SACRED HEART (1948)

The Rio Grande Railroad, which built through this part of Garfield County along the Colorado River in 1889, named the town for its soil. Silt's Sacred Heart Church was established in 1948 as a mission tended by the pastor of St. Mary's in Rifle. The diminutive chapel is a former Rio Grande section bunkhouse on a cinderblock foundation. A tiny bell tower and cross as well as a "swamp cooler" have been added to this one-room chapel, which sits in a grassy field next to the new Silt Branch Library.