The Eldorado sought by the earliest Spanish explorers in the 16th century remained hidden in the Rocky Mountains until hundreds of years later, when the untold riches would be discovered by other men.

Around 1680, the Ute tribe of Native Americans moved south of Wyoming to avoid the aggressive Sioux in the Dakotas. For many years, the Utes lived peacefully in the mountains and foothills of northern Colorado. During the summer they hunted elk in the high country and crossed the Continental Divide over the well traveled “Ute Trail” to Middle Park. The Ute Trail started west of Boulder, near Sunshine Canyon, traversed just south of Sugarloaf Mountain, and followed Gordon Gulch to Sulphide Flats (just west of Nederland). The trail then climbed the eastern ridge of Spencer Mountain, south of Eldora and just north of Peterson Lake, up Bryan Mountain and over Rollins Pass to Middle Park.

The recorded history of gold in Colorado may have begun in 1807, when General Zebulon Pike was taken prisoner by the Spanish in Santa Fe. The General was imprisoned with a well known mountain man named James Pursley (from Bairdstown, Kentucky). Pursley told Pike about his many adventures with the Native Americans in the Rocky Mountains and, “He assured me that he found gold on the head of the La Platte (River), and had carried some of the virgin mineral in his shot pouch for months, and that the Spaniards had frequently solicited him to go and show a detachment of cavalry the place, but that conceiving it to be our territory, he had refused.”

French fur trappers, Monsieurs Bordeau and Biesinette as well as mountain men the likes of Andrew Dripp, John Richard, and John Saunders roamed the Rockies during the early 1840s and 1850s. They were among the first white explorers of what was then called the “Snowy Range.” Fur traders John S. Smith, Elbridge Gerry, and James Sanders, built a few cabins just north of present day Denver sometime around 1844 and it became known as Sanders Post.

The Gold Rush to California in 1849 largely bypassed the Snowy Range. The northern route of the westward migration followed the Oregon Trail through Fort Laramie in Wyoming and the southern route followed the Santa Fe Trail into northern New Mexico.

In 1849, a party of men from Georgia that included W. Green Russell and his brothers Doc and Oliver began to drive a herd of thoroughbred horses across the continent to the new gold discoveries in California. They decided to winter near the site of present day Denver, and may have prospected the gravels for gold while they were there.

In the spring of 1858 small amounts of gold, reportedly obtained from the mountains of Colorado, was shown to settlers in the lower Missouri River Valley by “civilized” Cherokee Native Americans from Oklahoma. In May, a prospecting party of about 104 men that included W. Green Russell, his brothers, and a group of Cherokee Native Americans set out to examine the foothills of the Snowy Range and the headwaters of the Platte River where the gold had presumably come from. The spring runoff in 1858 was so severe that the rivers were “flooded beyond what had ever been known.”

They continued to prospect the region for several weeks, but found little gold. By the first of July, most of the original prospecting party had become discouraged and left for home. On July 6, only 13 people remained at the future site of Denver, including W. Green Russell and his brothers. Over the next few weeks, they did manage to find some gold dust in a gully along the banks of the Platte River, at some old “Mexican Diggings” about seven miles below the present site of Denver. They soon found more gold dust near the mouth of Dry Creek at what they called “Placer Camp.”

By the end of July 1858, word of the gold dust discoveries along the Platte River began to filter back to Kansas by way of well traveled mountain men and promoters like John Cantrell and Oliver P Goodwin. The Kansas City Journal of Commerce first published the news of what was referred to as the “Pikes Peak” gold discoveries on August 26, 1858. When excerpts of the article were reprinted by the Boston Daily Journal on August 29, the Pikes Peak Gold Rush was officially on.

References

Bastin, E.S., and Hill, J.M., 1917, Economic geology of Gilpin County and adjacent parts of Clear Creek and Boulder Counties, Colorado: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 94, 379 p.

Fossett, F., 1876, Colorado, Its Gold and Silver Mines, Farms and Stock Ranges and Health and Pleasure Resorts: 1st ed., Crawford, N.Y.

Hollister, O.J., 1867, The Mines of Colorado, Samuel Bowles and Co., Springfield Mass., 45 p.

Lovering, T.S., and Goddard, E.N., 1950, Geology and ore deposits of Front Range, Colorado: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 223, 319p.

Thayer, W.M., 1888, Marvels of the New West, Henry Hill publishing Co, Norwich Conn., 715 p.