Baker and six companions made their way down the Arkansas River, over Poncha Pass, through the San Luis Valley, up the Rio Grande River, over Stony Pass, and down into the valley of the Animas River. Here they found a large park extending from just below Silverton, up past Howardsville to just beyond Eureka. They forthwith named it Baker’s Park. They also found some placer gold which would yield about twenty-five cents to the pan. This seemed encouraging enough for others to follow, and a settlement was established, called Baker City (now Silverton). Their diggings and some brush shanties were nine miles above at what was later Eureka. But the placer gold proved disappointing. Baker spent one terrible winter in his park and remained for the summer of 1861. Then he retreated to Fort Garland rather than attempt the hardship of a second winter. Here he heard about the Civil War and went home to Virginia to enlist in the Confederate army. Years went by. Finally in 1874 Henry Gannett, leader of a detachment of the famous F. V. Hayden Geological Survey party, came down the Animas River, climbed over an enormous rockslide and “came out into a thick clump of trees in which were several log cabins, bearing on a flaring sign board ‘Eureka,’ evidently intended for the name of a town that was expected to be, though what had been found there to suggest the name was not immediately apparent.” What was not apparent to Henry Gannett was the Sunnyside mine. It was staked in 1873 and had gathered around itself the cabins he encountered. The mine was so rich in gold that it operated continuously until 1931. Despite the richness of the Sunnyside, Eureka attained no greater rating in the Colorado Business Directory than “a small mining camp in the San Juans” until 1896 when Otto Mears’ railroad, the Silverton Northern, was completed, and more people moved in for a time. Again there was a boom period in 1918 when the Sunnyside mill was rebuilt, and a large crew was hired. Eureka’s population rose to two hundred and fifty. Until 1931 no great change occurred. Then for six years, from 1931 to 1937, it was a ghost town. When the mine and mill re-opened in 1937, Eureka had about two years of new life only to die again because of a strike by the miners which the owners refused to settle. Again people moved away, and finally the Silverton Northern was sold and junked in 1942. By 1960 the town was almost leveled—and its unique jail towered alone—one of the most unusual buildings in Colorado. This odd jail gives Eureka its quality of uniqueness....