Historic Photos of Colorado Mining

By Ed Raines

In 1859, 100,000 folks started the journey to the Pikes Peak goldfields, but only 50,000 completed the trip. An additional 25,000 soon gave up and went back home. The remainder not only brought statehood to the central Rocky Mountains, but they also brought the industrial world to isolated areas in the high mountains, where they mined mineral deposits for gold, silver, lead, zinc, and copper, among others.

This book, Historic Photos of Colorado Mining, provides an introduction to Colorado's mining history through photographs from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Accompanying captions provide specific contexts for the photos and tell the story of the prospectors, miners, engineers, teamsters, railroaders, and townspeople who served as entrepreneurs and workers in industrializing the Colorado Rocky Mountains.

Many ruins from the mining days are now recognized as historic landmarks. But the stories behind the ruins are often as fascinating as the ruins themselves—the struggle to survive and thrive in the wilderness is always a compelling tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: Oct 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781618583871

Book preview

HISTORIC PHOTOS OF

COLORADO MINING

TEXT AND CAPTIONS BY ED RAINES

When this photograph was taken of the Gregory gold vein, almost 40 years had passed since its 1859 discovery. A railroad served the district; various structures had been built and torn down; and the richest, near-surface portion of the vein had been completely depleted, or mined out, leaving the open cut. The Gregory-Bobtail vein system produced about $20,000,000 (gold values when mined) between 1859 and 1959.

HISTORIC PHOTOS OF

COLORADO MINING

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Historic Photos of Colorado Mining

Copyright © 2009 Turner Publishing Company

All rights reserved.

This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009922625

ISBN: 978-1-59652-535-1

Printed in China

09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16—0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PREFACE

THE GOLD RUSH AND THE INITIAL MINING EFFORT (1859–1895)

SILVER, TOO! (1867–1895)

UNDERGROUND HARDROCK MINING (1859–1920)

THE SAN JUANS (1871–1920)

THE LAST TWO RUSHES (1889–1920)

MINING FOR INDUSTRY (1893–1920)

NOTES ON THE PHOTOGRAPHS

The Ice Palace was a regular sightseeing stop on the Argentine Central Railroad’s McClellan Mountain route. Here, a tourist examines an abandoned mine tunnel encrusted with a beautiful growth of sublimated ice crystals.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This volume, Historic Photos of Colorado Mining, is the result of the cooperation and efforts of many individuals, organizations, and corporations. It is with great thanks that we acknowledge the valuable contribution of the following for their generous support:

The Colorado Historical Society

Colorado School of Mines Arthur Lakes Library

Colorado School of Mines Geology Museum

The Denver Public Library

The Library of Congress

We would also like to thank Silvia Pettem for her valuable contributions and assistance in making this work possible.

With the exception of touching up imperfections that have accrued with the passage of time and cropping where necessary, no changes have been made. The focus and clarity of many images is limited to the technology and the ability of the photographer at the time they were taken.

PREFACE

My parents, both Texans, met in Estes Park, Colorado, in the late 1920s. Throughout the rest of their lives, they came to Colorado almost every year. After my fourth birthday, they brought me with them. That’s what Texans did in the pre-air-conditioner summer days of 95- to 105-degree heat: they got in their cars and drove two days in that heat so they could relax in the mountains for a few weeks, before they had to climb back in their cars and drive through that heat again. It was worth it, a thousand times over.

When we came to Colorado, we always brought along Muriel Sibell Wolle’s Stampede to Timberline. As we drove from one old mining town to another, Mom would read aloud Mrs. Wolle’s descriptions and stories of the place where we were headed. By the time that I was 18, I had visited 80 percent of those old mining areas that Mrs. Wolle described. And I had started a hobby.

Mom and Dad were avid fishermen. At the age of nine or ten, while standing alongside some mountain stream, I decided that I was not. I was bored stiff and I wasn’t going to fish anymore. So I picked up some rocks and began to work on my curve ball. I threw rocks at all the surrounding trees and retired by the side. Before the next inning could start, my mind had shifted scenes, and I was lobbing hand grenades at some imagined enemy. I discovered that if I threw my grenades into the stream, the ensuing splash would approximate the explosion that my imagination required. Mom’s words brought me back from the Battle of the Bulge. Ed, you are ruining the fishing. Why don’t you look around and see how many different kinds of rocks you can find? Make a collection and we can identify them. So I did. And I still collect rocks. I don’t fish.

Every place that we went in Colorado had rocks, and in lots of those places people have mined them. I knew, because Mrs. Wolle had told me so. So if we went someplace where silver was mined, I tried to collect silver ore, and the same with gold, zinc, lead, tungsten, et cetera. I soon learned that it was difficult for a beginner to find good rocks.

Then in my sixteenth summer, I was fortunate enough to meet Stan Noga, a prospector and the owner of a small rock shop near Buena Vista, Colorado. Stan took me collecting, explained that mineralogy was a science, and introduced me to the literature of geology, mineralogy, and mining. I began to read whatever I could find (and understand) that would tell me where to look. I was hooked.

Later, when I studied geology in college, a graduate student told me that there was a day that every geologist could look back and say that on that day, he became a geologist. He was right; mine came when I discovered that, from cover to cover, I could read and understand Samuel Franklin Emmons’s U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 148, The Geology of the Leadville Mining District, Colorado. I also read the USGS papers, bulletins, monographs, and annual reports on Cripple Creek, Breckenridge, Central City, Georgetown, Lake City, Creede, Silverton, Telluride, Bonanza, and lots of others. My studies, work, and collecting have taken me to