The Trail of Gold and Silver: Mining in Colorado, 1859-2009

Prologue

 “Gold! Gold in the Pike’s Peak Country,” shouted newspapers throughout the Midwest in the late summer and fall of 1858. The news spread over a country still stirred by the tremendous excitement of the California gold rush a decade earlier. Wonder of wonders, had it happened again? Trapped in the worst depression in living memory, many Americans hoped against hope that it had. It would take nearly a year to sort the rumors from the reality. The golden saga, though, did not begin here. Rumors of mineral wealth in the area dated back almost to Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World in 1492. Teased by finding a little gold, the Spaniards in Central and South America hit the bonanza in the early sixteenth century, when they conquered the astoundingly wealthy Inca and Aztec empires. Lured by stories of even more fabulous wealth in the “Seven Cities of Cibola,” with their streets of gold and tinkling silver bells, Francisco Vazquez de Coronado led an expedition northward up the Rio Grande to the “Tierra Nueva.” This wandering, Prologue GOLD! GOLD!! GOLD!!! GOLD!!!! —Kansas Weekly Press, September 4, 1858 Prologue  desperate search of 1540–1542 turned up neither gold nor silver, and the discouraged Spaniards eventually trudged back to Mexico. Time eventually obscured the reality of what Coronado had seen and endured;agenerationslippedawaybeforeoldstoriesof mythicalgoldbrought the ever-eager Spaniards back to the upper Rio Grande country. By the early 1580s, they were venturing northward, searching for “mines.” Despite reports of “extremely rich veins, all containing silver deposits,” no rich mines were found and no rush developed. Always hopeful, despite a notable lack of success, they did not give up. Next came Juan de Oñate and, with him, permanent settlement in 1598. Except for the twelve years following the Pueblo revolt of 1680, a permanent European colony—Nueva Mexico—persisted on the lonely northern fringe of Spain’s New World empire. However, the colony struggled to survive. No new golden or silver kingdoms were found, and little evidence of precious metals was uncovered locally. Nevertheless, the dreams and stories of wealth never flickered out completely. Sometime in the mid-seventeenth century, someone ventured across the miles—from Albuquerque or Taos or Santa Fe or places in between—toward the mountains to the north. There they apparently found deposits of placer gold in the streams, and perhaps outcroppings of minerals on the mountainsides . They also found that the indigenous inhabitants, the Utes, were not terribly happy about this incursion into their domain; the Utes posed a threat to every intruder. No frenzied media reports of gold from the isolated, scattered settlements along the Rio Grande tempted locals northward to make their fortunes. Only a few New Mexicans and Spanish officials knew about those rumors. In contrast, the French, in the Midwest and the St. Lawrence Valley, had beenhearingrumorsof “richmines”intheRockyMountainsforyears.In1702, a party left Illinois to see mines the Indians had told them about; this venture was followed in 1723 by a report of copper and silver mines. Sometime after 1739, a group journeyed westward but apparently failed to find any treasure. A 1758 map vaguely located a purported gold mine on the Arkansas River. Not to be outdone, the rival English claimed that the country to the west was “full of mines.” Some of these ambiguous, exaggerated reports probably rested on precariously little fact, but the ever-present hopes and rumors spawned legends of lost mines, buried gold, and a lone survivor of an Indian attack who had carried a cryptic map back to the settlements and then promptly died before furnishing any further information. These treasure tales echoed down the decades, teasing and tempting each new generation. Prologue  The Spanish settlers, who lived closer to the locus of the legends, had by no means abandoned their quest. Juan Maria Antonio Rivera led two 1765 expeditions into the rugged, high La Plata and San Juan mountains, searching particularly on the first one to meet a Ute to guide him to a reputed silver deposit. A Ute, Wolfhide, had appeared earlier in Santa Fe with wire silver ore, and the governor was determined to find the source. So out went Rivera—and found his prey elusive, although he skirted and perhaps probed both the San Juan and La Plata mountains. He eventually reached the Gunnison River before returning to Santa Fe. Following Rivera’s expedition, New Mexicans apparently prospected and...