Mining-Related Properties
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1623 MINING-RELATED PROPERTIES IN THE COLORADO STATE REGISTER OF HISTORIC PROPERTIES OFFICE OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORIC PRESERVATION COLORADO HISTORICAL SOCIETY New Address Effective April 2010 1560 Broadway, Suite 400 Denver, CO 80202 MMIINNIINNGG--RREELLAATTEEDD PPRROOPPEERRTTIIEESS IN THE COLORADO STATE REGISTER OF HISTORIC PROPERTIES Includes Colorado properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places Third Edition Updated Through December 1, 2006 Prepared by Lisa Alder ©2006 Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation Colorado Historical Society 1300 Broadway Denver Colorado 80203 www.coloradohistory-oahp.org The Colorado State Register of Historic Properties is a program of the Colorado Historical Society. Founded in 1879, the Colorado Historical Society brings the unique character of Colorado's past to more than a million people each year through historical museums and highway markers, exhibitions, manuscript and photograph collections, popular and scholarly publications, historical and archaeological preservation services, and educational programs for children and adults. The Society collects, preserves, and interprets the history of Colorado for present and future generations. A nonprofit agency with its own membership, the Society is also a state institution located within Colorado's Department of Higher Education The Colorado Historical Society operates twelve historic sites and museums at ten locations around the state, including the Colorado History Museum in Denver. Each has its own regional character and thematic focus - from the days of the fur trade along the South Platte and Arkansas Rivers to early Hispanic life and settlement in southern Colorado, the Ute Indians of the Western Slope, the Clear Creek gold rush, the Leadville silver boom, and the growth of Denver. The Society's collections - protected, conserved, and held in trust for all of Colorado's people - contain more than 125,000 artifacts and eight million historical documents, including books, maps, photographs, diaries, and newspapers. From these historical treasures and tools of knowledge, we prepare exhibitions, publications, and educational programs - and we offer a full range of services for researchers through the Society's Stephen H. Hart Library. Historians, archaeologists, and preservationists of all kinds may also explore the vast database of Colorado's visible past - and link to other preservation resources - through the Office of Archaeology & Historic Preservation. Whether for business or pleasure, many of the Society's statewide facilities offer excellent, history-rich settings for special events. The activity that is the subject of this material has been financed in part with Federal funds from the National Historic Preservation Act, administered by the National Park Service, U.S Dept. of the Interior and for the Colorado Historical Society. However, the contents and opinions do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Dept. of the Interior or the Society, nor does the mention of trade names or commercial products constitute an endorsement or recommendation by the Department of the Interior or the Society. This program receives Federal funds from the National Park Service; Regulations of the U.S. Department of the Interior strictly prohibit unlawful discrimination in departmental Federally-assisted programs on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, or handicap. Any person who believes he or she has been discriminated against in any program, activity, or facility operated by a recipient of Federal assistance should write to: Director, Equal Opportunity Program, U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1849 C Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20240. This activity was also partially funded by the State Historical Fund, a program of the Colorado Historical Society. Cover Photograph Headframes of the Independence and other mines in Victor National Register of Historic Places ining was far and away the most the earliest evolved from the work of James significant industry in nineteenth-and Purcell, a trapper out of St. Louis. Around 1800, he M early twentieth-century Colorado and found gold in what is today South Park, in central has remained important since that time. Colorado, but fled the Rockies to escape hostile The Pike’s Peak Gold Rush brought unprecedented Indians. The rumors and unconfirmed reports numbers of people in the region and that inurn led spread by trappers and traders about gold in the to powerful social, economic, and political mountains formed part of the basis that eventually changed that brought about eh creation of led to mining development decades later. Colorado Territory in 1861, culminating in the admittance of Coloration to the Union in 1876. As the California Rush mounted in the Mining in all its phases remained the great engine very late 1840s and early 1850s, thousands of of the Colorado economy until the early twentieth Argonauts hurried west of the various trail systems century. The industry also contributed to from the Missouri-Mississippi Valley area. Among significant technological advances and that, the most important was the Santa Fe Trail. Would- combined with the professional studies of all be miners followed it west to around present-day aspects of the industry, had powerful ramifications Pueblo, then turned north to follow Fountain Creek in the industry’s global expansion in both the to the future site of Colorado Springs. Throughout nineteenth and twentieth centuries. the 1850s miners bound for California made an uncounted number of gold discoveries along Though sometimes derided as a “mom and Cherry Creek, at its junction with the South Platte pop” industry and one of quaint ruins, mineral River, and over locations in the general vicinity. development in the Centennial State both reflected Findings like this added to the unconfirmed and contributed to the dramatic industrial and accounts the fur trappers had left behind, and so technological advances of the late nineteenth and the rumors of gold at “Pike’s Peak” continued to twentieth centuries. Moreover, the powerful grow. In June of 1858 a small mining party found a advance of industrial metal mining, coupled with substantial deposit of placer gold at the junction of immense coal production, contributed immeasura- Cherry Creek and the South Platte. With the bly to state, national, and international develop- Midwestern economy still in the throes of ment. recession caused by the nationwide economic panic of 1857, people proclaimed what was in Nobody knows who made the first reality an insignificant discovery as the second discover of gold and silver in Colorado. The coming of the California Gold Rush. The Pike’s earliest record dates to the 1760s, probably 1765, Peak Gold Rush was on! when the Spanish explored Juan Maria de Rivera led a party in the San Juan Mountains searching for The new Rush began to take shape in the a non-desert route from Santa Fe to California. In fall of 1858. The first “boomers” – eventually the 1860s and 1870s, American miners may have known as “58ers”- had begun to stream in, often in found evidence of Spanish efforts, but that ones and twos, and sometimes in small groups. The evidence was lost in new development. If the spread out across the High Plains searching for Spanish miners did indeed recover gold, silver, or gold and creating the region’s first mining camps, other metals from ore, productions must have been towns and townsites; among them Montana City, small and inconsequential. It produced no rush or St. Charles, and Auraria City along the banks of permanent settlement, but probably initiated or Cherry Creek, Arapahoe (no longer is existence) contributed to the rumors of gold in the Rocky off toward the future “Golden City” (now Golden), Mountain region. and “Boulder City” (now Boulder), at the site of large red boulders where Boulder Creek enters the Fur trappers in search of beaver began Plains from the mountains. There were others, too, pushing into the Rocky Mountains toward the end for the most part log towns and tent cities. All of of the eighteenth century, and their work in the these first developments, however, rested more on cold remote waters led to gold discoveries. Perhaps hope then anything else. Directory of Mining-Related Properties 1 In the late winter and early spring of 1859, than anything else, shaft houses and headframes the “59ers” began arriving in “Denver City” (now became symbolic of mining areas. Denver) and other incipient towns only to confront the reality –there was little gold at the site of these By the 1860s, the Gold Rush had largely “diggings”. News of discoveries in the High Plains come to an end. So as the placer era ended also, so, burst and many of the ‘59ers surged into the too, did the Rush per se-a phenomenon based mountains – some bound for the site of the largely on placering. By the early 1860s, Gregory Diggings and others for the site of the Colorado’s mining industry was in the transition to Jackson Diggings. What this meant was that during the hardrock era. The rest was the abandonment of the spring and summer, a group of new mining many of the original placers that had produced and towns emerged at the site of these placer deposits: sustained the Rush along with many of the Black Hawk, Central City, and Nevadaville in the associated camps and towns. As yields of gold hills of the Gregory Diggings (all of them located plunged, the surging inflation of the conflict made in what would become Gilpin County). As placer many people clamor for gold or shares in gold- mining pushed its way toward the central Rockies, mining companies. The sale of stock in Colorado there was a significant changed on the High Plains. mining companies in 1863 produced a boom in The original mining camps of Auraria City and what many investors thought were gilt-edged Denver City – small towns really – grew securities, hardly realizing that many companies dramatically, but not as mining communities per had little in proven reserves or had found se.