Brian Alers, Tommyknocker Geo-History Adventures Ltd.

Dedicated to the memory of the “old time” prospector, one of the most unique characters in American history.

Rumors of Riches

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

The Utes, linguistic kin of the Comanche Native Americans, had moved south out of Wyoming around 1680 to the mountains and foothills of northern Colorado 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 Mtn., up Gordon Gulch to Sulphide Flats (west of Nederland), then up the eastern ridge of Spencer Mountain, north of Peterson Lake and the ski area, following Ute Ridge up Bryan Mountain and over Rollins Pass to Middle Park.

The recorded history of gold in Colorado may have started in 1807, when General Zebulon Pike was taken prisoner by the Spanish in Santa Fe. He was imprisoned with a well known mountain man named James Pursley (from Bairdstown, KY). 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 and mountain men the likes of Andrew Dripp, John Richard, John Saunders, Monsieurs Bordeau and Biesinette 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 westward migration largely followed the Oregon Trail through Fort Laramie in Wyoming to the north, or the southern route along the Santa Fe Trail in northern New Mexico.

A party of men from Georgia that included W. Green Russell and his brother drove a herd of thoroughbred horses across the continent west to the new gold discoveries in California. They winter in 1849 near the site of present day Denver, and likely prospected the gravels for gold while there. After spending the next several years prospecting for gold in California the Russell brothers return to Georgia.

In the spring of 1858 small amounts of gold reportedly obtained from the mountains of Colorado by “civilized” Cherokee Native Americans from Oklahoma was shown to settlers in the lower Missouri River Valley. By May, a prospecting party of about 104 men that included W. Green Russell, his brother and some 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. They prospected the region for several weeks but because the spring runoff of 1858 was so severe, and the rivers were “flooded beyond what had ever been known” they found little gold. By July 1st, most of the original prospecting party had become discouraged and decided to leave for home.

On July 6th only 13 people remained at the future site of Denver, including W. Green Russell and his brother. In the next few weeks, they did manage to find some gold dust in a gully in the banks of the Platte River, about 7 miles below the present site of Denver, at some old “Mexican Diggings”. Soon more gold dust was found at “Placer Camp” near the mouth of Dry Creek. By  the end of July in 1858, the first word of the gold dust discoveries on the Platte River begin to filter back to Kansas by way of the well travelled mountain men and promoters like John Cantrell and Oliver P Goodwin. The first published news of the Pikes Peak gold discoveries was in the Kansas City Journal of Commerce on August 26, 1858, and when excerpts of the article was reprinted by the Boston Daily Journal on August 29, the Pikes Peak Gold rush was officially on.

By November, 4th the town site of Auraria (named after the town in Georgia where the Russell party had come) was laid out on the west side of the Platte River at the mouth of Cherry Creek. On the east side of the river, another group from Lawrence, Kansas had platted out another town site they called St. Charles. Unfortunately, when most of this group returned to Kansas for the winter, St. Charles was sold to the Denver Town Company, and Denver was created.

The Pikes Peak Gold Rush 

By December of 1858, there were about 1,000 men living in Auraria (now Denver), awaiting the spring thaw. As soon as they could, these prospectors would follow the placer gold up many of the streams emerging from the Snowy Range to the disintegrated oxidized residue of the gold-bearing veins, which they called the “mother lodes”. 

The first discoveries in the mountains were made by hearty prospectors that could not wait until the spring thaw. They braved the winter storms to prospect far up into the uncharted terrain of western Boulder and Gilpin Counties. At the end of January, 1859, B. F. Langley discovered placer gold where a timber filled creek (Lump Gulch) met South Boulder Creek east of Rollinsville that he called the “Deadwood Diggings.” And by the end of March considerable gold was recovered. 

Placer gold was also discovered in January of 1859 in Gold Run Creek, near present day Gold Hill. In June of 1859 Gold Hill established itself as Mountain District #1, Nebraska Territory.  Mountain District #1 formed a provisional government, and it was the first governing body in the territory. Gold Hill is founded later in the year with 15 houses and 1,500 people living mostly living in tents. Gold Hill produced some 4,838 ounces of gold during this first year of mostly placer production from Gold Run Creek. 

The first mention of gold from Boulder County may have been on January 7, 1859, when an Arapahoe Native American by the name of Cut Nose, showed about $50 (2.5 ounces) of shot gold that he claimed to have found in “a crevasse in the mountain” while he was hunting for elk and mountain sheep to mountain man Jack Jones, aka William McGaa. He later told the Missouri Republican on February 23, 1859 that the gold was, “a pretty fair specimen, from the size of a pea to a large buck shot”. Even though Cut Nose was never able to locate the crevasse again, there is a pretty good chance that this gold came from Boulder County, because the placer gold found in Boulder Creek was much larger in size (shot or scale gold) than the gold being found in most of the other creeks (float or flour gold) at the time.

The City of Boulder was laid out by a group from Nebraska City, including A. A. Brookfield, on February 10, 1859, and by the 20th of the month there were 60-70 houses being built. On February 12, 1859, Oliver P. Goodwin reported that “The Boulder district diggings, as far as prospected are the richest yet discovered, paying $3-$5 (0.15-0.25 ounces of gold) per day to the man, but one drawback, 280 men and not a single white woman.” These old newspaper accounts never mention is that for a prospector to make $3-$5, he needed to spend 2 days stripping and collecting the gold bearing material in preparation for washing out the $3-$5 in gold with a 25 foot long sluice box called a “Long Tom”. 

In what could be the first published reference to mining in Nederland, John H. Buell reported on February 20, 1859, that gold was found for 25 miles up Boulder Creek. Only mule or pony packs could travel up Boulder Canyon so Dayton (later Nederland) was established as a trading post to supply the local prospectors. The first placer mine near Nederland was referred to as the “Jefferson Diggings”. The Grand Island Mining District (later Caribou) is established northwest of present day Nederland but the early prospectors were not on the lookout for silver.

In November of 1858 the Native Americans show George Jackson the hot springs near present day Idaho Springs, and later in January of 1859 he discovers placer gold in a branch of South Clear Creek that he named Chicago Creek in April of 1859. They referred to the placer workings as the “Jackson Diggings”. 

Thousands of gold seekers flocked to the Snowy Range in the spring of 1859 following the stock market crash of 1858 that left many penniless with nothing to lose. Most of the solders in Fort Laramie left for the gold fields and some Cherokee Native Americans even abandoned their buffalo hunt to search for gold. 

The trip from Lawrence Kansas took about 20 days and the unpredictable weather caused lots of livestock loss. Handcarts were the first to leave because they did not have to wait for the grass to get green on the prairie to feed their animals. But the “snow was long on leaving” that spring in the Rockies and many were left living on “cactus and crow” without ever having struck a pick to the ground. As hundreds of people were arriving every day, just as many were leaving after seeing that there was no gold just lying on the ground. These discouraged prospectors often became furious and began turning back all who they met on the way back with tails of starvation, freezing and robbery.

The First Lode Gold Discovery

“The spring is backward, and the snow is long on leaving the mountains” - J. M. Fox, May 8, 1959, Denver City, Kansas Territory.  

Placer gold is the gold dust and nuggets that are found in river gravels. The source of placer gold deposits is the rusty disintegrated residue of gold-bearing quartz veins that the miners called “blossom rock” that was the surface expression of the “Mother Lode” that lies at depth.

The first placer gold discoveries in the foothills of the “Snowy Range” were made during the winter of 1858 by hearty prospectors that could not wait for the spring thaw. They braved the winter storms to prospect far up into the uncharted terrain of western Boulder and Gilpin Counties. As soon as they could, they followed the placer gold up many of the streams emerging from the Snowy Range looking for the source lode of the first placer gold discoveries in the territory made by W. Green Russell and his brother the previous summer near Auraria (present day Denver). 

Dr. Levi Russell (brother of W. Green) was left in charge of the Auraria Town Co. while his brother had returned east for supplies. At the time, Auraria and its sister city, Denver City was made up of something like one hundred log cabins that included six stores, one hotel, twelve or fifteen saloons and many small cabins. It was a colorful place as evidenced by some of these descriptions; 

“There is more drinking and gambling here in one day than in Kansas City in six - in fact one-half of the population do nothing else but drink whiskey and play cards.” - G. N. Woodward, April 3, 1859.  

“Inhabitants are Indians, Mexicans, and white people - about equally divided – all hard cases. Drinking and fighting all the while, someone killed nearly every week - now and then one hung.” - Unsigned letter, April 17, 1859.

Maybe not the drink of choice, but the drink of abundance was Taos Lightning. Taos Lightning was a distilled corn beverage or “corn-whiskey” from New Mexico that “struck hard, fast and often” and it was said that it tasted so bad that anyone who drank more than one tin cup of the stuff never lived long enough to become addicted.

Another beverage that dated back to the early fur trading days was “Indian Whiskey”. It was said a single bottle could be traded for a buffalo robe. It was made with a barrel of creek water, two gallons of the cheapest grain alcohol you could find, two ounces of strychnine for the kick, and three plugs of chewing tobacco for the color, which was added to make the Native Americans sick, because they believed that if the whiskey did not make you throw up, it was no good. This concoction was stirred once a day for a week.

John H. Gregory, like W. Green Russell, was an experienced gold miner who had learned how to prospect for gold in Georgia in 1827. Gregory was a skinny Scotsman with fiery red hair, beard, and temperament. He had lost close to everything during the stock market crash known as the Panic of 1857 and was forced to leave his wife and kids for the Frazer River goldfields of British Colombia in August of 1858. Gregory got as far as Leavenworth, Kansas where he was offered a job driving a government mule team to Fort Laramie in Wyoming. During the late summer, the Fort was alive with rumors of the gold discoveries at Auraria, along the South Platte River. As a result most of the solders had left to search for gold. 

Gregory set out in January of 1859, during the dry early days of winter to pan every stream gully that drained the Front Range south of Fort Laramie. He prospected for the next three months with little luck until finally, exhausted, he arrived at Auraria in early May. 

The two weeks he had spent in Auraria and its exorbitantly priced supplies had cost John H. Gregory all of the gold dust he had managed to find over the last three months. By himself and penniless, he set out into the uncharted wilderness of the mountains. He followed placer gold showings up the Vasquez Fork (Clear Creek) of the South Platte River west of present day Golden until he arrived in a steep gully that was crossed by an outcrop of what appeared to be the same rusty, disintegrated residue of gold-bearing quartz veins that he had seen in Georgia. But, before he could examine the outcropping ledge or lead any further, clouds loomed over the site and a spring snowstorm quickly moved in. 

Gregory was forced to seek shelter on the lee side of a large boulder under a couple of pine trees to avoid the spring snow storm that was looming above the ravine. With experienced and skillful craftsmanship, he used his gold pan to brush off the snow, dig out a relatively flat spot and fashion a crude shelter out of pine boughs to hunker-down and sit out the storm under his bear skin robe. 

After two days, Gregory emerged from his burrow to waist deep snow. The thick snow of spring had covered all the local landmarks, and obscured the topography making it impossible to further examine the lead, stake a mining claim, or know exactly where he was. It was cold and he had eaten the last of his deer meat during the storm, so he had no choice but to leave his discovery and fight his way through the snow, rocks and fallen timber back to town for supplies. Along the way, he was too tired and weak to even shoot a rabbit for food. After a few days, he finally arrived at a two or three cabin settlement at the base of the mountains that was called Arapahoe (near present day Golden). Gregory was exhausted, and he had no money, so he drifted into the local saloon hoping someone would buy him a drink. 

Gold Hill

Gold Hill Colorado was the site of some of the first placer and lode gold discoveries made in the wilderness of the Snowy Range during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush. The Gold Hill Mining District is the largest gold mining district in Boulder County, producing something like 200,000 ounces of gold. The Gold Hill Mining District, proper, includes the smaller mining camps of; Sunshine, Salina, Wall Street, Rowena, and Crisman (Tellurium).The Gold Hill Mining District is considered the center of the Boulder County Telluride Belt, that includes the; Sugarloaf, Magnolia, Jamestown and Ballarat Mining Districts. 

Captain Thomas Atkens, his son James, and a band of prospectors were the first to discover placer gold in the gravels of Gold Run Creek, southeast of what would later become Gold Hill during the dead of the winter in January of 1859. By March 7th, the miners had established the first provisional governing body in the wilderness, which they named Mountain District #1, Nebraska Territory. At this time, all lands north of the 40th parallel (Baseline Road) were part of the Nebraska Territory, and all lands south of the 40th parallel were deemed part of the Kansas Territory. 

As soon as the snow melted in May 1859, J. D. Scott discovered a decomposed gold bearing quartz vein on the west side of Gold Run Creek. This was the first lode gold discovery made in the Nebraska Territory and was made about a week after John H. Gregory’s first lode gold discovery in the Kansas Territory, next to what would become Central City. 

Later that summer, in June of 1859 David Horsfal, William Blore, and Matthew L. McCaslin had prospected all the way to the top of Gold Run Creek with little success. David Horsfal became so discouraged that he literally gave-up and walked to the top of a nearby hill to have some lunch and take a nap. When he threw his pick down on the ground in disgust, it broke of a piece of rock.  Much to his surprise, the rock was encrusted with gold. He had discovered the Horsfal Vein on the hill northeast of the present day Gold Hill, and it would became one of the most productive mines in the district. Many of the most productive gold veins in the district were discovered during this period.

Gold Hill is founded in October of 1859 with 15 houses, a hotel, graveyard and about 1,500 people mostly living in tents just below Horsfal Hill, adjacent to the Horsfal Mine. The original townsite was destroyed by fire on May 24 of 1860, so the town was re-built at its present site because the old site was said to be “too cold and windy”. 

The early placer gold deposits in Gold Run Creek proved to be wildly rich and over the next year or so, between three and five thousand prospectors flocked to the region. During the summer of 1860 more than a dozen stamp mills and a number of arrastres were in operation in the region. But, by the fall of 1860, as the easily-accessible pockets and pay streaks were worked out, only two or three mills remained. 

In September of 1860, the Corning Tunnel was begun from Left Hand Creek under Horsfal Hill. The amount of creek and gulch mining became steadily less and soon the decomposed quartz vein material of the leading lodes were exhausted.  Most of the original claim holders abandoned their mining claims, or traded them for supplies in grubstake agreements. The Horsfal Mine managed to operate until the stamp mill was completely worn out, in 1863.

Gold Run Creek produced something like $100,000 (4,838 ounces of gold) during this first year of mostly placer mining.

By 1870, the Post Office had closed and only 6 people were living in Gold Hill. 

In May of 1872, Geologist J. Alden Smith identified an unusual tin-grey colored mineral at the Red Cloud mine northeast of Gold Hill that would return enormously high gold values by fire-assay, but produce little gold when processed using a typical stamp-mill. It turned out the mineral was the hitherto unknown and the extremely rare gold-silver telluride mineral Petzite (AuAg3Te2). By 1873, Sylvanite (AuAgTe4), Calaverite (AuTe2), and Hessite (Ag2Te) were also identified at the adjacent Cold Spring mine and the Boulder County Telluride Boom was on. At the time, these minerals were only known to exist in the Transylvania region of Romania. Tellurium is an element, that when it is reduced, easily forms compounds (minerals) with gold and silver, and these compounds are known as telluride minerals.

From 1873 to 1875, many rich telluride mines were located including the Ingram, Klondike, Interocean, Cash, Logan, Poorman, Wood Mountain and Grand Republic. The Slide mine on the south side of Left hand Creek, soon reaches a depth of 1,080 feet. The Corning Tunnel is extended to 2500 feet long and the Prussion Tunnel (300 foot lower) reaches a length of 1800 feet below Horsfel Hill, intersecting the Slide, Klondike, Twinn and Horsfal veins.

The Boulder County Telluride veins are extremely high grade (often well over 100 ounces of gold per ton) and visible gold was not uncommon at the Logan, Slide, Red Cloud, Cash and Cold Spring mines. Unfortunately, the actual paying portion of the telluride vein is most often only a few inches thick and it was said that the ore required as many men to “hand dress” or sort out the actual vein material as it did to mine the ore underground in the mine. So, eventually, by 1880 most of the mines were forced to close.

Many hotels were built during the Boulder County Telluride Boom, when the town grew to over 50 dwellings. In 1873, Charles Wentworth built the “Grand Mountain Hotel” (later called the Wentworth House). While washing dishes at the hotel in 1873, Eugene Fields wrote the poem “Casey’s Table D’Hote.”  Gold Hill and the Wentworth House survived the devastating fire of 1894. 

The hotel was purchased by Edwin and Annie Goudge in 1900 and it became known as the Gold Hill Inn. They operated it until about 1910. In 1920, they sold the building to the “Holiday House Association” headed by Mrs. Jean Sherwood of Chicago and she renamed it the Bluebird Lodge. 

Jean Sherwood had fallen in love with Colorado in 1904 while lecturing at Boulder’s Chatauqua Park. So, in 1911, she founded the “Holiday House Association” as a non-profit outdoors club for young female factory and office workers from Chicago. The first club was based out of a cottage near Chatauqua Park. The club became very popular during the roaring 20s and the women of the Holiday House Association became known as “Bluebirds”. 

The Bluebird Lodge was so successful that in 1926 a dining hall was built next-door to the Lodge by Tim Walter. The dining hall was built from prime logs gathered at the Arapahoe Watershed west of Gold Hill. The Bluebirds enjoyed horseback riding, hiking and relaxing in Gold Hill well into the 1950s.

The Bluebird Lodge and the adjacent dining hall was purchased by Frank and Barbara Finn on April 20, 1962. They remodeled the kitchen, put in a bar and opened a fantabulous gourmet restaurant called The Gold Hill Inn in the old dining hall. The restaurant has been operated by the Finn Family ever since. 

Twinkle was one of Gold Hills most colorful and beloved residents. Twinkle, was the Finn Family burro. This grey-brown burro wandered freely through town and starred in a television commercial. She loved leftover pancakes, could drink a bottle of soda and enjoyed stopping traffic in the center of town until she received a treat. Unfortunately, Twinkle passed away at the ripe old age of 25 in 1984.

(Originally published in the August 8, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)