The Trail of Gold and Silver Read online

  Greeley and his party went back to Denver the next day, and remained there for several weeks. His June 20th dispatch made a more sober assessment of the gold craze, returning to his concern about whether all this would pay off: “I answer—it will pay some; it will fail to pay others. . . . but ten will come out here for gold for every one who carries back so much as he left home with.” Victorian rhetoric overtaking him, he concluded that “[t]housands who hasten hither flushed with hope and ambition will lay down to their long rest beneath the shadows of the mountains, with only the wind-swept pines to sigh their requiem.”

  He warned his readers that the distance from the settlements, the elevation, the high cost of almost “every necessary of life,” and the need for capital to develop the mines made this anything but a “poor man’s diggings.” He could not have been more blunt in proclaiming, “this is not the country for you!” Repeating his earlier theme, he wrote, “Far better to seek wealth further east through growing wheat, or corn, or cattle or by any kind of manual labor, than to come here to dig gold.”12

  Optimistic and positive, yet constructive and moralistic, Greeley gave his readers a remarkably insightful, vigorous account of the early days of Colorado mining. He saw a great future for the West, and confirmed that the gold was no mirage. The perceptive Greeley also realized that what the region needed most was a railroad built all the way to the Pacific Coast. His Pike’s Peak readers could not have agreed more.

  2

  1859: The Year Dreams Became Reality

  When the speeches ended, the distinguished “keynoter” Greeley became an onlooker as the miners set about creating a rudimentary set of mining laws. Technically, those mining on Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Ute land were trespassers, who had no legal rights to their claims. Their company also included those who were mining in parts of the Kansas, Utah, and Nebraska territories. All these very interested parties gathered at a miners’ meeting, a democratic institution that brought everyone together to chart the development of a “district.”

  They had a precedent: Californians had taken similar measures when they overran the Sierra Nevadas a decade ago. Veteran miners knew the legal course to take, and they blended U.S., Mexican, German, and Spanish precedents to create their rules. This was truly functional American grassroots democracy, although the indigenous inhabitants of the land were notably absent from the table. The proceedings gave the miners some internally legitimate basis for ownership, but they were still trespassing—a matter of little concern to most, who believed strongly in manifest destiny and did not care who stood in their way.

  First, they defined the Gregory District and clarified their intentions for the area. Everyone, whether experienced miner or excited “pilgrim,” would have an equal opportunity to make his fortune, with the district’s original discoverer being allowed to stake an extra claim. Twelve resolutions were approved. They were simple, democratic, to the point, and involved few officials—perfect for fifty-niners who would much rather be working their claims. The resolutions included:

  • “No miner shall hold more than one claim except by purchase or discovery.”

  • Each miner could hold one mountain claim, one gulch claim, and one creek claim “for the purpose of washing, the first to be 100 feet long and fifty feet wide, the second 100 feet up and down the river or gulch and extending from bank to bank.”

  • Mountain claims must be “worked within ten days from the time they are staked off, otherwise forfeited.”

  • “Each discovery claim shall be marked as such, and shall be safely held whether worked or not.”

  • A “company constituted of two or more, shall be at work on one claim of the company, the rest shall be considered as worked by putting a notice of the same on the claim.”

  • “When two parties wish to use water on the same stream or ravine for quartz mining purposes, no person shall be entitled to the use of more than one half of the water.”

  To resolve disputed claims, the district secretary was to list nine disinterested miners, from which list each party could strike off three names. The remaining referees “shall at once proceed to hear and try the case, and should any miner refuse to obey such decision,” a miners’ meeting would be called. If the decision by that body was the same, “the party refusing to obey shall not be entitled to hold another claim in this district” and shall pay the secretary and referees “$5.00 each for their services.”1

  Once the excitement of the Gregory District’s opening meeting subsided, other proposals soon appeared regarding “needed” modifications. Unsurprisingly, some suggestions proved to be incompatible; others were so convoluted as to be nearly incomprehensible. The simple solution was to appoint a committee to look into the issues. At a July 16 meeting, the committee reported that the original code should be retained, albeit with some additions.

  A recorder would keep all district records, including mining and water claims and bills of sale. Also, a one-dollar fee would be paid to the recorder for each claim recorded. All laws relating to trials of disputed claims were repealed and new ones promulgated. To accommodate the fast-changing methods of mining, quartz mill and tunnel sites were brought under district jurisdiction, as were companies that brought in water. They could pass over any “claim, road, or ditch” but could not “injure the party over whose ground they pass.”

  The Gregory miners held no further meetings until November, at which point they fine-tuned what they had already accomplished and made a few modifications to meet some new need. Thereafter, they focused their full attention on the reason they had come to the Pike’s Peak country: mining.

  This was only the beginning. Before they were finished, Gilpin County had been divided into nearly a score of mining districts, each with its own laws. All the districts in Gilpin County established rules and regulations through the same process, although some interesting content variations appeared.

  Russell and South Boulder Districts gave women the same rights as men in staking claims, but the stubborn men in the Silver Lake District emphatically declared (in the secretary’s original spelling), “be it annacted that no woman shal hold claims.” The Russell and Fairfield Districts stated that every person “of suitable age” residing in the district “is hereby declared a voter.”

  Miners in the Pleasant Valley District carefully defined another problem that repeatedly caused trouble: “No miner shall run tailings or throw waste dirt or rock upon the adjoining claims without permission of the owners except such as will naturally run in the water from Tom, Rocker or Sluice.”2Violators were liable for damages.

  Some speculators planning to make money in “urban” real estate appeared on the scene. The Hawk Eye District allowed such ventures, but required a plat; it allowed the developer only “every tenth lot.” The South Boulder District permitted towns to be laid out provided “the person or company” gained “the consent and signature of a majority of the miners in and of this district.”

  Miners in the Climax District would not permit “Liquor selling or [any] Gambling Establishment” and granted the constable “twenty five cents per mile going and returning for all necessary distances traveled serving papers.” Both the Independent and Russell Districts prohibited “houses of ill fame or prostitution.” The rest remained silent on the matter, thereby tacitly allowing the world’s oldest profession to flourish. On April 28, 1860, Russell voters categorically stated that they wanted to advance “the interests and promote peace harmony order and a good understanding between man & man and believing that the allowing Counternancing or encouraging of low Body Houses Grog Shops and gamboling Saloons to be degrading to the Morals detrimental to the sway of peace and order and Disgraceful to the name and character of the District.” This resolution also levied a $50 fine on a “party or parities” violating the regulation.

  In this loose-knit society that often became litigious over mining issues, lawyers might have had an unfair advantage over the unrepresented or inexperienced. The Independ
ent District bluntly took care of that potential problem: “No practicing lawyer, or any other person having been admitted as such in any State or Territory, shall be permitted to appear in any case pending in the District, as attorney or agent of any person.” A lawyer could appear only if “a legal party to any case” or if both parties employed counsel.

  In a virtually rootless society, jails and prison terms cost tax money to build and oversee, none of which the fifty-niners wanted to pay. Consequently, they devised other, more expedient means of punishing infractions. The Illinois Central District, for example, approved of fines, lashes on the “bare back” (from 10 to 100, depending on the crime), and banishment. “[A]ny person found guilty of murder shall be hung by the neck until dead” or, interestingly, shall be “banished from the mines and property confiscated.” A jury decided which penalty to apply3

  Experienced miners in all districts realized that water was critical to their ventures. As mentioned earlier, the Gregory miners’ meeting discussed the issue on June 8. After the dry summer of 1860, they tackled another issue in February 1861: “in case there shall not be water Sufficient for all, priority of Claim Shall determine the right to such water.” The Independent District carefully defined the water power granted to run mills and the responsibilities of water companies; the Wisconsin District defined water claims and ruled that they “shall hold as real Estate, & not [be] jumpable.” Miners of the Pleasant Valley District were concerned about obstructing the free passage of water and building dams that backed water onto another’s claim. The secretary of the Bay State District might not have been much of a speller, but readers grasped the meaning:

  It Shall be the privilege of enny miner or Miners to take out the water out of North Clear Creek in a ditch or floom around anny mans Claim or over his Claim for the purpose of washing Dirt on the Hill Side by hydraulic power or Slusing not ingering the claims passing thare over.4

  In future Boulder and Clear Creek Counties, miners had been equally busy. With an extra-legal basis in place for owning land, miners could now develop their placers and their mines, mill men could build their mills, promoters could develop towns, and water ditch plans could be implemented. Rudimentary government had been developed and everyone could focus on the real reason they had come to the Rocky Mountains. A pattern had been established that would carry over to every new discovery area.

  All this was probably secondary to those who had rushed to Pike’s Peak country for one reason and one reason only: gold. Reports going east still varied from the truthful to the dismal to the exciting. The report by Villard, Richardson, and Greeley carefully explained: “Gold-mining is a business which eminently requires of Its votaries capital, experience, energy endurance, and in which the highest qualities do not always commend success.” They decried the “infatuation” with gold that had caused “thousands to rush to this region” and then “run back before reaching it.” A letter writer quoted in The New York Tribune (May 28) concluded that at “present there is very little here to induce people to come out, yet they keep coming.” Indeed they did, causing the Atchison Union of June 4 to theatrically complain that the rush had placed “thousands, and tens of thousands in irretrievable ruin.”

  Writing to his nieces from Mountain City on July 17, L. D. Crandall explained what underlay such reports. While on his way west the previous month, he had met people who claimed “Pike’s Peak a perfect failure & a humbug & every story to discourage coming here that human imagination could invent.”5 William Green Russell knew better, even though by the time he returned the Gregory diggings were so overrun with prospectors that he moved southward into what became known as Russell Gulch. He reported to his hometown newspaper, the Dahlonega Mountain Signal (August 19), that “new discoveries are being made every day” and mountain diggings were improving. He also stated that many gulches and ravines “are yet very little worked or prospected.”

  One of the region’s prime boosters, William Byers of the Rocky Mountain News, visited the Gregory diggings in mid-June. He wrote, enthusiastically, that “every day witnesses new gold digging discoveries.” He expressed a “wish” that would echo down through Colorado mining for decades, and elsewhere as well: that the “mines already opened grow richer as they descend.” Byers reported that about 100 sluices were operating, that the “product safely set down” was $200 per day per sluice, and that pans paid up to $10.6

  The Gregory diggings, by far the richest of the three initial discoveries, received the most attention during the late spring and early summer of 1859. There Colorado mining earned its initial fame—or infamy. In this district the miners learned their first real mining lessons. Gold appears in nature in the form of free gold, found in streams, or as lode (vein) gold, combined with other minerals and gangue (waste rock) that had to be mined out of the mountainside. The fifty-niners quickly encountered both in the Gregory diggings. Fortunately, they initially started by placer-mining free gold.

  The pan came in handy, both for gathering their golden treasure and when sampling up a stream to find where the ore was eroding off the mountainside. When gold no longer appeared in the pan, the prospector knew it had to come from below that point. None of this took very long to learn, but panning was backbreaking work.

  Like the forty-niners before them, these miners wanted to make their fortunes quickly. To make more money, they had to move more “dirt” (gold-bearing gravel). Hence, they built rockers. After ore was shoveled over the rocker’s sieve, miners poured water over the ore, then rocked the whole mechanism back and forth. The idea was that the heavy gold would settle on the bottom and get trapped behind the cleats, while water took out the loose gravel and sand. Essentially, this was what happened with panning, too; the point of the rocker was to wash more dirt faster and a bit more easily.

  The simplest methods quickly spawned innovations and equipment developments. The first improvement was the sluice box, a long wooden trough stretching out twenty-five to fifty feet, with cleats on the bottom and another sieve-like device at the top. After ore was shoveled in, water carried it down the sluice, allowing the gold to settle behind the cleats.

  Fearing they might still be losing gold, the miners transformed the sluice into a long tom. Pushed by water, just as in nature, gold settled to the bottom behind numerous cleats. It took several men, however, to run such operations, and so mining companies and partnerships emerged. These methods also used more water and demanded more land on which to dump waste rock. The water flowing back into the streams carried sand, dirt, and whatever else came out of the sluice and the long tom. Soon men downstream protested vociferously—hence the initial district regulations on this subject.

  No matter what process was used, final cleanup depended on a vital fact: mercury’s affinity for gold. When the two were mixed together, the mercury picked up the precious metal from the black sand (containing minerals, usually iron, nearly as heavy as gold) that generally was left behind with the free gold. Careful heating separated the gold from the mercury, leaving the miner with his treasure and with expensive mercury that could be reused—as long as he avoided breathing any of the poisonous mercury fumes.

  Once placer gold was located, prospectors usually tried to track it back to its source. Even while the streams were busily being mined, the fifty-niners started digging gold out of the mountainsides. To do this successfully meant leaping into industrial mining. Placer skills were easily learned, but following a lode into the ground required different skills, techniques, and equipment.

  To ensure that the mountain did not collapse on them, the miners had to timber the shafts, drifts, and tunnels they dug. Seeping and pooling water had to be pumped out. Ore had to be brought to the surface, and that meant hoisting it up the shaft, which required some form of power. The hoisting mechanisms evolved swiftly: initially, manpower operated a windlass, then a horse powered a whim, and finally steam powered a mechanical hoist. Unless the owner and his partners operated the mine themselves, miners had to be hired t
o dig the ore, and the vein had to be followed carefully to increase profitable production and keep expenses to a minimum. To protect equipment and provide storage, buildings were required. All told, mining was expensive and time-consuming.

  Once the ore reached the surface, the gold had to be separated from the gangue. At first, miners used the straightforward old Spanish/Mexican arrastra, which involved grinding the ore in a circular stone basin or trough by dragging a large rock over it. The miner then introduced mercury into the pulverized ore and recovered his gold.

  These basins were easy to build and easy to operate, but were not fast enough or able to handle a large enough volume for those in a hurry to get rich and get home. The obvious answer was the stamp mill, which had been used for years in other gold districts. This mill used a steam engine to drive a battery, or batteries, of heavy iron “stamps” (usually five to a battery) to pound the ore. Mercury introduced into the finely crushed ore bound with the gold, and the heating/refining process already discussed freed the gold.

  Stamp mills also proved fairly easy to build and operate, but they did not always capture a high percentage of the gold; sometimes the miners lost half (or even more) of their treasure. Further, the mills were not initially available locally in the Pike’s Peak area and had to be imported, generally from the Midwest. This added cost and time before they could be placed in service. For most, a trial-and-error period also delayed successful operation.

  During those tumultuous summer days of 1859 in the Gregory diggings, the opportunity for “poor man’s diggings” had not yet waned, despite the amazing pace of activity there. Frank Fossett later tried to capture the excitement: