The Trail of Gold and Silver Read online

  Before the end of May the valleys of the streams that course through the mountains of the country that has since become Clear Creek, Gilpin, and Boulder counties were alive with men. Trees were felled, cabins erected, and sluice boxes constructed for washing the gold from the gravel and “pay dirt.” Hand rockers were also used and arrastras were subsequently operated.

  Another early chronicler of this era, Ovando Hollister, noted that “[b]y the lst of July, 1859, there were one hundred of these sluices running within a short distance of Gregory Point.” Because water, for both the gulches and lodes, was scarce, two ditches of considerable magnitude were projected, to bring it from the head of Fall River. These eventually became “The Consolidated Ditch . . . [which] cost one hundred thousand dollars, and for the soft gristle of the young community was a big undertaking and quite a triumph” (it was finished in the spring of 1860).7

  Reports from the mountains varied as summer slipped away. Nevada Gulch reported “large nuggets” and “old mines” operating steadily. In the Gregory diggings, however, water was getting scarce, which led to work being “temporarily abandoned on many good paying claims.”

  L. D. Crandall’s letters reveal how one man balanced dreams and practical reality. After a few weeks in and around Mountain City, he was convinced “that there was and is large quantities of gold in these mountains but I am further satisfied that it costs more labor & [is] harder to begot at than in California.” Still, he purchased four claims and determinedly wrote: “Gold is here and I shall stay here until I get some of it and will stay here through the winter and next season”—a clear demonstration of “gold fever” in action.

  With so many working the streams, the productivity of the placers started to decline, spurring some of the crowd to rush off to any newly discovered “pound diggings”—rich areas yielding three to twenty dollars per pan. Those who stayed had to turn to the serious matter of digging underground. The News encouraged them, reporting that quartz mills with several steam engines were on their way from the States (July 23). On September 10, the paper noted a “large quartz mill” being erected in the Gregory District. “Before long,” the paper predicted, people would see the “result of systematic quartz mining.”

  It turned out that establishing a mill was difficult, too. The first steam quartz mill in the United States, erected by Prosser, Conklin & Co., went into operation on September 17. It had a successful run until late in the month, when “huge columns of smoke and steam” were seen coming from the mill. The fire caused a total loss of more than $10,000. In October, the Coleman, Lefebvre & Co. steam mill started operating, but soon broke down. It was repaired and started again in November, but that was late in the mining season. Others were still coming or planned when winter closed in. Industrialization had not yet overtaken the solo prospector, nor underground mining the search for easy placer pickings.

  George Jackson’s discovery of gold in South Clear Creek, in January 1859, was not publicized until April, and then was soon overshadowed by Gregory’s discovery on North Clear Creek. Nearly all the miners rushed northward, but attention soon returned to South Clear Creek’s placer deposits. Among those who arrived in the Clear Creek diggings at Payne’s Bar was a young couple, Augusta and Horace Tabor. Like many others, they had been struggling on a Kansas farm when the news of the Pike’s Peak discoveries reached them in 1858. They determined to go to the gold fields to improve their financial situation. They started west in the spring of 1859.

  Leaving his wife at the future Golden, Horace struggled into the mountains, was too late for the Gregory diggings, and tried his luck at Payne’s Bar. As he wrote later, “I located a placer there and worked on it all summer and made moderate wages.” Augusta was more revealing. She took up the story when her husband and two friends returned to Augusta’s camp:

  They thought they had better move me up farther. We packed up and went beyond there up to Payne’s Bar. We were three weeks going from there to where Central is now. Had to make our road as we went. We could only make about three miles a day, a wagon had never been there before.

  There miners told Mr. Tabor he ought not to keep me at Idaho Springs during the winter on account of snow slides that would cover us all up. He became frightened and moved me back to Denver, when he returned to camp he found his claim had been jumped. Some of the miners had told him this to get him away so they could jump his claim. There was no law in those days.8

  The Tabors had learned a valuable lesson about abandoning a claim and about human nature. They were not alone in making mistakes; the inexperienced and the gullible needed to be continually on guard and careful about “friends.”

  Others were more fortunate in mining the bars along Clear Creek that summer. As in the Gregory District, water shortages hampered operations until the late summer rains came. The Rocky Mountain News reported on October 13 that the Clear Creek mines had been nearly abandoned for the season, particularly those around Idaho Springs and above.

  What eventually became the richest of the Clear Creek discoveries that season was also one of the slowest to be developed. Two brothers, George and David Griffith, were among those who arrived too late at the Gregory diggings and turned their attention elsewhere, heading over the mountain to Spanish Bar. Working their way upstream, they eventually reached the future Georgetown area by August. There they found gold-bearing quartz outcroppings on the side of a mountain that they named for themselves. Joined by their brother John, the three men sank a shaft on the Griffith Lode and worked several other promising claims. Then, lured by news of rich strikes (“thousand dollar” diggings, some said) to the north, they left the valley temporarily. (The Griffiths eventually returned. That fall, one stayed in the area and the other two went back east, one to purchase supplies and the other to bring his family back the next year.)

  When William Byers visited the Georgetown mines on August 27, the Griffiths were gone, but a few other miners had arrived. Typically, Byers was impressed:

  Two or three other claims are being opened on the lead, but not yet properly worked, although they evidently are very rich. Several other leads crop out in the immediate vicinity, on both sides of the creek presenting more favorable opportunities for working them . . . but there is no one to develop them; the whole settlement consisting of five men and one boy

  The creek is also rich in gold, but the bed rock is deep and it requires a combination of labor or capital to work it successfully.

  Despite that warning, Byers enthusiastically told his readers (September 10): “We have no doubt there are millions of gold in the immediate vicinity.”

  On Fall River—a tributary of South Clear Creek—quartz outcroppings were found, ditches dug, and “slides” constructed to get the quartz down from the hillsides. Despite much work and time spent, disappointment in lieu of profits led to the mines’ being generally abandoned by the fall of 1859. Of the three initial discoveries, the Gold Hill District received the least attention, even though it was the first one generally known, thanks to Byers’s report in the first issue of the News. Hal Sayre, just starting his Colorado career, humorously described his experience in this district. He and a partner arrived, neither having had any mining experience or even having been in a gold-producing region.

  There was plenty of gold in the vicinity of Gold Hill, but Peabody and I failed to find it. We ran over the ground almost like fox hounds seeking a trail, and nearly as rapidly, stopping to stick a pick here and there, but without any knowledge of indications as to where to go to work. We found other parties making the search much as we were doing.

  The same could have been said of fifty-niners in every mining district.

  By July of 1859, both placer and quartz mining were well under way in many districts, but information seemed difficult for Byers to obtain. It was, the News reported, on July 23, “understood” that miners were making between three and twenty dollars per day. (Those same familiar figures popped up in every district.) The article concluded, “o
n the whole we report progress very encouraging and have still stronger faith in next year’s operations.” The enthusiastic Byers never stopped promoting!

  The so-called Twelve Mile diggings, twelve miles from Boulder, and the Seventeen Mile diggings both had their moments that summer and fall. In late October, however, the News reported that although the Twelve Mile diggings had had “several hundred men this past summer,” at the present time “not more than fifteen men were working, most making three to five dollars per day.”

  A former Missouri slave was one who seemed to be doing well. He showed the reporter three dollars in gold he had taken out of his rocker in half a day, and his claim appeared “very rich.” Others were having less success. A “rude” arrastra on Left Hand Creek proved to be a “failure” that discouraged quartz mining. The reporter thought it far inferior to those worked by either oxen or water power in the Gregory diggings.

  One report, published in September, concluded that the quartz rock taken out “cannot be advantageously worked without machinery.” The next year would offer better prospects with the arrival of needed equipment. An October 6th letter pointed out that the “quartz leads” were “very numerous and very rich” and that there “are some very rich gulch diggings” near Gold Hill and at Twelve and Seventeen Mile gulches.

  Even less success was achieved in the Jefferson and Deadwood diggings, “about fifteen miles south” of Gold Hill. The miners had spent much time making miles of ditches and opening the creek bed to bedrock. Unfortunately, few “indeed, were crowned with the success which they deserved for their perseverance.”

  Farther afield, August found excitement way up north along the Cache la Poudre River. On August 13, the News reported “rich diggings” and another “will-of-the-wisp” stampede. Among those who ventured north was John Gregory, looking for another strike. It seemed that wherever they looked now, prospectors envisioned—and occasionally found—the gold they had dreamed of when they came to Pike’s Peak country.

  Far more exciting than even the Gold Hill diggings was the news that gold had been discovered in South Park. Miners who found the “older” districts overcrowded had started moving further into the mountains by midsummer. They entered mountain-rimmed, wind-blown Bayou Salado, better known as South Park. They rushed to Tarryall, but tarried only briefly before finding their “bonanzas” in early August at what became Fairplay and in the mountains nearby. The Rocky Mountain News (August 13) bore by-now-familiar headlines: “Rich Discoveries,” “Great Stampede.” Reports of “$100-$1,000 per day” for the “lucky miners” soon appeared, but the News warned that they were “not entirely well authenticated.” The rush, the paper said, became a “continual stream of miners” with wagons, carts, and pack animals. “What the result will be, time alone will tell, but we believe rich mines will be found along the Platte throughout the whole extent of its mountain course.”

  A familiar pattern was repeated. The editor told his readers on September 17 that “hundreds of men rushed expecting to gather gold by the thousands.” Disappointed, they cried “humbug” and “rushed away again as precipitously as they went in.” He advanced the usual advice: “Those who went patiently and industriously to work are now making money at the rate of twenty to sixty dollars per day to the man.”

  Putting aside their fears and worries, the fifty-niners crossed the “snowy range” and landed on the Western Slope of the Continental Divide. The first prospecting party failed to find the fabled “pound diggings.” Worried about the Utes on whose land they were trespassing, they retreated. Others, who crossed over the range later in the season, discovered gold dust in paying quantities in several gulches.

  They scattered along the Blue River, placering and tracing veins up the gulches and mountainsides. A letter appeared in the News (October 20) as the mining season drew to a close. The correspondent had been there “near two months,” found the stream bed to be very rich, and had “no hesitancy in crying out Eureka.” Another letter writer opined that the “mines prove the most extensive yet and regular paying diggings of any yet discovered in the Rocky Mountains.” Such enthusiasm could not overcome the fact that they were terribly isolated in a country that was itself isolated. Still, these pioneers stayed, built cabins, and started a little settlement that would one day be called Breckenridge.

  In the midst of all the gold excitement, the News (August 13) carried a small headline “Silver Mines Discovered,” followed by a brief article. Twelve miles above Boulder, a “silver mine was recently discovered” and “believed very rich.” On August 20, the News expanded its story, saying that a former slave with twenty years’ mining experience had discovered the “reputed silver mine.” Whatever the miners found, they claimed they traced the vein for two miles. The Rocky Mountain News printed an August 22 editorial stating that silver had been found “in many places of almost incredible richness and unlimited extent. We believe the Washoe and Arizona will be outdone.” That was some belief, because the Comstock (Washoe) was still glorying its first bonanza. In the September 12 issue, the newspaper claimed, “[D]iscoveries of silver veins still continue to be made almost daily in all parts of the country. As might be naturally expected the whole country is on the tiptoe of excitement respecting silver mines.”

  Apparently, the Griffiths also found silver but did nothing about it. All this did was stir up a minor tempest in a teapot over who had discovered silver first and where it had first been found. Such a strike was part and parcel of the legends that led some people to expect that they would uncover rubies, diamonds, and other precious stones at any moment. At the time, though, gold overshadowed everything else. As the summer turned to fall, nothing more was heard about silver mines. More importantly for the future of the territory, coal and limestone were “found in large quantities” near Boulder. The mining industry and the camps in general would need both if settlements were to become permanent.

  Wherever they prospected and mined, the fifty-niners faced medical and health problems, ranging from bad drinking water to accidental shootings to mining accidents. With few physicians within reach—and some of those poorly trained—and modern medicine nearly a century away, the miners, often poorly fed, badly clothed, inadequately housed, and working long hours in wet conditions, fell victim to a host of maladies.

  The altitude affected some, particularly those who rushed high up into the mountains where exposure to the elements might be deadly. Bad water, bad food, and bad whiskey did in others. Many complained of rheumatism, blaming the altitude and the dampness of mines. For some, nearby hot springs provided at least momentary relief, if not a cure. Thus was born Colorado’s image as a “health mecca.” According to the imaginative promoters, the springs would relieve almost all known aliments, and they summoned the ill and infirm to bathe in or drink the “miracle waters”—a call that expanded especially after the railroad arrived.

  In the summer of 1859, a mysterious “mountain fever” ran through the mines in Gilpin County and elsewhere. Although it was never medically identified, many thought it was a typhoid-type disease. It proved debilitating and sometimes deadly. Whether it was one disease or several will never be known, but Henry Villard described it as a “ravaging disease” that “demanded many victims, and caused many more to abandon their work and seek the plains.” Perhaps some Midwesterners, coming from the fever-ridden districts in their home states, had carried latent fevers with them.9

  In contrast, the out-of-doors work proved beneficial to some fifty-niners. L. D. Crandall commented that his health had “been generally better than it was in the states. The worst of my case is being obliged to go with wet feet the most of the time.”

  Caught between dreams and discouragement, a constant smaller rush of go-backers ebbed into Denver and points eastward. By late summer, it was becoming obvious that the weather would soon change, especially in the mountains. The downward flow increased as people scurried out of the mountains with the coming of the first snow. A Mountain City corresponde
nt wrote to the News (September 12) that “many of our miners are now preparing to leave for the States for home.” He was convinced, though, that “all of [them] express their determination to return early in the spring with their families and to make future homes among us.”

  Among those who departed was John Gregory, whose gold discovery had been the prime factor in saving the Pike’s Peak rush. Byers understood that Gregory had almost single-handedly saved the day and hailed him: “No one had labored harder to develop our resources than he nor with better success.” He took with him the “good wishes of the whole country” and, probably more importantly, carried “$25,000 in gold dust” back to his home in Georgia, after previously forwarding “some $5,000 to his family.” Byers hoped to see him again in “the coming spring with machinery and facilities such as we know he will operate as it should be done.” When the spring of 1860 came, Gregory arrived with his quartz mill, which he soon sold. That was his last hurrah. After drifting around for another two or three years, John Gregory disappeared from Colorado.

  Meanwhile, as stream flow decreased in late 1859, the number of sluices operating declined, and people started journeying back to the states, or at least lower elevations. The first snows hastened the process for some, but this was the first year in the mountains for many, and they did not know how quickly the snow could melt on warm fall days. Wrote one News correspondent after it snowed three to four inches on September 17, some “talked of suspending operations”; then “old sol came out and melted the snow.” On the 29th, twelve inches fell, “naturally causing serious alarm,” and “some set out immediately for the valley.” Then sunshine came out again and in five days the snow was gone. By late October, the outward emigration was nearly over. The News reported that those remaining “generally feel in good spirits, all looking forward with the brightest hope to the next mining season when they expect to make their pile and be among the homeward bound.”