GUSTON, Colo. - The skills he learned in London helping rebuild his family home - leveled by the Nazi blitz in World War II - made Chris George a likely bloke to save the head frame of the Yankee Girl mine, one of the richest veins of silver in the United States in the 1880s.

"The head frame hasn't been touched since they walked away from it," George said Wednesday as he showed a pair of visitors the structure that housed the machinery at the historic mine in Ouray County. "The main structure is as solid as they come, but we have to stabilize the foundation and get a roof on before snow flies."

Although restorative work began only last October, the Yankee Girl, which produced around $12 million of ore in 16 years of operation, hasn't suffered from lack of attention:

Frank Baumgartner, a retired oilman, burned two historic mining structures he owned in the area in 2003 and threatened to demolish five other historic structures, including the Yankee Girl.

A Paonia couple, Jim and Dee Ann Kopp, bought the Yankee Girl, Orphan Boy and Wilde mining claims from Baumgartner in 2005. The Kopps wanted the properties for a land swap with the Forest Service. When negotiations failed, the couple announced they would clear the land and torch the Yankee Girl head frame to build a house.

Last year, Montrose County Coroner Mark Young and his wife, Mary, paid $260,000 for the Kopps' three mining claims, a total of 23 acres. State tax credits and federal tax deductions will cover the cost.

Securing the future of the Yankee Girl was the cue for the entrance of George, who has been involved in the stabilization or restoration of 18 historical structures in the Red Mountain Mining District and a dozen historical structures in San Juan County since 1974.

George, born in Surrey County where the Magna Carta was signed, came to the U.S. in 1967 to work for Colorado Outward Bound. In 1973, he bought the St. Paul mining claim, located 1`BD miles from the Yankee Girl, and immediately converted its tipple house and head frame (the structures atop a mine shaft where ore cars are loaded) into the St. Paul Lodge, which caters to skiers.

George got a taste of the working world at a young age.

"In England, if you don't pass the (middle school-equivalent) exam at age 14, they kick you out, and you become a tradesman," he said. "I apprenticed as a chef in London - two years technical and five in the trade."

But instead of exercising his culinary skills, George, then 21 (he was toddler age during the Blitz), spent a year helping rebuild the family home.

"The War Damage Commission had put it together for us, but it was never the same," George said. "We reconstructed the house, which is how I got ideas about how to fix broken structures."

But George traveled many miles between then and when he began work on the Yankee Girl. He climbed mountains in the Alps and the Himalayas, rode his motorcycle to Mexico and South America where he climbed more mountains, earned a degree in history with a minor in French at Metro State College, treated himself to a sabbatical to study art, architecture and music at one of the three Aix-Marseille university campuses, became a machinist and worked on supersonic aircraft, married twice, and learned wooden-boat building. He even found time to serve on the Silverton School Board for 12 years.

"This is a stabilization project, not a full restoration - although that could follow," George said Wednesday at the Yankee Girl head frame, which sits atop a 1,200-foot shaft covered with a steel grate. "Fixing the roof and foundation can buy us 40 years."

Funding for the Yankee Girl project comes through the Red Mountain Task Force, a broad-based group funded by public and private grants.

The Yankee Girl head frame dates to the early 1880s, George said. The shaft beneath it is the result of a breccia pipe, a volcanic fissure that pushed to the surface, he said. Near ground level, the mine produced 2,000 ounces of silver per ton of rock extracted, but production declined as the chimney pinched off deep in the earth.

"This structure was cannibalized from the original," George said, pointing out differences in the 12-foot by 12-foot and 14-foot by 14-foot pillars of native Engelman spruce that sustain the structure. "You can't find a man in America to make this for you," George said, indicating a pillar that had been shaped with a broad ax.

A fire, perhaps, burned or partially burned the original head frame, necessitating repair, George said. Tar paper replaced shingles on the roof the second time around, said George, who plans to protect the wooden planks he is installing with metal.

When he works on the sloping roof of the head frame, George anchors himself with a safety line attached to the building. George has made some of the tools he uses such as a pry bar, and he returned from his South American tour with an adze he acquired in Ecuador.

On July 3, George observed the topping out ceremony common among ironworkers when they install the highest beam - adorned with a small evergreen tree and American flag - into place on a building. George installed only the flag, which occurred when he nailed the highest plank in place.

"I may be more American than I look," said George, who became a U.S. citizen years ago. "My mother's family was American Quakers who returned to England at the start of the Civil War.

"So if they tell me, 'Go back to where you're from,' I can say, 'I have."'