Gold Rush Boomtown: Eagle City "Eagle is thoroughly an American town, and patriotic to the heart in every respect. No impression of regret did we hear from anyone leaving the Canadian country, but were only too glad to get under the flag of the brave old stars and stripes." —M.D.K. Weimer’s True Story of the Alaska Gold Fields, 1903 Eagle City plat map, 1899. UAF Archives, Rare Maps Collection
General Store, Lake City, Colorado, 1890's "Valuable ore was first identified in the Lake City area in 1871, but at the time the area belonged to the Ute Indians so the discoveries were not exploited at the time. The Utes ceded the land to the United States in 1874, opening the area to new exploration. This was a remote and isolated district, so new arrivals made arduous trips by stage, mule, or on foot for their chance at a piece of the newly discovered riches. By the end of 1876, Lake City boasted fourteen general goods stores, seven saloons, three bakeries, two banks, two breweries, five blacksmiths, two brickyards, four Chinese laundries, and numerous other businesses catering to the thousands of people pouring into town."
In the mid 80's I took a vacation almost 2 weeks exploring ghost towns in the Rockies one of my best ones.
We passed through Colorado and the Rockies twice back in the Fifties. You could see several abandoned mines on the sides of hills along the way. I remember one shaft into the ground right along one of the secondary roads. You couldn't hear a rock hit bottom. [The rock thing fascinated me as a kid. ]
Taft, Montana 1907-1910 "Taft started as an unnamed work camp in 1907. The town was home to men working for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, who wanted to extend their line through the Bitterroot Mountains. The name of the town allegedly came about after Secretary of War William H. Taft visited the work camp. Secretary Taft chastised the unnamed camp for being a “sewer of sin” and “a sore on an otherwise beautiful national forest.” Either out of jest or spite, the townsmen named their community in honor of the future president." Taft burned down in the Great Fire of 1910.
Leadville, Colorado (don't let the name fool you!) Leadville was one of the world's greatest silver mining camps, but the district started out as a gold placer mining settlement. The district would languish for many years before miners would realize they were sitting on a mountain of silver. "Abe Lee and others discovered gold at California Gulch in the upper Arkansas River Valley in 1860. A settlement called Oro City was established as thousands of miner's arrived to work the area. The placer deposits were rich, and millions of dollars in gold was mined in the first five years. However, by 1865 the gold was running out, and most of the miners moved on to new strikes."
I vaguely remember passing by a Leadville, CO, road sign back in the Fifties. The town was well known because of its record low temperatures. The Crystal Palace Leadville fell on hard times after 1893, and the town's leaders decided to build an ice castle as a tourist attraction to make money. Because Leadville stood at over 10,000 feet and often had snow year-round, town leaders believed that, placed properly, an ice castle could remain all year and become a permanent community structure and tourist attraction. The palace had a timber and metal frame, and used over 5,000 tons of ice hauled in from a nearby lake. Construction was completed in 36 days. Its towers reached over 90 feet high and 40 feet wide. Due to unseasonably warm temperatures in March, by the end of the month, the Palace had begun to melt, and there appeared to be no way to save it. Investors took a significant loss.
Main Street, Helena, Montana, 1879 "Helena was inadvertently founded by four men, all from Georgia, and known in the history books as the “Four Georgians”. These four men, rather desperate after searching throughout western Montana for gold and finding nothing, stumbled into the area that is now Helena. That night, on July 14th, 1864, the men decided to take one last chance in mining the nearby creek. As luck and fate would have it, the men found gold that evening. They named the stream they found the gold in, appropriately enough, Last Chance Gulch." (but see next post)
Correction? ..Update from Wikipedia: The Four Georgians were a group of gold prospectors that are traditionally credited for discovering the Last Chance placer gold strike of Helena, Montana. They were John Cowan, D. J. Miller, John Crab, and Reginald Stanley. Of the four, the only actual Georgian was Cowan, who hailed from Acworth, Georgia. The other three came from Alabama (Miller), Iowa (Crab) and England (Stanley). It has been speculated that they were named "Georgians" not from where they came from, but because they were practicing the "Georgian method" of placer mining.