“The haze in the background of this July 1964 picture is dust which blew off the VCA tailings pile in such suffocating and blinding clouds motorists coming into Durango from the west turned on their headlights. The Herald received a series of calls from Durangoans who were annoyed and alarmed as afternoon winds lifted the tailings into the air and blew them around town.”
“The haze in the background of this July 1964 picture is dust which blew off the VCA tailings pile in such suffocating and blinding clouds motorists coming into Durango from the west turned on their headlights. The Herald received a series of calls from Durangoans who were annoyed and alarmed as afternoon winds lifted the tailings into the air and blew them around town.”Durango Herald file photo

75 years ago: “Durango will be one of the stops on a 1,000-mile tour of southwestern national parks and monuments in October.”

50 years ago: “Vehicle and fisherman traffic across the dam and on the east side of Haviland Lake will be shut off. The shut-down is necessary because construction will begin on roads to the 34 unit camping area which the San Juan National Forest is developing at the lake.”

25 years ago: “The La Plata Community Hospital board voted to lease the hospital to Brim & Associates Inc., killing any hope of consolidating community health-care services. The vote turns the 28-year-old public hospital over to a private, nonprofit company, which has promised to expand the hospital’s specialty services while maintaining a small core of medical and surgical beds.”

Most items in this column are taken from Herald archives, Center of Southwest Studies and Animas Museum. Their accuracy may not be verified.