Serene Karplus, Nederland.  Last August, we enjoyed the great privilege of touring our local gold mine to experience the history and current challenges of local hard rock mining. One year later, we will learn what happens to the ore after it is pulled from the mine by touring the Argo Mill and Tunnel in Idaho Springs. The last time we visited there, quite a few years ago, they still operated a mine tour. Since then, they refurbished the opening of the tunnel and changed which parts of our mining history they tell.

George A. Jackson discovered a major vein of gold in Colorado in January, 1859, at the confluence of what is today’s Chicago Creek and Clear Creek in Idaho Springs. The rapid arrival of over 50,000 miners quickly emptied the streams of the placer gold and they tracked it back to its source, requiring hard rock lode mining.

Over 13,000 mining claims were recorded between 1859 and 1861. As shafts grew deeper to reach successive veins, removing ore buckets containing 1,000 pounds of rock from thousand foot depths the water at that depth grew to be an enormous engineering challenge for pumps and hoists of that era. Productive mines threatened to close, unable to remove the precious ore.

As a means to drain water and haul ore from the mines higher up in the richest square mile on earth, Central City, and the many mines around it, Samuel Newhouse of Leadville spearheaded a small group of local businessmen and financed a grand project. Thanks to various funding sources, including selling stock and successfully finding investors like the Royal Family in England, they launched what was at that time the largest mining project and longest tunnel in the world. Their tunnel was first named “The Newhouse Tunnel” but soon changed its name to “The Argo Tunnel”.

They began in 1893 to hand dig and black powder blast, then later drill and dynamite a tunnel at the rate of a half a mile a year, then a world record. The first 2-1/2 miles are 12.5 feet wide, and the remainder 6 feet wide. The 4.16 mile tunnel blasted through the solid rock to reach from Idaho Springs to 1,300 feet below the surface of Quartz Hill at the Glory Hole west of Central City. By 1902, over 300 hard rock lode mines actively operated in the Idaho Springs area. The tunnel opened in 1910.

In the process, they recognized a need to bring the ore out and mill it in preparation for Colorado & Southern trains to transport the reduced product to smelters in Denver. R.E. Shimer incorporated the Argo Reduction and Ore Purchasing Company and in 1903 began building one of the largest and most modern 300 ton mills in the nation, able to recover a higher percentage of values than older mills in the area. In addition to breaking down ore for transport, the 5 story tipple mill offered amalgamation, flotation, a cyanide process and gravity systems such as spirals and wilfrey (shaker) tables. This economic center produced over $200 million in gold when it was 1 to 3% of the price per ounce that it is today.

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