners organized in an effort to share in mining profits and how management's harsh response led to labor strikes, murder and intrigue.

Hear about how the arrival of the Rio
Grande Southern Railroad changed the face of an otherwise rugged and
gritty western mining town.

Explore the innovations necessary for the people of a remote town in the San Juan Mountains to prosper. Discover how creative minds managed to find other ways to keep the region's economy going when mining profits began to dry up and the town began to fade away.

In short, the people, events and
history of Telluride reflect the innovations, tenacity and
enduring human spirit
in us all.

[THE TELLURIDE BLANKET]

A near-perfect cotton blanket from the Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) culture arrived in Telluride during the 19th century. But its origins and discovery lay shrouded in mystery until “reverse archeology” scholarship restored its story.

Ranchers Mel and Ed Turner discovered the blanket in a Utah cliff dwelling while chasing stray cattle about 1896. Mel Turner later gave it to Telluride banker W.E. Wheeler, perhaps as payment of a debt. From Wheeler’s death in 1935, until 1970 when it came to the Telluride Historical Society inside a leather trunk, the blanket’s age and importance went unrecognized.

An old photograph (also found in the trunk) showed the remains of an ancient village, while radiocarbon dated the blanket to between AD 1041 and 1272. The photograph was published and its location eventually identified. Subsequent exploration of the site revealed the inscriptions “E. Turner” and “Mel Turner,” suggesting that the Turners had found the blanket there.

[OUTDOOR EXHIBIT: HARD ROCKS, ROUGH LIVES]