The Trail of Gold and Silver Read online

  The New York Tribune (January 29)

  A bigger army than [that with which] Napoleon conquered half of Europe is already equipping itself for this western march to despoil the plains of their gold. The vanguard has already passed the Rubicon, if I may so metamorphose the muddy Missouri.

  The Chicago Press and Tribune (February 4)

  Naive, gullible, desperate, optimistic, confident—a host of adjectives could describe the gold seekers. Perhaps the story of a Council Bluffs, Iowa “Dutchman,” which may or may not be apocryphal, captured it all. Ovando Hollister, in The Mines of Colorado, recounted the story.

  A Dutchman [German] . . . was observed gathering up a large lot of meal-bags. He was asked what he was going to do with them. “Fill them with gold at Pike’s Peak,” he replied. O! he could never do that, they said. “Yes I will,” returned he, “if I have to stay there till fall.”

  Hollister, who knew better by the time he wrote the book in 1866–1867, concluded. “It is [a] matter of congratulation that people have become well cured of such charming infatuation.” Not so in 1859: Dreams of gold filled many heads as the new year dawned. So far, the only real footing for all this excitement was the small amount of gold found by the Russell party. However, few questioned the basis of the sensational commotion and increasingly frenzied and exaggerated reports coming east from “gold country.”

  Meanwhile, out along Cherry and Boulder Creeks and the South Platte River, the vanguard of the “march” who had already arrived settled in to wait out the winter. They anxiously watched for the snow to start melting so they could rush into the mountains to search for the elusive gold that they were convinced was hidden in the recesses of the canyons and peaks to the west. Experienced forty-niners understood that gold came down the streams out of the mountains. Their technique, learned in California, was to work their way up the creeks and waterways and pan for gold to find the source of the mineral, where it washed into the stream. There would be the bonanza.

  Snow came early in October of 1858, along with cold nights, but that did not stop those idling in the makeshift settlements along the foothills from looking west and even fighting their way into the mountains. Georgian George Jackson, in January, was hunting and prospecting along Clear Creek (then called Vasquez Creek) when he found gold near the future Idaho Springs. Jackson well understood that one did not brag about a gold discovery, so, as he said, he kept his mouth as tight as a “number 2 beaver trap.”

  Still, he eventually told a few friends. They formed a prospecting party and struggled up the narrow canyon during the spring runoff. They were rewarded in May 1859 by finding gold at Chicago Bar. In mining terminology, a bar is a placer deposit in the slack portion of a stream where the heavy gold, washed out of the mountainsides, accumulates. Finding these bars had been the goal in ’49, and it was again during the Pike’s Peak rush.

  In Boulder, a January prospecting party found gold-bearing quartz high in the foothills between two canyons. Gold Hill they called it, and they knew enough to mind their own business; plus, they were distant from the settlements in and around the future Denver. This discovery, however, was the first to become generally known. William Byers, in his first issue of the Rocky Mountain News (April 23, 1859), carried three reports referring to Gold Hill and its vicinity.

  By far the most important discovery was made by the Georgian John H. Gregory—another experienced miner, albeit somewhat lazy and inattentive. He too worked his way into the mountains, in April of 1859. He and four companions eventually fought their way up the snow-clogged north fork of Clear Creek to near its head, where they panned and found the bonanza they had been seeking. Some pans yielded as much as $8 worth of gold, rivaling the balmy days of California in 1848 and early 1849. Gregory’s strike area later became Central City and Gilpin County, which quickly grew into one of Colorado’s greatest gold districts. Like so many other discoverers, however, Gregory did not stay around long enough to prosper from his good fortune. He soon sold his claims and drifted out of Colorado history.

  These three discoveries laid a solid basis for the Pike’s Peak rush—a rush that had started with the Russell party’s findings and accounts that greatly magnified their significance. Americans felt that they had finally come into some good luck. Not only could Midwesterners and Easterners rush to Pike’s Peak, the region’s best-known geographical point, but Californians could also stampede over the Sierra Nevadas to the silver discoveries that became Nevada’s astonishingly wealthy, famous, and productive Comstock lode. In a unique coincidence of United States history, two major rushes at the same time drew folks hither and yon searching for their personal El Dorados. America’s mineral cup overflowed, and for those obsessed with gold, pressing sectional issues receded into the background.

  The fifty-niners knew nothing of these three strikes as they prepared to venture westward. For well over a decade, people had been traveling over the Mormon and Oregon Trails along the Platte, and for a generation over the Santa Fe Trail. There were also new and relatively untested routes along the Republican and Smoky Hill Trails. Before the exodus concluded, some would be dead, others shocked by the hardships, and most disappointed that gold did not appear in “buckets galore.” Again personal accounts and newspaper reports captured the drama:

  Our streets during the week have been lined with white topped wagons. The vast majority are gold seekers for western Nebraska and Kansas.

  Nebraska City News (March 12, 1859)

  It is astonishing how rapidly we learn geography. Indeed, ninety-nine out of every one hundred persons in the country did not know that there was such a topographical point as Pike’s Peak. Now they hear nothing, dream of nothing but Pike’s Peak. It is a magnet to the mountains, toward which everybody and everything is tending. It seems that every man, woman and child, who is going anywhere at all, is moving Pike’s Peakward.

  Evening News (St. Louis) (March 17, 1859)7

  They journeyed in both conventional and unconventional ways. One emigrant started with six dogs pulling his “light wagon.” Another had “two large” dogs pulling his. A projected wind wagon schooner, designed to sail over the “prairie ocean” pushed by gentle westward breezes, sounded great in theory but sank into the first gulch it encountered. Some pushed handcarts, others planned to walk. If they lacked personal knowledge, they depended on their guidebooks, which they hoped contained a good map and an honest account of what they would face. Before it was over, though, some became lost, wandering in the wilderness, and at least one party resorted to cannibalism.

  The editor of the Wyoming Telescope (April 9, 1859) became concerned about a “number of young ladies” en route to the diggings: “They have little idea of the hardship they may have to undergo during the journey.” They probably journeyed on, undaunted, along with 100,000 equally excited fellow Americans. “Pike’s Peak or Bust” was their slogan.

  They were crossing what had been described by the expedition of Stephen Long as the “Great American Desert.” Indeed, for many who were accustomed to water and trees, the land appeared desolate and inhospitable, except along the rivers. Newspaperman Albert Richardson described the land he traveled over by stagecoach in June: “We are still on the desert with its soil white with alkali, its stunted shrubs, withered grass, and brackish waters often poisonous to both cattle and men.”

  Along the way, the seekers encountered problems they never expected. In a letter published in the Daily Missouri Republican (May 29, 1859), an unidentified young man told his father about his experiences. His party had “suffered much on the journey,” having taken the Smoky Hill route and been “sorry for it.” After the wagon team gave out a hundred miles from their goal, they had to “pack” the rest of the way: “We soon got out of all our provisions, save a few crackers. On these we subsisted for six days, our daily allowance being two crackers each.” He concluded, “The suffering on this route has been terrible.” On the whole, it was far better to take an established route than to try to find
shortcuts over to the gold fields.

  Human nature created almost as many problems as Mother Nature. Former forty-niner Henry Wickersham described his 1859 experience: “I find human nature has not changed much since my trip to California. Men going to Pike’s Peak now quarrel just as much as men did going to California then. We came very near having bloodshed in camp a day or two since.”

  Another veteran Californian, and soon-to-be Colorado newspaperman under the nom de plume “Sniktau,” E. H. N. Patterson, became very sentimental when he stumbled on the grave of W Probasco of Caryville, Kentucky. Looking at the “tomb I could not resist a feeling of sadness. . . . [H]is bright hopes of golden treasures in the snowy peaks upon which his dying glance may have rested, had been nipped by the chill fingers of Death.”

  Not everyone was melancholy, discouraged, or disagreeable. Lawyer Charles Post, who eventually made Colorado his home, said that when they first saw Pike’s Peak in the dim distance, his party gave that all-occasion nineteenth-century cheer, Pike’s Peak “three times three. It was a beautiful sight, the rising sun shining brightly on the perpetual snowy camp of these mountains made us all feel quite cool. At the same time [we] were delighted to know that the Auriferous Peak after so long and wearisome a journey, was at last in view.”8

  Unfortunately, most reaped only disappointment in the promised land. The ragtag settlements were not awash in gold; in fact, no one seemed to know where it might be except in the snow-locked canyons and mountains to the west. Some went back home within a few days or weeks, as discouraged now as they had formerly been excited. A few wagons carried placards such as “busted by damn” (more politely, “busted by thunder”) or, as one “pilgrim” painted on his wagon. “Oh, Yes! Pike’s Peak in Hell and Damn Nation.” Others went west to Oregon or California, and still others were simply stranded. A father of a fifty-niner had his son’s letter published in the Daily Missouri Republican (May 29, 1859): “Times here are hard and dull. There is no gold at Pike’s Peak. No man can make ten cents a month. I am out of money, and without a chance to make any.” He pleaded with his father to send $125 “to take me back home” where he knew he “could make something. . . . If you don’t send me some money, I will starve to death. Send in haste.” Guidebook writer D. C. Oakes, hurrying westward, met some disappointed Pike’s Peakers returning home. Some threatened him; others buried him in effigy and left variously worded epitaphs:

  Here lies the body of D. C. Oakes,

  killed for aiding this damned hoax.

  When the “go-backers,” as they were derisively called, departed, and reports started trickling back home and into newspaper offices, the rush gained this new label of “hoax.” The Missouri Republican’s editor bluntly described the situation, albeit with a Victorian flourish, on May 11:

  Destitute of provisions or means of conveyance, disappointed and utterly disheartened, with broken hope and blasted fortunes, toil-worn, footworn, and heart-weary, these wretched adventurers come straggling across the plains in squads of dozens or scores.

  Henry Wickersham was not discouraged, however. He stated: “I place no reliance in any of the reports. I want to see for myself. Nearly every man we meet tells a different story.” He philosophically concluded, “It seems a man can’t travel on this road two hundred yards without forgetting how to tell the truth.”9

  Among those racing west was William Byers, who planned to start a newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, in Denver. He was not alone: John Merrick had the same idea with his Cherry Creek Pioneer. Both Byers and Merrick knew the importance (and potential profit) of owning the first newspaper to hit the streets of Denver. Byers won the race; the News beat out its rival with a first edition late in the evening of April 22, although it was dated the next day. The Pioneer lost the race by a mere twenty minutes, according to unofficial timekeepers, but its initial issue was also its last. Merrick was the first, but not the last, newspaperman, or merchant, or businessperson, to find out that in mining rushes, it pays to get there early.

  The News gave Denver City a definitive advantage in the struggle with its urban rivals “Golden City,” nearer the mountains at the mouth of Clear Creek, Boulder City; and the soon-to-be Central City. The popular tag “city” implied something about the community to the outsider, though none of these struggling communities could yet live up to the claim. Having a newspaper to promote and advertise a city and what it offered was one of the best hopes for success. Both the publishers and the would-be cities knew, though, that all their efforts would be for naught if the “hoax” image and the reverse migration were not stopped and replaced with reliable news. Only the really gullible would be fooled a second time. At that point, two men, almost single-handedly, turned the region’s future around: William Byers and America’s best-known newspaperman, The New York Tribune’s Horace Greeley. Byers was already on the scene, and so had a strongly vested interest in the outcome. Greeley, however, did not.

  Greeley and Albert Richardson, a young journalist, were on a trip to Utah and California to give their readers reports about the rapidly changing West. In early June, they stopped in Denver, which was rife with stories of the three solid strikes, to inspect the new town and get the real story of the rush. The area where Gregory and his friends were mining appeared to be the best-known and richest, so Greeley and Richardson decided to visit Gregory’s diggings. They were joined by correspondent Henry Villard of the Cincinnati Commercial, who was also visiting Denver.

  With Byers’s encouragement, Greeley, Richardson, and Villard journeyed to “see the elephant” in Gregory’s Diggings. Greeley found out at first hand what mountain travel was like, including struggling over “steep, rugged” trails and being caught in a “smart shower, with thunder and lightning.” Crossing a stream, his mule stumbled, and his fall left him stiff and sore by nightfall. Nevertheless, the party reached the diggings the next day, and found the miners ready for them.

  They encouraged Greeley to try panning, which he did—and found some gold, as they had known he would. Greeley also “visited during the day a majority of those which have sluices already in operation.” That evening, June 8, a mass meeting, lit by burning pine branches, was held, primarily to discuss the organization of mining districts and the institution of a set of mining laws. Before that, however, their famous visitor was called upon to give a speech to the reported 2,000 to 3,000 assembled miners. “Three cheers” greeted him. Not one to turn down such an opportunity, Greeley promptly admonished the miners about the temptations of gambling and drinking, encouraging them to maintain good order and “to live as the loved ones they left at home . . . would wish.”

  Those admonitions may or may not have fallen on listening ears. His support for “the formation of a new state” and praise for the “vast future before this region” caught their attention, however. After three rousing cheers, several other speakers took the platform, touting the “flattering prospects of the mines and the rich treasures in the gulches and ravines.” Richardson hit upon two popular themes: “The late discoveries promised to add a new star to the federal constellation, and to locate the great Pacific Railroad of the future in this central region.” The eastern visitors interlaced a few jokes about “mules and mule-riding” before the speech making concluded.10

  Greeley recounted his adventures in An Overland Journey. Leaving Denver, his party started up a hill, a “giddy precipice.”

  Our mules, unused to such work, were visibly appalled by it; at first they resisted every effort to force them up, even by zigzags. I was lame and had to ride, much to my mule’s intense disgust. He was stubborn, but strong, and in time bore me safely to the summit.

  A lot of fifty-niners and others had stories to recount about mules. They, and burros, became legendary in the mining West.

  For his Victorian stay-at-home readers, fascinated by the goings-on in the West, Greeley recounted his adventures in a report from “Gregory’s Diggings, June 9, 1859.” They learned that six weeks earlier, the “ravine was
a solitude, the favorite haunt of the elk, the deer, and other shy denizens of the profoundest wildernesses.” By the time of publication, though, “probably” one hundred log cabins were being constructed, “while three or four hundred more are in immediate contemplation.”

  As yet, the entire population of the valley—which cannot number less than four thousand including five white women and seven squaws living with white men—sleep in tents or under booths of pine boughs, cooking and eating in the open air. I doubt that there is as yet a table or chair in these diggings, eating being done around cloth spread on the ground, while each one sits or reclines on mother earth. The food, like that of the Plains, is restricted to a few staples—pork, hot bread, beans and coffee.

  Greeley guessed that “less than half of the four or five thousand people now in this ravine have been here a week; he who has been here three weeks is regarded as quite an old settler.”

  Greeley also gave some sound advice: “And I feel certain that, while some—perhaps many—will realize their dreams of wealth here, a far greater number will expend their scanty means, tax their powers of endurance, and then leave, soured, heartsick, spirit-broken.” He himself adhered to “my long-settled conviction that, next to outright and indisputable gambling, the hardest (though sometimes the quickest) way to obtain gold is to mine for it.” He maintained that “a good farmer or mechanic will usually make money faster, and of course immeasurably easier, by sticking to his own business than by deserting it for gold-digging.”

  The insightful Greeley understood the significance of activity besides mining that was taking place in the diggings. “Mining quickens almost every department of useful industry.” A blacksmith was on the scene, sharpening picks “at fifty cents each,” and a “volunteer post office [had been] established.” Looking into the near future, he foresaw that a provisions store would soon be needed, “then groceries, then dry goods, then a hotel, etc., until within ten years the tourist of the continent will be whirled up these diggings” over easier roads. This visitor “will sip his chocolate and read his New York Paper—not yet five days old—at the Gregory House, in utter unconsciousness that this region was wrested from the elk and the mountain sheep so recently as 1859.”11