BOULDER, Colo. -- How do you handle dynamite believed to be decades old?

For some of us, the answer would be "very carefully," but the Boulder County bomb team decided to burn down the old mining shed that it was in, instead of removing the cache of old dynamite.

The box with about 50 pounds of dynamite was found Wednesday after the property owner died. It was in an old shack on Lefthand Canyon Drive near an old mine. Experts determined that instead of removing it, it was just better to burn down the building, thus destroying the dynamite.

After getting permission from a representative of the estate, fire crews secured the scene Wednesday night and set out to burn down the shed on Thursday.

While the bomb techs soaked the crate and shed with diesel fuel, firefighters from four departments dug a fireline around the structure and applied a fire-retardant foaming agent to nearby structures to prevent the inadvertent spread of the fire.

The fire was ignited at about 3:15 p.m. and burned for several hours. It was extinguished at 7:15 p.m.

No one was hurt and the dynamite was destroyed.

Lefthand Canyon was closed to traffic for about an hour Thursday afternoon as a precaution.

The dynamite belonged to a 96-year-old Boulder woman who died last week. She warned her attorney about the dynamite on the property. After spotting the wooden crate labeled "high explosives" the attorney then called the bomb squad.

Fire crews said because of the configuration of the site -- a cluttered, ramshackle old mining shed -- and concerns about the volatility of old dynamite, the team did not want to attempt to move or relocate the contents of the dynamite crate.