The Trail of Gold and Silver Read online

  This Victorian gentlewoman, despite her Eastern upbringing and education, came to appreciate and be captivated by the West and its beauty and bemoaned the transformation of it. In a letter to her friend Helena, in the fall of 1880, she regretted the change about to take place:

  It fills me with despair to see the rapid progress of the RR through the valley. The only lovely spot within reach—unbroken loveliness for miles—and now in a miraculously short time it will be spoiled with unpainted pine shanties and other accompaniments of civilization in the crude state.

  Few others in Leadville would have agreed with her. They were perfectly willing to trade the beautiful valley for the benefits coming with the iron horse.

  Out of her Leadville experiences, Mary Hallock Foote would carve three novels, The Led-Horse Claim (1882), John Bodewin’s Testimony (1886), and The Last Assembly Ball (1889). Concerning the first, she wrote her brother-in-law, James D. Hague, that it has “been very difficult for me to write it and make it impersonal and at the same time characteristic.” She then confessed an inner doubt, believing that the literary “field” had been “so completely and unapproachably occupied by men of much wider experience in mining camp life than I hope I shall ever have.”

  Be that as it may, in the opening chapter of The Led-Horse Claim she depicted the Leadville she had known. In a single paragraph, she captured the transformation of Leadville from mining camp to mining town:

  The discontent and the despair of older mining-camps in their decadence hastened to mingle their bitterness in the baptismal cup of the new one. It exhibited in its earliest youth every symptom of humanity in its decline. The restless elements of the Eastern cities; the disappointed, the reckless, the men with failures to wipe out, with losses to retrieve or to forget, the men of whom one knows not what to expect, were there; but as its practical needs increased and multiplied, and its ability to pay for what it required became manifest, the new settlement began to attract a safer population.11

  Leadville’s importance to Colorado and mining cannot be measured solely by silver profits. Experienced and educated mining men arrived, such as those Mary Hallock Foote knew—and they, rather than the school-of-hard-knocks, self-trained fellows, were the future of mining. The formation of the United States Geological Survey in 1879 further legitimized this new world. Clarence King, the first Director of the Survey, hoped to publish a “series of monographs which would in time include all the important mining districts of the country.”

  Leadville became the site of a detailed, sweeping professional examination. The Survey acted quickly: By December 1879, Samuel Emmons and a team of others were studying Leadville’s geology, mines, metallurgy, and ores. Mining historian Rodman Paul called the 1881 publication of an abstract, and the 1886 full volume of Geology and Mining Industry of Leadville, “epoch-making.”12 This volume would be the “miner’s bible” for generations to come.

  Smelting also benefited from Leadville riches, as some of the best metallurgists and smelting men arrived there in 1878 and 1879. Emmons discussed this too: “In conclusion, it may be said that lead smelting, as carried on in this region, while not entirely beyond criticism, has been brought to a relatively high degree of perfection, and is extremely creditable to American metallurgists.” He pointedly concluded with the observation that the success of various smelting works “has been proportional to the more thorough training in scientific metallurgy of its managers, the completeness and accuracy with which they have gauged the operations of their furnaces by tests, and the intelligence with which the results of these tests have been applied to the practical conduct of their business.” Emmons hoped the lesson had been learned because it might prevent an increase in “the already very considerable number of abandoned smelters which dot our western hills and valleys.”13

  As with most Cinderella tales, there was another side to all this. A plague of insiders, who bought and sold mining stocks using private information, had the public at their mercy. The mere fact that a mine happened to be in the Leadville district often prompted promoters to inflate its stock value without any real basis for their assertions. Mining speculators, joined by promoters, ran amuck. Some were overenthusiastic, excitable promoters who saw millions in their properties just beyond the miner’s pick in the drift. Investors forgot the old mining adage, “You can’t tell beyond the pick at the end of the mine.” Other promoters and owners were downright crooked and set out to fleece the unsuspecting investing public with fancy mine pamphlets, enticing company prospectuses, gaudy promises, and full-scale promotion. Nor could the public be held blameless. Greedy and gullible investors bought stock just because it was a Leadville mine. They read about Tabor and the other Leadville mining kings and naïvely assumed that every mine held equal promise and production capability.

  The glamour of wealth also masked the inhospitable living and working conditions in a community built almost overnight. A transitory world blinked a silver beacon for all to come regardless of their experience, abilities, or health. Far too many thought it was their chance—perhaps the last—to make their fortunes. The high altitude took its toll on people’s health and lives, as the number of graves in the cemetery attests. In fact, so many died that startled local boosters tried to hide the true toll in the winter of 1878–1879. The mining world was not kind to everyone. The owners and stockholders might be making fortunes, but the miner laboring deep in the mines still worked for the standard $3.00 a day, and the men at smelters for less. Many in Leadville struggled just to make a living.

  Still, the excitement and glamour carried over into early 1880—and then Leadville, the stockholders, and the public received a series of severe jolts. All went well through mid-January 1880, with the Little Pittsburg already placing $850,000 into jubilant stockholders’ pockets. With the stock price in the $30 range, predictions that it would hit $50 before the year was out promised even more good fortune for those lucky individuals. Then, unaccountably, the price started to dip in mid-February, going from $30 to $22, then under $20, and continuing to drop. Stock was being sold, by whom and why nobody knew. By the second week in March, investors saw it sink to a sickening low of $7.50 per share, and stockholders found themselves holding a bag of empty promises.

  There were accusations of inside trading, withholding of information, corruption, and gutting of the mine for personal profit. Colorado “bears” were trying to depress the stock, shouted the eastern press. Colorado responded in kind, blaming New York capitalists, naïve investors who failed to understand the vicissitudes of mining, greedy Easterners, and wily promoters. People on both sides were charged with criminal activities, and those former prophets of profit—Chaffee, Moffat, Tabor, and others—found themselves muckraked by the press, which was having a field day with the mess. Meanwhile, the insiders swiftly departed with their profits.

  Rumors, denials, accusations, and insinuations bounced from Colorado to New York and back again. Regardless, the whole story never emerged, and the parties responsible will probably never be known. There was certainly enough guilt to go around on both sides; without question, they both shared the blame for the debacle.

  What did emerge out of this disaster? For Leadville, the publicity boom was busted, investors shied away, and its days of glamour vanished in the light of the scandal’s unwelcome glare. Colorado suffered as well when the prestige of its most famous district waned. Just as in the shenanigan-filled, bonanza days of Nevada’s Comstock, national mining suffered a large black blot on its reputation.

  The dust of the aftermath of this calamity had not settled when the Chrysolite walked down the same path. March 1880 found it producing $242,000, amid the cheers of the local press, who were desperately searching for good news outside the depressing Leadville story. Stockholders pocketing their fourth dividend were pleased, too. Then the stock, which had topped $40, plummeted, in an edgy market, to the $13 to $20 range by May.

  Something strange happened at this point. The Chrysolite miners marched o
ut on strike on May 26, in a strike that soon spread to other mines, producing the first major labor dispute in Colorado mining history. Rallies, fired-up speakers, armed guards, and rumors of violence set what would become a familiar pattern in Colorado labor relations. With mines closed and threats of violence increasing, the cry went out from the owners and the sheriff to Governor Frederick Pitkin: Send in the Colorado National Guard and declare martial law! In the troops marched, and they were far from neutral in their actions. The National Guard’s strikebreaking left the owners in complete control, so they reopened their mines with men who had not taken an active part in the strike.

  Reported causes of this unusual event—desire for higher wages, obnoxious rules, worry about increase in hours, and the like—appeared to be a cover for something else. That “something else” apparently was the Chrysolite’s financial situation. With shaky stock prices before the strike, the management passed on issuing the mine’s monthly dividend, blaming the strike. Passed dividends, or moving dividend payment to a quarterly or yearly basis, rapidly undermined public confidence. However, the strike-ambushed company could not be blamed this time . . . or could it? By mid-July, the Chrysolite’s price sagged from $17 to $6.75 per share. Again charges flew, including a fascinating theory that management had forced the strike to cover up the poor ore reserves and the bleak financial future that surely would attend that revelation.

  The Little Pittsburg lay gutted, and the Chrysolite was being called “this notorious Colorado mine.” Capital and labor had fought the opening skirmish in a conflict that would stretch well beyond the turn of the century. Mines, the district, the state, and personal reputations suffered serious, and in some cases irrevocable, damage.

  Nor was that all that occurred during this tragic year. Just over Fremont Pass from Leadville lay the Ten Mile District, and its best mine of the moment, the Robinson, located near the camp of the same name. Its owner, George Robinson, entered politics, as so many Leadville mining men eventually did, and was elected lieutenant governor in 1880. After a dispute broke out with a neighboring mine, Robinson placed armed guards around his property. When he failed to identify himself during a night-time inspection, a guard shot and mortally wounded him.

  Leadville’s glory days of unbounded public confidence were gone, and they took with them most of the confidence in Colorado silver mining generally. The indefinable spark that separates a booming, youthful town from one slipping into middle age flickered out. Leadville’s glamour and fame collapsed with its mines after only thirty months in the public eye. It was not that mining died after the embarrassments of 1880; it did not. There was only one year, during the period from 1880 through 1887, that Leadville’s mines produced less than $10 million, and in that year it missed by only the barest of margins. Lead and silver continued to provide a living, but Leadville’s excitement, novelty, and grandeur disappeared. The general public and investors did not care or believe anymore, and the town took on the tired, grimy appearance of something past its prime, an unattractive industrial city. Dreams of being the state capital vanished too. Promoters, investors, the drifting crowd, and newspaper reporters turned elsewhere for their next prospects and thrills.

  Mark Twain and P. T. Barnum are credited, respectively, for the statements that “A mine is a hole in the ground owned by a liar,” and “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Leadville proved that the originators of these sentiments were quite correct on far too many occasions. For a shining moment, Leadville grabbed the public’s attention and ushered in the “silver eighties.” Later, it heralded an even better decade in the golden 1890s. Never again would Colorado silver mining match this two-decade era, nor would the state behold a collapse like what it had just witnessed at Leadville.

  7

  The Silver Eighties: The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

  As the tide of Colorado mining ebbed and flowed in the 1880s, many Coloradans scrambled to make a living in a world that seemed far different from that of twenty years ago. They may even have grown a little nostalgic about the “good old days.” Mining had become big business, because, as one wag put it, it “took a gold mine to operate a silver mine.” As the mines sank deeper, the expenses mounted, the equipment required grew more costly, the geology became increasingly intricate, and the ore generally decreased in value. The international price of silver did not help, either. It continued slipping downward and eventually broke the dollar-an-ounce barrier. (Recall that the price was for smelted and refined silver, not ore at the mine portal.) The miners could not understand why the decline was happening, unless it was an “international plot,” a conspiracy to rob them of the profits from their hard work. Regardless of the cause or causes, the situation left miners squeezed in an economic vise of increased expenses and declining profits.

  Placer mining had become a relic of an earlier age, although the old districts were still being reworked with limited success. Production from Park County placer deposits, for example, fluctuated from about $50,000 to slightly over $100,000 annually, as old-timers picked over districts that had long since seen better days. Boulder, Gilpin, and Clear Creek Counties each contributed small amounts as well.

  At the same time, Colorado mining had its bright spots. San Juan and the Gunnison countries both came into their own, and a bright new silver district—Aspen—took the “silver queen” crown away from Leadville. Custer County’s Silver Cliff, Westcliffe, and Querida enjoyed fleeting moments of fame early in the decade, when nearby silver mines kept production in the range of $500,000 to $600,000 per year; however, they collapsed by the mid-1880s. Those two old favorites, Gilpin and Clear Creek Counties, continued to produce gold worth $1 million to $2 million annually, but were hardly the newsworthy stars they had once been.

  It was a mixture of the old and the new, with individual diggings steadily being replaced by company-controlled industrial mining. One could see that trend everywhere. People might yearn to return to an earlier, seemingly simpler era, but those days were gone forever.

  One of the factors driving this change was the railroad, a blessing that could sometimes be a frustration as well. The century’s last two decades saw Colorado railway trackage reach its all-time high. The Denver & Rio Grande (D&RG) reached the town it had created, Durango, in 1881, and a year later it extended to Silverton in the heart of the San Juans. Silverton soon became a railroad center with three smaller lines going deeper into the mountains to tap the Red Mountain, Animas Forks, and Gladstone mines.

  Colorado’s “Baby Railroad,” as the narrow-gauge D&RG was called, arrived in Leadville in 1880, at Crested Butte and the Gunnison country the next year, and at Robinson and Red Cliff during 1881–1882. Ouray and Aspen cheered the appearance of the D&RG in 1887, Lake City did so two years later, and Creede heralded its arrival in 1892.

  Competitors soon challenged the D&RG. The Colorado Midland reached Leadville in 1885, but lost the race to reach Aspen to the D&RG and had to read the Rocky Mountain Sun’s report of the exuberance: “At half past eight o’clock the sound of locomotive whistles was heard, and, at a signal from a rocket, additional fires were lighted on the mountains, steam whistles blew, and giant powder reverberated from hill to hill” (November 5, 1887).

  The Denver, South Park, & Pacific reached Leadville initially by using D&RG tracks, but in 1884 it got there on its own. The Colorado Midland and the Florence and Cripple Creek lines raced to Cripple Creek; the latter won the race in 1894, with the Midland arriving a year later. Meanwhile, Otto Mears’s Rio Grande Southern went around the west end of the San Juans from Durango to Ridgway in 1890–1891, reaching Telluride along the way.

  Aspen’s Rocky Mountain Sun (January 2, 1886, New Year’s edition) cried, “Aspen needs a railroad.” That plea repeated a by-now familiar story. All districts needed a railroad, for railroads were ideally suited to mining enterprises, hauling in supplies and hauling out ore. Colorado mining districts in general were well railroaded; some were actually over-railroaded. Larger lin
es swallowed up smaller lines, following a trend in the rest of the industrial United States late in the century. The Union Pacific ended up controlling both the Colorado Central and the Denver and South Park. The overextended D&RG fell from William Palmer’s hands to Easterners, but eventually took over both the Rio Grande Southern and Florence and Cripple Creek lines.

  Mining could not prosper without railroads, but the railroads were not guaranteed profits. Unfortunately, because of high construction expenses, most lines were built on credit, financed by investors who expected profits to start rolling in once the trains reached their destination. That did not always happen. Further, the railroads were not always managed well. Far too many suffered from chancery, dishonesty, and stock manipulations, and even the most honest management often faced local, state, and national issues and requirements that could derail the company.

  The railroad/mining connection was a marriage of necessity, not always love. Each needed and depended on the other, even though they often had complaints and concerns. Except for those few districts fortunate enough to have more than one railroad connection, the relationship could be contentious. Mining communities and districts did not want to be under the thumb of just one railroad, with limited train schedules and no competition for lower rates. Railroads desired continued high freight and passenger traffic, something no one could guarantee, and they pointed out that the mountain weather left them at the mercy of the elements. In the end, though, when the railroads arrived, Colorado hard-rock districts blossomed, and those left off the routes suffered both economically and promotionally.