The Trail of Gold and Silver

by Duane A. Smith

  The strikes at Telluride and Cripple Creek cost the WFM everything it had previously gained. Its outspoken leaders had pushed too hard and too fast, converting strikes for the improvement of miners’ wages and working conditions into brutal struggles for recognition and power. The owners’ vicious responses, along with exceedingly questionable actions by Peabody, Bell, and Wells, won the war. In the end, though, there were only losers, including the state, state government, and the public’s perception of this western commonwealth.

  Colorado now had a reactionary image, and unionism had suffered a serious setback, but the miners lost the most. Not only did they have a radical, un-American reputation, having been made villains in the public eye, but they were also firmly trapped under the thumb of management. They were not even free to work: They had to have cards to show they were not in the union. This requirement persisted long after the strikes; in 1912, membership in the Miners’ Protective Association was still mandatory in Cripple Creek. Information on each miner included his age, marital status, length of time working in the district, and birthplace. The owners? They suffered the least, except for lost profits and an image problem—which probably did not bother them in the least.

  Despite the violence that came and went, in declining or less prosperous districts mining continued much as it had for decades. In the still-prospering districts, though, mining changed more than it had in years. Electricity powered lights, drills, pumps, engines, and cages that moved up and down shafts; it warmed doghouses and propelled ore trains. Trucks supplanted mule and burro trains and even the once-omnipotent railroads. Where the roads were good, it was easier and more convenient to transport ore to mills by truck than by rail. In the next few years, carbide lamps took the place of candles, and the once-standard cloth cap, hardened by pitch or some other substance to provide a little protection, was replaced by the hard hat. Some mines had trained rescue crews in case of an emergency. Nevertheless, even with all these improvements, mining still remained a skilled, difficult, and dangerous occupation.

  No other mining district in Colorado could match Cripple Creek and the San Juans in production; only the declining Lake County even came close. Much of Colorado mining mirrored Carroll Coberly’s experiences at Ashcroft, nearly a ghost town even then. He went to work in the Montezuma Mine in 1906, and his first job was to clean out a tunnel that had been blocked by ice. It was a “hard miserable job,” with the men coming out at night “wet to the waist.”

  The next summer, a new, inexperienced manager built a mill at the “wrong place,” a location where avalanches were common. In October he “got scared” and “closed everything down.” By then the company was broke, a new company took over, and Coberly became superintendent. For the next five years, snow and snow slides continued to hamper operations, taking out the boarding house, tram towers, and other buildings. The mine never paid, but Coberly was convinced it would have had the mill been located in a spot “safe from snow slides.”7

  Even as corporate mining began its transition to the modern age, expectant prospectors still took to the mountains, despite the tremendously long odds against finding anything valuable. To help the neophyte, books such as The ABC of Mining (1898) included chapters on prospecting, mining, floating a company, and other such necessities. The ABC offered tips on camp life, such as: “The working man found out long ago that pork and beans suits him nicely”; “the dictates of fashion [are] unheard [of] on the mountain side, and beneath the pines, dress resolves itself into a mere question of warmth and comfort”; and “a camp kit of cooking utensils often begins and ends with a frying-pan and tin kettle.”8

  Such optimism lent a glimmer of hope to Leadville. Its gold belt had kept it in the news early in the century, but silver—even in the paltry range of fifty to sixty cents an ounce—still remained its main claim to fame. Annual production stayed at the $1 million-plus level into the 1920s. Both operator-owned companies and lessees remained active in the district, but there and elsewhere, increased leasing indicated that a district was past its prime. As The Mining Investor (September 16, 1907) reported: “The most interesting sort of prospecting is in progress at this time in various sections of the Leadville district, Fryer hill and the downtown section coming in for their share. There is actually more ore in sight today in Leadville, through careful recent development, than at any time in the history of the camp.” The article continued: “But a new era is dawning for Fryer Hill. Its development at depth is inevitable. Leadville in other sections has proved rich at depth, and is now producing to the second contact, which has been found at depths ranging from 1,000 to 1,400 feet.” Colorado miners had lived on such expectations and guesses since the Pike’s Peak rush nearly fifty years earlier.

  Leadville was not the only district living on hope. Gunnison County, for instance, had barely caused a ripple, except for Ohio City. There, the Gold Brick District, with its Gold Links Mine, briefly produced a fair amount of gold. Also, Gold Creek near Ohio City boosted the county’s gold production to more than $100,000 each year from 1908 through 1912. That had happened only eight times in more than sixty years of mining in the county.

  Dorchester, on the Taylor River, contributed a brief boom after 1900, being hailed as the “coming mining camp.”9 The optimism had some basis, as nearby mines produced well into the century’s second decade, but thereafter the low price of silver and the cost of transporting ore to Aspen drove the district into a downward spiral.

  Most of the excitement in the Gunnison “Gold Belt” occurred in the 1890s, but the Iris Mine managed to hold on into the new century. Part of the treasure was just across the county line in Saguache County. The Cochetopa Gold Belt (August 23, 1895) excitedly described it as “a great big free milling proposition,” worked by three mines with steam plants and “two stamp mills of ten stamps each.” Yet, by 1903, the district was finished, every mine had closed, and the camp verged on ghost-town status.

  More representative of what was happening was Sillsville in the southeastern part of the county. In 1903, Sillsville boasted a camp and nearby mines, of which the Maple Leaf was the best. However, the higher-grade surface ore quickly pinched out, and the miners and companies departed as rapidly as they had come. The district peaked, the boom became a bust, and Sillsville disappeared from the newspapers.

  Gunnison County’s production was extremely uneven in the years from 1900 to 1920. It produced $124,676 in gold in 1912 and $9,500 the next year. By the first year of the “Great War,” 1917, the total had dropped to $6,635. Suddenly, Gunnison “revived” from 1919 into the early1920s, with silver production in the $20,000 to $30,000 range and gold jumping to a high of $30,000. At best, though, those total amounts were only a pale reflection of the county’s great silver years back in the 1880s.

  Clear Creek County completed the transformation it had begun earlier. Gold production in lower Clear Creek surpassed silver in upper Clear Creek starting in 1902, thanks to the gold mines around Idaho Springs. Annual gold production had been in the $400,000-$700,000 range for a decade before it surpassed silver, and it remained in that range for more than another decade. Sadly, even gold was not the savior the locals had hoped for. The Georgetown Courier (January 10, 1920) depressingly summarized what had happened: “The mills at Idaho Springs were not active in 1919, for the Argo and Jackson were closed, and the Hudson and Newton were operated only on part capacity.”

  Georgetown, Silver Plume, and Idaho Springs newspapers, regardless of the year and situation, remained stubbornly optimistic, as these excerpts illustrate: “The Old Terrible mine is once more the scene of great activity.” “Several hundred men are at work in the mines and what insures the great growing prosperity of the place is that nearly all the men are actually engaged in producing pay ore.” “The Colorado Central Mining company has so far perfected its pans that work from now on will be vigorously pushed, and within the next sixty days the company expects to have in the neighborhood of 100 men employed.” “The Georgetown tunnel is
within about 200 feet of the Cliff lode which produced handsomely in early days from surface workings.” “This great property which has been idle for seven or eight years is about to be reopened.”

  Not all the reports were so encouraging and boosting of local self-confidence. “The Colorado Central mine, which has been a boon to Georgetown for several years has suspended operations, or rather, operations were forced to be suspend by the employees quitting.” “The aerial tramway to Sunset Peak has been sold as junk to Denver parties.” “With the exception of the work [done by Mr. Winter,] all the properties lying between the Colorado Central and the Waldorf are dormant.”10 There were fewer of these sobering articles, and their coverage was not as wide, but they told the underlying truth about what was happening in the county.

  Another indication of the decline in Clear Creek County appeared in the 1913 Colorado State Business Directory. In Georgetown, once the glittering “Silver Queen,” few people in town were directly connected to mining. They included employees of the headquarters of seven mining companies and one tunneling company, three mining engineers, and one individual who simply listed “mining.” Nobody gave “miner” as an occupation.

  In contrast, San Juan mining, which featured gold production, was in full flower. Ouray’s Camp Bird and Telluride’s Liberty Bell and Smuggler-Union became famous. Telluride bounced back quickly after the strike. The Engineering and Mining Journal (August 15, 1908) reported that it was booming, with mines and mills running at “full capacity” and more men employed in the district “than for many years past.” The year before, the Journal (August 14) had described how Silverton “has really taken on new life.” Poor Rico had not, however. George Backus wrote Harriet when he visited the town, “Rico is a deserted, broken down mining camp.” He might have added that its production had sunk to well under $100,000.

  Meanwhile, lawsuits—the trouble that had hit so many mines over the years—engulfed the San Juans. The Smuggler-Union and Liberty Bell went to court over issues of trespass and ore removal, all of which, once more, involved the infamous apex question. The Smuggler won, but at the cost of large amounts of money and two years of litigation.

  There would be one more old-style excitement: Cave Basin northeast of Durango. In 1913–1916, a mini-frenzy mounted; the Durango Weekly Herald (March 26, 1914) said that it “promises to be one of the best in the state.” Durango and Bayfield fought to be the “gateway” to the “bonanza,” while prospectors, miners, and investors scurried thither. It all came to nothing: The Cave Basin miners never hit enough pay dirt to move their “mines” beyond mere prospects. It was soon pushed out of the papers by the outbreak of World War I in Europe.

  President Woodrow Wilson had hoped that the United States could remain neutral, but that proved impossible. As America’s entry into the war neared, the San Juans slowed down. Hard-pressed England required its citizens to bring money from foreign investments home. That dried up a major source of operational and investment funds that had kept the district going for the past quarter of a century.

  The World War I era marked the end of large-scale gold mining in Colorado for nearly a century. It dropped from more than $21 million in production in 1915 to $12 million in 1917—a trend that continued downward in the years thereafter. Silver mining enjoyed a revival, jumping from $3 million to $7 million annually during the same years—interestingly, a high percentage of that was gained as a byproduct of mining for other minerals. Given the paucity of financial resources, mining in those days was more frequently carried on by smaller companies and crews.

  To see the trend, one need only examine the mining inspector’s reports from the 1920s in declining Clear Creek County. The Glasgow Mine in 1924 had one man and “at times two men employed”; the Fenton Mine (1928) employed five men; Sussex Lode (1920) was leased; East Butte was leased; High Grade Group employed two men; and the Atlas Tunnel (1926) had two men employed. Production of these properties was described as “none,” “no available ore in sight,” “all work in line of development,” “the vein has not been intersected yet,” “some ore available,” and “no ore in sight”—not a very encouraging summary, but typical of this county and others in the 1920s.

  Where, then, did county production come from? The leased Gold Belt Mine employed nine men underground and on the surface and operated almost the entire year in 1923. Ore averaged eighty-three ounces of silver and a trace of gold to the ton, along with lead. In fact, it was the production of base metals that kept many of the precious-metal mines operating in Clear Creek County and throughout Colorado. These commodities were far less romantic than gold and silver, but crucial to a mine’s production and profitability.11 As the Georgetown Courier of January 10, 1920, explained in summarizing 1919 mining in the county, “In Clear Creek County the low price of lead and zinc closed the principal producing mines at Silver Plume in May 1919, and thus cut off the usual large silver contribution from that camp.” That held true for every district in the county where mines were still operating.

  Old-timers Boulder and Gilpin Counties followed the same general pattern. Gilpin struggled to maintain $50,000 in annual gold and silver production by the mid-1920s. Boulder County, where mining gradually declined as well, actually managed to pull even with its longtime neighbor and rival. Throughout the two counties, where the mining industry had once been dominant, only traces of it remained.

  The industry blamed some of its problems on the lack of smelters. By 1927, only the Durango and Leadville smelters remained in operation. Plants in Denver, Salida, and Pueblo were being closed and dismantled, meaning that only counties “immediately contiguous to the two operating plants” could maintain profitable production with low-grade ore. That situation, the Colorado Annual Report (1927) of the Colorado Bureau of Mines stated, had a “far more disastrous effect on the mining industry than all the ill effects arising out of the postwar depression.”

  Gold fever never went completely extinct, though. In 1922, interest suddenly revived in the “old” Hahn’s Peak, which had been promising much but producing little since the 1870s. “There is gold in the Hahn’s Peak district. Veins of it, lodes of it—and a mother lode,” declared the opening paragraph of an article in the Mountain States Mineral Age. Despite cautioning that the gold might be under 250 feet of shale, the article forecast that “when it is found it will mean, in all probability, another Cripple Creek” and insisted that it was “not a wildcat mining” region.12 Unfortunately, the article’s fear that the gold “may never be found” proved entirely correct.

  Dredging also raised some people’s hopes. At one time or another, dredges working rivers and streams operated in Park, Gilpin, Costilla, Routt, and Summit Counties. A little dredge even operated on the Animas River, though it dug deeper into investors’ pocketbooks than into the river bottom. Between 1898 and 1942, nine dredges were operated at various times by several companies along the Blue and Swan Rivers. They even clanked into Breckenridge. As their buckets tore up the water bottom, they could be heard for miles, or as Alaskan poet Robert Service described it, “turning round a bend I heard a roar.”

  It wallowed in its water-bed; it burrowed, heaved and swung;

  It gnawed its way ahead with grunts and signs;

  Its bill of fare was rock and sand . . .13

  While “it glares around with fierce electric eyes,” the dredge “looked like some great monster in the gloom.” “Full fifty buckets crammed its maw,” bringing up the gravel.

  However, conditions had to be exactly right to sustain profitable dredging operations. In most places, high hopes and expectations were dashed on the rocks of reality—in this case, large boulders in the streams. Rocks of all kinds shot costs beyond estimates nearly everywhere.

  Summit County and Breckenridge saw success in 1902 when, in a short five-month season, the American Dredging Company worked profitably on the Swan River, reportedly recovering more than $100,000 in gold. On the Blue River, the Gold Pan Company finally reached bedrock f
orty feet below the surface, but encountered large boulders that hampered operations. The company also conducted hydraulic operations on its nearly 1,700-acre property. It had a large dumping ground for tailings, but people downstream still encountered muddy waste tailings floating by. The Engineering and Mining Journal (December 11, 1909) concluded that hydraulic mining in the Breckenridge district “has never been successful.”

  By 1909, three dredges were operating in the area. The amount of gold recovered varied considerably from year to year: from $100,000 to $600,000, depending on the length of the season, the water available, and the amount of gold recovered. The dredges moved a lot of gravel per day, leaving the familiar trail behind. The Engineering and Mining Journal (February 8, 1913) reported that a dredge could handle 3,000-6,000 cubic yards per day at a cost of five cents per yard. That was the benefit of a dredge working low-grade deposits: high volume at low cost. Thanks to its dredges, Summit County had some of its best years in gold production just before the United States entered World War I in 1917.

  Dredges, though, were frustratingly prone to regular breakdowns, and fires burned more than one boat. Some particularly ill-fated boats burned twice. Lawsuits, debts, angry creditors, disgusted stockholders, lack of funds, and failed hopes trailed the dredges after World War I. The Depression years were even worse, and by the 1940s Colorado’s dredging era was over.

  After digging into the valleys to depths of sixty feet or more, dredges also left an environmental mess along the streams for future generations. The earlier era saw it quite differently, though; as the Summit County Journal had stated back on December 9, 1899: “A debt of gratitude we will never be able to pay, [dredging] transformed Swan River from a worthless barren wilderness to scenes of commercial and industrial activity, the like of which was never dreamed of, three years ago.” Locals tended to agree with a dredge boat superintendent who was quoted as saying, “Industry is always to be preferred to scenic beauty.”