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Park City • At the southernmost end of Park City Mountain, the Town Lift ferries skiers and snowboarders from the restaurants and the shops selling fine art and furkinis to the slopes. Just to the north, the Payday Express serves as one of the primary arteries between the resort’s main base area and the upper mountain.

In between, cut through a thicket of pine trees, is the birthplace of ski competition in Park City.

The former site of the Creole Mine, built in 1875, is now a ski run by the same name. Yet shortly after the silver mine was abandoned in the 1920s — before Utah housed even a single chairlift — Norwegian Alf Engen constructed a ski jump atop the pile of waste rock that had been pulled from the mine. When mining eventually later waned, skiing stepped in to take its place as the town’s major economic driver.

Now, hikers and bikers — and, eventually, skiers — will be able to learn the history of the Creole site and more than 20 other historic mining structures through a free audio tour created by the Friends of Ski Mountain Mining History. The full self-guided Historic Mine Route can be experienced via a 7-mile hike or 10.5-mile mountain bike ride around Park City Mountain and through downtown Park City. Two shorter routes of less than 4 miles are also mapped out.

“It’s just been an incredible opportunity to combine the outdoor adventure that we love with the Western mining history — silver mining history — that Park City is known for,” said Coleen Logan, a spokesperson for the all-volunteer group.

Friends of Ski Mountain Mining History formed in 2015, following the collapse of the 85-foot-tall Daly West Mine head frame near the Montage Deer Valley hotel.

Mining structures weren’t built to last, Logan said, and it became clear then that if they weren’t restored, those visual reminders of Park City’s past would all soon crumble. In the decade since, the group, which is associated with the Park City Museum, has raised more than $5 million dollars and restored 15 structures that date back to the late 1800s.

Not all the refurbished structures are included in the tour, which also features a miner statue, the train depot and the childhood home of one-time Salt Lake Tribune publisher Jack Gallivan. However, the rehabilitated structures along the trail and their histories give a rich sense of what life was like in Park City during the mining boom, which began in 1868.

The Creole Mine ski jump, the forebear to the Ecker Hill jumps that drew athletes from around the world to what is now the Utah Olympic Park, is just one example — and perhaps not even the most interesting. The tour also leads to the Silver King Mine, which was one of the two most prosperous mines in the area. In today’s dollars, about $16 billion in silver ore was pulled from that mine’s 1,450-foot shaft, Logan said. Many of the Silver King’s miners lived in a complex on the mountain, which had almost everything they needed — even pigs.

Further down the mountain, tour followers will find a sturdy bunker that held the explosives used by the Daly-Judge Mining Company. The bunker was built after an explosives magazine stored in Daly West Mine ignited. Two people were killed in the explosion and another 32 were believed to have been killed by the gases it emitted, making it the deadliest mining accident in Park City history.

“What’s so cool about this historic mine route is that we now have a way to really properly frame and share the story and make an experience out of these iconic mining relics that have been there all along,” Logan said.

She added, “It takes some things that were already there, and we’ve layered on a story, and linked them with our free audio guide and the map.”

Hikers and bikers with the app can choose to have readings of the histories automatically triggered via GPS. Those preferring a more analog approach can pick up a map at the Park City Museum and skim 18 interpretive signs posted along the trail. The information on the app is also available at the Historic Mine Route website.