Placerville to Naturita via Norwood Hill

TravelerPlacerville was originally established as a small mining camp, named after the placer gold mines located on the San Miguel River and Leopard Creek. The location became known as Old Placerville after the Rio Grande Southern Railroad constructed a depot and several passing sidings west of the original settlement, calling it Placerville. A. B. Frenzel discovered vanadium-bearing sandstone near Placerville in the late 1890s. The ore was in strataform bodies in the Entrada Sandstone (Jurassic) east of the town. The principal mineral was roscoelite, with minor montroseite and carnotite. By the fall of 1899, development was described as "of the most superficial character," although Frenzel had driven one tunnel 18 feet into the rock.[5] By 1901-1902, Frenzel was excavating several thousand tons intended for shipment to Europe.[6] Most of the Placerville ore was less than 3% vanadium, too low grade to pay for shipment to Europe, so in 1905 the Vanadium Alloys Co. built an ore-processing mill southeast of Placerville to recover the metal as ferro-vanadium, which it sold.[7] At least five mines were active at one time, and by 1919 the two ore mills at Placerville were producing 30% of the world's vanadium.[8] Through 1940, the mines produced about 3.7 million pounds of vanadium. The Placerville Schoolhouse, a one-room schoolhouse, operated from 1908 to 1960. In 1909, the failure of the Trout Lake Dam caused the flooding of Placerville as well as Sawpit and Newmire. Although carnotite was recognized as a minor constituent of the ore since its discovery, the amount was small, and no assays were made of the uranium content of the ore until World War II. Beginning about 1950, the small uranium content of the ore was also recovered from the ore.

TravelerThe post office in Naturita was opened on October 21, 1881, under the name "Chipeta"; the name was changed to Naturita September 15, 1882, and has used that name since then. Naturita is a name derived from Spanish meaning "little nature".

TravelerLots of bikes! Did you encounter other riders on the road?