The La Plata Mountains are a small subrange of the San Juan Mountains in the southwestern part of Colorado , United States . They are located on the border between Montezuma and La Plata counties, about 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Durango . Their name is Spanish for silver .
4-594: The Colorado Mineral Belt (CMB) is an area of ore deposits from the La Plata Mountains in Southwestern Colorado to near the middle of the state at Boulder, Colorado , and from which over 25 million troy ounces (778 t) of gold were extracted beginning in 1858. The belt is a "northeast-striking zone defined by: a Proterozoic shear zone system (McCoy, 2001); a suite of Laramide -aged plutons and related ore deposits ( Tweto and Sims, 1963 );
8-460: A major gravity low (Isaacson and Smithson, 1976); low- crustal velocities ; and high heat flow (Decker et al., 1988)." Mining districts include: [2] The belt lies within a zone that has been geologically active at intervals beginning from near the time of crustal accretion in central Colorado at least 1.6 billion years ago until the present. Parts of the CMB follow shear zones of Precambrian age and
12-521: The Paleozoic and Mesozoic . Igneous rocks intruded about 60 to 70 million years ago during the Laramide orogeny are associated with the belt and once were thought to be responsible for most of the ore deposits. Now many of the important ore deposits are thought to be genetically related to younger magmatism, some at least as young as about 25 million years. La Plata Mountains The peaks of
16-642: The range are easily visible from U.S. Route 160 , which skirts the range on the south. The La Plata River and the Mancos River have their headwaters in the range. The Colorado Trail accesses even towards the northern peaks. The best-known and highest peak in the La Plata Mountains is Hesperus Mountain , which is the Navajo sacred mountain of the north. The seven highest summits are listed below. This Colorado state location article
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