Georgetown, Colorado, and the Evolution of Western American Silver Milling and Metallurgy, 1864-1896
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The Ingenious Community: Georgetown, Colorado, and the Evolution of Western American Silver Milling and Metallurgy, 1864-1896 By Robert L. Spude N ational Park Service, Santa Fe n 1870, U.S. Milling Commissioner Rossiter Traditional Beginnings \XI. Raymond boasted that two recent inno I vations "justify lfor) us in America the most During the 1859 rush to " Pikes Peak," valuable contributions that have been made to Georgetown arose on the banks of south Clear the metallurgy of silver in the last five years." Creek fork, and was named for Kentuckian Usually a conservative chronicler o f stati stics, George F Griffith, discoverer of the district. The the mining commissioner may have exaggerated, gold diggings flourished for a season then waned but the latter half of the nineteenth century was once the easily won placer dust was gone. A truly a period of technological innovation in the chance discovery of high-grade silver ore above mining \'\les t. The American West was a place, the nearly abandoned camp brought a revival. Clark Spence wrote, "where ideas were ex Such news, in the words of a Denver newspa changed, tested against the rugged western en perman, "caused every prospector to wrack his vironment, sometimes discarded, sometimes brain to remember where he saw silver out in adapted or even re-exported in modified form."' the hills before." In 1864, several different par The small commuoity of Georgetown, Colo ties of '59ers staked the most visible mineral rado, was the site of one of Raymond's "contri outcrops, near timberline at ten thousand feet, butions" to metallurgy and a site of adaptation. and laid out the camps of Peru, Chihuahua, A group of assayers and metallurgists- from Montezuma, and Argentite-names reflecting i\Iexico, German y, Britain, Canada, African their dreams of treasure. The following spring Americans and Anglo-Americans from the U.S. miners found rich ore nearer Georgetown.2 l'viidwest, and some of the first American col The first miners working in the shallow shafts lege-educated mining engineers-tested and re and adits high above Georgetown uncovered shaped metallurgical processes to work the high-grade silver ore containing a low percent district's rich but refractory silver ores. age of lead. By fa ll 1865, small ore hearths-a Located at eighty- five hundred feet in the fire-place-sized furnace known to :tv1edieval En Rocky Mountains, Georgetown's complex geol gland-were smelting the galena and argentite, ogy, harsh winters, and isolation required inno proving that, at least on a limited scale, lead vations to meet regional differences from Old smelting was appropriate for the district. Down \'\/orld mioing practice. To provide an environ hill from the mines and possessing water-power, ment for innovation, the community required Georgetown became the location for smelting skill, machinery, and capital, as well as that hard operations; in the words of one reporter, "the to-define factor that enabled the acceptance of city of smokestacks and sulfur fumes." 3 change over tradition. T he ingeoious commu iVIany of the miners who had rushed to the nity o f Georgetown provides a case stud)' for Rocky Mountains came from the Midwest, and technological innovation. it was from that region's lead mining and smelt- The Ingmiolfs ColllllllllltfJ' 1 1 l GICI~C£TOWN A bird's-e_)'e vieJJJ o/ Georgetonm iN 1874, JJJith J Ost<tr SteJJJcnt's 111ill at lower left and tbe Pelican .Mill (tbe earlier Ger/11({1/ mil~ at cenfel: {A11tbor's collection.) ing industry, established from the 1820s through the district He mixed the right amount of flux the 1850s, that Coloradans imported skill and and ore, blew in the green-flamed high level of machinery. Scotch hearth furnaces were com heat, and smelted the silver-lead.5 mon in the lead districts of the Mississippi River During 1866 and 1867, Georgetown wit Valley, where that imported British technology nessed a smelter building craze. Most of these helped the tri-state Jistrict of Iowa-Illinois-Wis plants would have been familiar to smeltermen consin and the lead regions of Missouri to be in England's Pennine Mountains a century be come productive factors in national mineral fore. Miners formed partnerships or sold their markets. Georgetown's first larger plant, a Scotch marginally developed prospects to joint stock hearth, arrived from Galena, Illinois-bellows, companies. Lorenzo Bowman-part owner of bricks, and hardware-in the summer of 1866.4 what would become the rich Equator lode Caleb Stowell, an operator at the nearby gold helped organize the Red, White, & Blue Mining district of Central City, invested in the Company, a company organized by the African Georgetown mines and erected this water-wheel American community of Denver and with a range powered smelter along South Clear Creek. In a of investors including Frederick Douglas, the now-legendary ta le, Stowell hired "Professor" famed former fugitive slave. Bowman built a Fred Dibbens, who failed to smelt the ore. Scotch-hearth smelter a mile and a half above Lorenzo Bowman, an ex-slave from the lead town, which began working Equator ores in mines of ivlissouri, stepped forward asking for 1867.6 an opportunity to try. With twenty years of ex Miners from Mexico also arriveu to work perience, Bowman was the best metallurgist in claims. They built a mud and stone cupola fur- 112 2003 Mining HirtOJy joJirllal nace to work the galena. The Roc~' iVIotmfain NeJvs carried mineral. The fissure deposits were of reported that, "The furnace is built by Jv!exicans, silver with traces of gold. Glaciation and leach under the supervision of one of their number ing of these deposits had created rich outcrops. who has had many years experience in the tnines i\ few hundred feet below, these were replaced of his country." The Mexican community in by more refractory sulfide ores in combinations Georgetown provided early comment on the rich with arsenic and zinc. Under shallow deposits ness of the district, always getting a hearing when of native silver and rich silver-lead galena the comparing lodes to those of Mexico. A Mexican ores turned to predominately argentite, polyba family had the first child born in the camp and site, and tetrahedrite-complex and difficult to Mexican residents added to the larger work.9 community's cosmopolitan feel during the 1860s. Yet the ore was high grade, tempting the Like their U.S. Nlidwestern, Anglo-American and smelters to continue to try to make their plants African-American counterparts, they introduced successful. But tradirional methods failed them. the traditional practices, though limited in scale, What was needed was another process or method which dominated the first metallurgical works.7 to win the metals from their ores. A French min However, they all failed because of a dimin ing engineer visiting the Georgetown and other ishing of the rich galena ores, the lack of quality districts in the fall of 1867 observed the failed fuel (beyond charcoal), and the lack of the right smelting attempts and wrote: "He who finds the environment for }.t!exican-style plants and the means of reducing, 0' prat'fical 11/Cthods, not those Scotch hearth. The Mexicans, Bowman, and the of the laboratory, the ores of Colorado ... he other early smelter operators shut down as the \Vill have made his fortune. Overnight he would district's miners dug through the galena surface be rich in millions." He added, "To the task, orcs. Sitnilarly, an attempt to use German smelt metallurgists! Which of you will become the ing technology failed, as did an early effort by great man whom the world awaits." 10 British miners to use a reverberatory furnace. The grandest early plant-the Georgetown Sil William Bruckner's Cylinder Furnace ver Smelting Company, with its 130-foot smoke stack on chimney hill in the heart of the camp In Iviarch 1867, the Central City, Colorado, blew in the fires of its "immense" reverberato newspaper editor noted that a "party of scien ries with much fanfare and praise in 1867. But tific Germans" had recently installed new equip within a few months it too fell silent. Its stack, ment in the old Excelsior mill in nearby Black with the letters "OK" in brick, stood as the larg Hawk. The equipment included a drum-like est monument to the camp's short-lived smelt cylinder roaster, the Bruckner furnace, which ing boom.8 promised to roast ores and remove sulfur-a Unfortunately, these first efforts-imitations major cost-more cheaply and quicldy. Within or replications of smelters tried-and-true in En a month, the editor reported the success of the gland, Germany, Mexico, or the U. S. Midwest partners Krause, Reese, and Bruckner in reduc failed because of geology. What Georgetown's ing the complex ores of the Central City district operators found was that the galena ores dimin at a lower cost and higher return. He added: ished with depth. Geologist Josiah Spurr of the "We have been very chary of pronouncing any U.S. Geological Survey, writing a half-century new process or mode of working ores a success, later, described the region's difficult ores. Geo but we see no reason why we should not do so logically, the surrounding ridges of granite were on this occasion." The editor also noted the fau lted and filled with once-heated fluids which number of times the Germans tested or assayed The Ingenious CoiiiiJ//IIli!J' 113 ore as it moved through the process, undoubt bor costs. In 1864, the twenty-eight-year-old edly an uncommon practice for the day and an Bruckner came to the United States to patent obvious reference to a more scientific control and market his cylinder furnace.