The Trail of Gold and Silver Page 9
As always, though, there were some gleams of hope. The world’s most skilled miners, Cornwall’s “Cousin Jacks,” were starting to arrive. Englishman Maurice Morris, visiting Colorado in 1863, noted “the large influx of Cornish miners,” who were expected to “improve the practice, if not the theory, of mining here.” The Cornishmen complained almost immediately about the “rude way many of the shafts are constructed” and the great “risk consequently run working them.”
Lack of money seemed the most pressing issue: money to buy machinery, improve transportation, solve the riddle of refractory ore, and develop the “plentiful” gold deposits. The region, in desperate need of investors with funds, decided to test the eastern market for stock and mine sales. Back east, a war-stimulated economic boom had resulted in profits for many, who began to worry about inflation and the government’s turning to paper currency rather than continuing to use gold and silver coins, the “money of the Bible.” In short, Easterners were seeking an investment, and what was better than gold? Nothing seemed safer or more dependable as a foundation for one’s wealth.
In the late summer and autumn of 1863, the fates of Easterners and gold were joined with those of the future Colorado. Coloradans and their agents hawked their schemes all over the east; Easterners listened and leaped. Suddenly, Colorado properties and companies became the glittering star of the stock market. Every untested claim or hole-in-the-ground mine blossomed overnight, in the minds of a mesmerized public, into a “bonanza” waiting to be developed. Claims were staked in the snow and sold to unsuspecting buyers. New York and Boston investors eagerly devoured the numerous mining pamphlets flooding the market and clamored to buy.
They were told that the mines grew richer with depth, that the gold was inexhaustible, and that the mining problems were solvable. Investors fell all over themselves scrambling to get in on the ground floor. Buy they did—worthless claims, overpriced mines, undeveloped prospects, and nonexistent holes in the ground owned by liars. They sent out untested mining and milling machinery, accompanied by wild expectations, inexperienced mine captains, and piles of money. Coloradans could hardly believe their luck.
Frank Hall, from his office in the Daily Mining Journal, cautioned: “Those who have the true interest of Colorado at heart, will uniformly frown on all attempts to swindle parties in the East by selling at enormous figures property which has no known existence, outside of the Recorder’s Office.” On April 6, 1864, he returned to the subject:
Never in the history of the country did the excitement of mining speculation run so high as at present. Men are every day receiving windfalls in the shape of receipts from the sales of claims to Eastern capitalists. Demand increases rather than diminishes. . . . This state of things is unhealthy, and therefore can not be permanent.
By late winter of 1863–1864, it became obvious to those not completely bamboozled that something was wrong. The substantial financial outlay from the east was not matched by gold bars coming from the west. The boom came to an end in April 1864. There was no pot of gold at the end of the Colorado rainbow. Faster than it had developed, the gold-mining investment frenzy failed, with cries of anguish and blame from both east and west. The situation amounted to a “slaughter of the innocents,” according to The New York Times (April 6). “Not one in fifty mining ventures ever pays a profit, and not one in twenty ever returns their investment to the stockholders.” Angry name-calling and finger-pointing offered no consolation to those who had lost money and had dreams crushed. They determined not to be burned again by the unprincipled—if not downright criminal—Coloradans. Speculation and greed, combined with desperation and dishonesty, gave Colorado a bad reputation that persisted for more than a decade.12
Colorado mining stock lay dead on the market. Investors shied away, reputations were ruined, and the whole sorry mess left a bitter, devastating heritage for the young territory. Further, the sad episode had solved none of the territory’s mining problems; in fact, it had made the situation worse. The exhilaration and profit-taking produced only short-lived benefits and left behind long-lived grief.
A young Virginia City newspaper reporter, at Nevada’s silver-ribbed Comstock, remarked on the Colorado situation even as he speculated on Comstock “feet,” as they called stock. Samuel Clemens (alias Mark Twain) wrote about his mining-stock ventures in his classic book Roughing It. The lesson Twain learned was this: “There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can afford it, and when he can’t.”
John Wetherbee, in his 1863 volume on the Colorado Territory, summarized these years succinctly: “Like a lottery, the prizes attract.” Many had gambled their futures in that “lottery,” but few indeed claimed any prizes as 1864 slipped away.
4
1864–1869: “Good Times a-Comin”—Someday
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Charles Dickens had published those words just as the Pike’s Peak rush started. His popular A Tale of Two Cities undoubtedly traveled west that summer, packed away in some fifty-niner’s luggage, and as 1865 dawned, Coloradans could apply his description to their own situation. They were certainly glad to leave the year 1864 behind; the “gold bubble,” as the mining-stock frenzy came to be called, had lifted them up and knocked them down in less than a year, but its effects in the territory lasted for the rest of the decade.
The Rocky Mountain News of April 18, 1864, deplored one negative effect of the gold bubble: “The panic in the stock market consequent upon the fall of gold has left Colorado mining property pretty dull. The expenses and delays that have embarrassed the Colorado companies the past season have discouraged many.” The ever-optimistic William Byers, however, added that confidence in the richness of the mines of Colorado was “not shaken.”
Nevertheless, even Byers was worried. In the December 11, 1864, issue of the News, he fretted about there having been so many failures in Colorado mining that “people are now afraid” to invest. The wealth was there, he assured his readers, “but the territory has not fulfilled its glittering promise of two years ago.” Despite forecasting a bright future with the new “separation processes” being built, Byers vacillated; eleven days later, he headlined an article, “The Curse of Colorado,” pleading with mine owners to stop running other mining properties down “to build up” their own.
The boom days of 1859 had become the depressed days of 1864, followed by a disheartened 1865. Byers advised his readers in the October 6 issue of the News that they should not leave Colorado, for “good times were just around the corner.” For most of these “migratory, restless men,” however, both the present and the future looked bleak.
In addition to the crash of the gold-stock schemes, there were problems with the Plains tribes, which had been increasing in intensity since early 1863. The tribes considered these pioneers trespassers and destroyers of their land and game, and they knew what had happened to the Sioux in Minnesota in 1862. There resentments had exploded into a massacre, and the army, after a brief war, drove the Sioux out on the plains to join their cousins. In retaliation, the Sioux and their allies virtually cut off transportation in the summer of 1863. They did it again in 1864, much to the disgust of angered Coloradans. Wagons, trains, and stagecoaches stopped running; stage stations were destroyed; nearby farmers and ranchers fled to Denver; and the cost of living in Colorado skyrocketed. The tension eventually led to the tragedy of Sand Creek in November 1864, resulting in a rare occasion when the Plains Indians waged war in the winter.
But this was still the Colorado Territory, where encouraging news and rumors refused to die out completely. Silver, that alluring coquette that had teased men for decades in these mountains, finally materialized from fleeting hopes and dreams into a reality. (Something had to happen, with Colorado gold being in such disfavor.) Given the fame of the Comstock lode, and its silver millions and millionaires, some thought silver might hold out the best hope for Colorado.
It happened in the upper Clear Creek V
alley, where prospectors had poked around for years. A few promising strikes had been made, and two little settlements—Elizabethtown and Georgetown (which merged in 1866)—snuggled next to each other amid the mountains and trees at valley end. The profitable placers along the lower valley, where some of the original 1859 discoveries had been made, completely overshadowed this lonely district.
Hard-rock mining, not placers, had produced what gold had been found, but it was never enough even to pay operating expenses, let alone yield profits. More than a decade later (January 12, 1878), Georgetown’s Colorado Miner concisely summarized those days, noting that it “was a sickly and despondent camp for a long time. The stamp mill could not save much gold because there was but little gold in the quartz. Provisions were high. It was all outgo and no income.” Late in the summer of 1864, as the aftermath of the gold-stock mania wreaked its havoc, specimens of silver ore were uncovered in and around Georgetown’s mountains. A Central City reporter for the Miners’ Register arrived in the valley in mid-July 1864, just before some rich silver veins were found. He encouragingly discussed the new mill under construction, proclaiming that the lodes “of that locality are very numerous” and that some ores “yield enormous” amounts of silver. The article included one caveat: “The mountains rise abruptly on each side of the stream, and are difficult of ascent.” Even that, however, might prove beneficial for tunneling and intersecting mineral veins. The report concluded that “Georgetown offers very superior inducement for prospectors well as capital miners.”
Once the news leaked beyond the valley, prospectors started to appear as summer turned into fall. The Miners’ Register headlined an October 4 article, “SILVER MINING,” in which it said: “Silver mining is usually considered much more profitable than gold mining.” The writer explained how the ore could be profitably smelted, for “silver ores are complex ores,” as everyone soon found out.
Initially, hopes soared as high as the nearby peaks. Assayer Frank Dibbin predicted that silver assays would “give much better average results than those of Nevada and consequently the silver mines of Colorado are superior to those of Nevada.” If Georgetown surpassed the Comstock, the territory would be blessed indeed. More immediately, Georgetown held the possibility of being the next “bonanza.” As snow ended the mining season, locals had plenty of rich specimens to show, and Cornish miners had arrived. All they needed was capital, better transportation, and machinery. (Sound familiar?)
The next year, as the war ended, Georgetown and silver appeared to be the future of Colorado. Prospectors climbed the mountains, located claims, dug into the rock, organized districts, and lugged high-grade specimens down to the valley for everyone to see and admire. They cited with enthusiasm the old mining adage that the higher the silver strike, the richer the ore—and the prospectors were ranging ever higher. As a 1867 government mineral report stated, “These veins were followed to an altitude previously unknown in mining experience in Colorado.” It continued:
Much excitement was occasioned in Colorado by this discovery [silver], and a large number of prospectors were soon engaged there, making discoveries and preemptions under the liberal laws of the Territory, which gave undisputed possession to discoverers who should have their claims recorded in the county office, after making the developments and improvements required by law1.
Suddenly the future shone bright again. With the Comstock fading into borrasca rather than bonanza, Georgetown briefly took center stage—and once again reality struck the promising district. It was the same old story: The ore near the surface was easy to work, but the farther and deeper the miners dug, the more complex the mining became. As with gold, the milling and smelting methods had to deal with “refractory” ores.
Like their neighbors, Georgetown miners awaited the development of a reliable, cost-efficient process that would allow their ore to become profitable by saving a high percentage of gold, silver, or both. Hopes rose briefly when Lorenzo Bowman, who headed “a party of colored prospectors” in the area back in 1864, revealed that he had had experience in Missouri with lead mining and smelting. He helped devise a solution based on heating the ore in furnaces. Sadly, the method failed with ore from deeper mines. Bowman had no better luck with a Scotch hearth smelting operation.
Meanwhile, the country’s leading mining journal, the American Journal of Mining (AJM), kept its readers informed about developments. “That silver interests of Colorado are entitled to no little attention in mining circles is a fact now being rapidly established” (“The Silver Mines of Colorado,” February 2, 1867). “Your readers will be justified in drawing the most flattering conclusions as to their future, from the daily growing testimony labor is affording as to their value. To be sure capital is needed . . . . Smelting is the key to success” (“The Silver Mines of Colorado,” June 1, 1867). “The silver region is being rapidly developed. Here too is seen the repetition of the old folly, a mill costing $50,000 with no mine to give it ore” (October 3, 1868).
Finally, in an editorial again titled, “The Silver Mines of Colorado,” in the April 24, 1869, issue, the editor advised readers that Colorado’s silver district likely had a solid basis “upon which in the course of time a prosperous industry will be built up.” He wryly noted, though, “But with the usual half shrewd, half sanguine manner of western mining communities, our friends in and about Georgetown are talking of their prospects more largely than the facts will warrant.” In fact, many expected too much too soon. The Rocky Mountain News gushed, on June 16, 1868: “It is a wonder to us that there is not a rush from every quarter of Colorado at least to the silver region of Georgetown. The lodes there are proving marvelously rich.”
The AJM editorial warned Coloradans to stop blaming eastern capitalists for their troubles: “We are not such fools as we used to be.” The writer advised that it “is necessary to open and work good veins” and “get your ore,” and then capital will come. The editor’s final comment is telling: “We hope to chronicle during the present year for the territory of Colorado, not a new speculative excitement, but a sound and permanent progress.”
An old Mexican proverb cautions, “It takes two years to make a mine.” It does take time to develop mines, improve transportation, and find a profitable smelting method or methods. However, impatient Americans, both owners and investors, wanted silver profits immediately. So, Georgetown languished.2
In 1865 and the following years, silver “discoveries” kept popping up, always teasing but seldom producing. Some reports came from areas previously reported to have silver, such as the Snake River and Ten Mile regions. Others were new, such as in the valleys above Georgetown and in Boulder County. Rumors—always rumors—placed silver almost everywhere in the territory. Byers boosted silver as he had previously touted gold. The Rocky Mountain News (March 24, 1869) tried to persuade readers that the amount of silver produced that month “ought to convince our Eastern friends that there is silver in the Colorado Mines.”
By mid-1869, though, gloomy reality settled over the Clear Creek Valley. Placers no longer produced what they once had, and the silver mines awaited the savior of smelting at a reasonable cost. This moved the Colorado Miner (July 2) to observe that while passing from Georgetown to Idaho Springs, the traveler would see a “great many costly monuments.”
These “compliments” to the dead will not be found to resemble marble, nor nothing grand and imperishable, but rather will they be found after the pattern of ruined and ruinous mills, surrounded by old rusty machinery, and decked with scattered fortunes.
The monuments, the author continued sarcastically, were “erected years ago by men who had no more idea” of what to do “than the man in the moon has of what is on going in the Georgetown police court room.”
United States Commissioner of Mining Statistics Rossiter Raymond blamed much of the problem on “eastern capitalists who did not accomplish anything.” His 1869 Georgetown report also pointed the finger at “tons of worthless machinery,” “large sums . .
. paid for undeveloped property,” and “large mills built before the mines were able to supply them.” Then he took a pointed swipe at “agents, generally incompetent and without experience in the business.”3
Despite such pessimism toward Colorado silver mining, as the decade turned Georgetown still held the key to success, with most of the mines and the production that had so far been achieved. Nevertheless, everyone awaited a successful smelting operation.
Silver mining districts were not alone in their melancholy situation. Ovando Hollister painted a depressing picture of Oro City, the once “golden star” of 1861. He noted truthfully that “nothing, indeed, can be more deceiving or ephemeral than the feverish prosperity of a placer mining country.” Of California Gulch and Oro City, he wrote graphically:
The relics of former life and business—old boots and clothes, cooking utensils, rude house furniture, tin cans, gold pans, worn-out shovels and picks and the remains of toms, half buried sluices and riffle boxes, dirt-roofed log cabins tumbling down and the country turned inside out and disguised with rubbish of every description, are most disagreeably abundant and suggestive.
His prophetic hope was that “a new and better and more permanent life be founded upon these quartz deposits, thus fulfilling that Scripture which says ‘the last shall be first.’”4
Hollister could have said the same of several score of once-promising and prospering placer camps scattered along the Blue and other rivers, even as far away as the San Juans. These relics of a “bygone time” spoke volumes about men’s hopes, dreams, and disappointments.
The American Journal of Mining again joined in the 1869 condemnation, noting that a hole “20–30 feet in the ground” does not make a mine. With the Georgetown folk, they blamed eastern capitalists for letting those properties remain unworked or only marginally active. All, however, appeared to believe that a “prosperous” industry would soon bedrock that county.