[1] The mine's surface facilities are located in a 9.7-acre (3.9 ha) area enclosed by a chainlink fence off Smuggler Mountain Road (Pitkin County Route 21), on the northeast fringe of Aspen just outside city limits.

Directly to the west, with some open space between them and Silverlode, are two rows of attached condominium-style units on Free Silver Court and Nicholas Lane.

On the southwest, across Park Circle, are seven tennis courts, buffering a densely developed residential area on their west.

A two-lane road curves around to the north to climb to a small complex of buildings uphill near a smaller tailings pile.

[4] Although prospectors were aware very early of Smuggler's potential, they were unable to fully exploit it for a variety of reasons until the late 1880s.

In the late 1870s, shortly after Colorado became a state, prospectors began crossing the Continental Divide at Independence Pass in search of silver deposits in the Roaring Fork Valley.

Many set up their tents about ten miles (16 km) below the pass at the confluence of the Roaring Fork and its tributary Castle Creek, the first area they found suitable for large-scale settlement.

It was called Ute City at first for the dominant local Native American tribe, but the prevalence of aspen trees in the forests soon gave it the name it has had ever since.

[5] The first prospectors to find Smuggler, Edward Fuller and Con Allbright, are believed to have sold the claim very soon afterwards for necessary supplies.

A variant has it that another, unnamed prospector discovered Smuggler while hunting deer when an errant shot revealed silver inside a rock he struck, and he sold the claim the next day for $50 and the ill-fated mule.

One report says his party came across the claim around that same time, June 1879, and found it abandoned (which would suggest that prospectors were exploring the valley earlier than is commonly accepted today).

They subdivided it, named the streets after themselves and sold the lots for $10 ($320 in modern dollars[7]), an event which brought the city of Aspen into existence.

No relation to Hyman's former partner, Wheeler, at the time co-chairman of Macy's, had discovered Aspen and its opportunities in 1883, when he moved to Manitou Springs for his wife's health.

In the late 1880s, Hyman and Wheeler sued each other over which of them owned the greater rights to the Smuggler node, a legal battle, which captivated the boomtown while tying up money that would otherwise have been used to develop the mines.

[9] Their legal differences aside, Hyman and Wheeler collaborated to bring the railroads to Aspen, increasing the value of their holdings and their profits, later in the decade.

[2] The mines also produced lead and zinc, as well as the coal that heated and lit the city in wintertime, at the price of covering it with a sulfurous haze.

[1] The price of silver began to rise slightly in 1895, due to China's agreement to pay its reparations for the First Sino-Japanese War in that metal, at an amount larger than it was expected would be available on the international markets.

The miners who had remained from the boom years were more solidly established in the community, and had an incentive to keep what had become Aspen's largest employer running.

The period since the boom's end in 1893 had become known as "the quiet years"; with Smuggler shut down, the 1920s, prosperous in much of the rest of the country, became quieter still.

In the late 1930s, some leftover mining equipment had been used to create the first primitive ski lift up crude trails on Aspen Mountain across the valley.

[21] Timber taken from the demolished 1885 Kit Carson stage stop in the city was used to build the wooden shop at the top of the lower pile.

[25] In 1986, over the strenuous objection of many local residents,[26] it added the mine and mountain to its National Priorities List (NPL), making it eligible for cleanup under the Superfund program.

[22] Despite the ongoing cleanup efforts, in which the EPA eventually removed soil from the area, Albouy was able to restore the mine to functionality, but he and his partners struggled financially.

[22] Thirteen years later, in 2012, Parker and Preusch were forced by the majority of shareholders to put the mine up for sale, listing it with Sotheby's for $9.5 million.

A new owner has the option of continuing to operate the mine, which is estimated to contain 890,000 pounds (400,000 kg) of recoverable silver, or shutting it down for good.