Cripple Creek was indeed magical in those days, but its time on center stage was nearly done. Nevertheless, Colorado mining had come a long way in the decade that ushered in the new century. A headline in the Denver Republican (January 4, 1900) proclaimed, with obvious pride, “Colorado Mineral Output Greatest in its History.” The article opened with eager anticipation and enthusiasm, gushing that “the mining interests of the entire state have never been in better condition.” Colorado’s greatest gold district and flourishing mining town proudly concurred. The Cripple Creek Star boldly predicted, on January 2, 1900: “Paste this in your hat for reference; Cripple Creek will have the biggest boom in its entire history during the summer of 1900.”
“History is the witness that testifies to the
passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes
memory, provides guidance in daily life, and
brings us tidings of antiquity.”
—CICERO (ROMAN STATESMAN,
ORATOR, AND PHILOSOPHER)
Photographic Essay Nineteenth-Century Colorado Mining
The following photographs provide all that Cicero hoped, except, perhaps, “guidance in daily life.” Historians and Coloradans are fortunate that the development of Colorado mining paralleled the development and improvement of photography.
Photographers managed, it seemed, to be everywhere to record Colorado mining at its nineteenth-century acme. The result is an amazing heritage of a vanished day and time, of places that no longer exist, of mines that poured forth millions or cost their owners more money than they ever took out of the ground, of dreams that died and of dreams that lived. The result is a fascinating look at a long-departed era, in which the subjects remain ever young.
The Gregory Lode, where it all started. By 1861, many small mines and claims crowded the lode. The large building at the lower left is the Gregory Store and Bank.
COURTESY OF DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY, WESTERN HISTORY COLLECTION
Sluices crisscross this Gilpin County ravine, and an unidentified small mining camp clings to the hillside in the background of this 1860s-vintage photograph.
COURTESTY OF DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY, WESTERN HISTORY DEPARTMENT
The ore sorting room at the Caribou Mine. Young boys started work here, often joined by injured miners who could no longer work underground.
COURTESY OF DUANE A. SMITH
Nathaniel Hill brought Colorado mining up to date at his Black Hawk smelter.
COURTESY OF THE PETTEM/RAINES COLLECTION
Burros and mules hauled freight to isolated mines high in the mountains and brought ore out; they were continuously used well into the twentieth century.
COURTESY OF COLORADO MINING BUREAU
The arrival of the railroad promised better days for local mining. The “highline” between Durango and Silverton was a major construction project for the Denver & Rio Grande.
COURTESY OF LA PLATA COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Hydraulic mining allowed working of low-grade deposits, but left an environmental mess for later generations.
COURTESY OF MARK AND KAREN VENDL
Most Colorado mines did not “pan” out a bonanza. This is the Argentine Mine at Leadville.
COURTESY OF MARK AND KAREN VENDL
The hoist operator was one of the most important individuals at any mine. Miners depended on him to lower them safely and to bring ore to the surface.
COURTESY OF DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY, WESTERN HISTORY DEPARTMENT
Miners on the cage, waiting to be lowered to the working level for the start of their shift. This crew worked at Central City’s Saratoga Mine in 1889.
COURTESY OF DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY, WESTERN HISTORY DEPARTMENT
Kokomo, in Summit County, was one of many small camps that dotted the Colorado mountains. Most of these camps had a short lifespan and few profitably producing mines.
COURTESY OF DUANE A. SMITH
The burro could be used for many things besides hauling freight and ore, as this Ouray scene clearly displays.
COURTESY OF OURAY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Cripple Creek’s Battle Mountain and the famous Independence Mine. Winfield Scott Stratton’s home is in the foreground.
COURTESY OF MARK AND KAREN VENDL
The Strong Mine was blown up during the 1894 Cripple Creek strike.
COURTESY OF CRIPPLE CREEK DISTRICT MUSEUM
The heart and soul of any mining enterprise: the miners. This group posed at Sneffles in Ouray County.
COURTESY OF COLORADO MINING BUREAU
The stuff of legends: A lone prospector sits with his dog.
COURTESY OF DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY, WESTERN HISTORY DEPARTMENT
10
1900–1929: Looking Forward into Yesterday
As the new century dawned, only Cripple Creek and the San Juans upheld Colorado’s mining reputation of yesteryear in the present. Other districts looked more to their past and relied on history to entice investors, along with their finances, for tomorrow. Still, every spring, doggedly optimistic prospectors and miners re-caught mining fever. Finding an antidote was getting harder, though. No new camps or districts were opening, and much of Colorado had already been exhaustively prospected, examined, probed, and dug. In May of 1911, both the Denver Republican and the Durango Herald asked the same question: “What has become of the genius prospector?” The articles continued: “Months, years have gone and not a whisper hardly about a new gold field or a mining discovery in many parts of the state. The prospector seems to have disappeared; he is not to be found in the mountains and he fails to appear at the assay office.”
They did not have to look far for the answer. Mining was now big business, and men labored for corporations instead of seeking private bonanzas. The surface and easily accessible deposits had already been found and worked, so more costly, deeper exploration was required to find untapped deposits—usually in districts that had been prospected and mined for several decades or longer. Luring financial backers into older districts was much more difficult than attracting them to exciting, flourishing Leadville or Aspen. Furthermore, as each year passed, mining became more expensive and technical. Equipment, reduction charges, wages, transportation—all costs were rising and, for the majority of mining operations, were incurred in working progressively lower-grade ore.
Mining was also falling under the control of the smelters, much to the dismay of those on the digging side of the industry. The American Smelting and Refining Company (AS&RC), which was organized in 1899, had quickly consolidated as many smelters as it could under its control, in the name of efficiency and cost reduction. The company soon controlled about two-thirds of the industry; a “smelter trust” had been born. The Guggenheims and their smelters were just about the only hold-outs against the new behemoth.
When a strike broke out against ASARCO in 1899, the Guggenheims remained in operation while their rival suffered. The well-financed Guggenheims used their newly enhanced position to good effect in negotiations between the two companies; and in April 1901 they merged, with the Guggenheims taking over management of the entire enterprise. At that point, they controlled the industry from Mexico to Montana, and opponents quickly claimed that it was a monopoly in restraint of trade.1 It was indeed a monopoly, and it made the Guggenheims, who also owned the Silver Lake Mine in San Juan County, premier players in the Colorado industry.
With its total dominion in Colorado, ASARCO could set prices and other conditions as it wished, much to the disadvantage of local mine owners. Perhaps the most damaging development was the closing of smelters. Eleven had been operating when ASARCO took over. The company promptly closed and dismantled six of the eleven; the remaining facilities, the miners complained, were insufficient to handle daily Colorado mine production. The miners protested in a variety of ways, but there was little they could do. As a result, ASARCO gained the nickname “American Screwing and Raping Company,” and was cast as the villain that deprived honest miners of their “just rewards,” forced
mine closures, and hampered development through its monopoly and “unfair practices.”
Even with a monopoly, innovations in ore refining continued. Cripple Creek became one of the first districts to use cyanidation. Both that process and chlorination had been experimented with during the 1890s, in the ongoing quest to find the cheapest and most successful method for saving a high percentage of gold. Cyanide won out, primarily because of its strong affinity for gold and the fact that it was a stable, reasonably cheap compound that was not exceptionally dangerous when highly diluted.
After the turn of the century, cyanide was percolated through the old dumps and tailings piles, to dissolve out nearly all the gold that had been missed earlier. Thereafter it proved relatively easy to separate the gold from the cyanide. Meanwhile, the Tomboy mill was experimenting with a new cyanide process to free the gold; eventually, this would become the solution to profitable working of low-grade deposits. Cyanide mills now appeared at the mines. The crushers and stamps that had been kept were eventually replaced by ball and rod mills, and the pans, tables, and other equipment that had long been part of the milling process were discarded. Big wooden vats and steel cyanide drums became the hallmarks of a mining district. The success of cyanidation created a revolution in milling and set off mini-rushes throughout the Colorado gold districts, both placer and hard-rock. Old districts temporarily revived, albeit with fewer miners and support people.
The public again looked at mining with interest and again proved the truth of the old saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Mining had always had its share of con men and swindlers, but their numbers seemed to increase when the pitch was most alluring or the district in bonanza. Perhaps the most famous mining fraud in Colorado history was the “great diamond hoax” of 1872 in the unsettled northwestern part of the state. Diamonds and other jewels, both cut and uncut, were scattered about the landscape, then “discovered.” Before the scam was exposed, at least twenty-five companies had incorporated to mine the supposed diamond fields. With tongue in cheek, the San Francisco Chronicle (December 11, 1872) concluded: “Stock robbers are common; anybody can steal at stocks, [t]o salt a gold mine or rob a bank demands no genius. . . . But to plant diamonds from Golconda and rubies from the Orient in the desert place and make them to blossom[,] to our mind, is the highest evidence of business capacity.”
How could the public fall for such an audacious dupe? It was simple, according to con man George Graham Rice himself, who had mastered his trade in Nevada mining districts:
You are a member of a race of gamblers. The instinct to speculate dominates you.
You feel that you simply must take a chance. You can’t win, yet you are going to speculate and to continue to speculate—and to lose. Lotteries, faro, roulette, and horse race betting being illegal, you play the stock game. In the stock game the cards (quotations or market fluctuations) are shuffled and riffled and stacked behind your back, after the dealer (the manipulator) knows on what side you have placed your bet, and you haven’t got a chance.
Modern get-rich-quick finance is insidious and unfrenzied. It is practiced by the highest, and you are probably one of its easy victims.2
Investors should have paid attention to a 1907 book, The Economics of Mining, which offered advice from many specialists, including T. A. Rickard and Herbert Hoover. Among other pearls of wisdom, it offered the following cautions:
Don’t “take a flyer” in mining, but invest your money with the same care and discretion you would use in buying bank stocks, real estate or a silk factory.
Don’t invest in a mining company that guarantees dividends. Dame Nature has something to say about that.
Don’t invest money on the strength of a printed prospectus or the advice of an “interested friend,” without preliminary investigation by a reliable engineer.
Leadville proved the value of this advice in various ways, as did some of the other major mining districts. A fine line exists, however, between outright fraud or misrepresentation and mere overenthusiasm. Owners might have convinced themselves that their claims were about to become bonanzas, or they may have failed to understand that the surface assay returns did not guarantee that the ore value would stay high as the miners dug deeper into the earth.
Cripple Creek ore figured prominently in some notorious swindles, one of which used it to promote a Missouri “mine.” Walter Scott, better known as “Death Valley Scotty,” also used this truly rich ore in spinning the tale of his “secret” desert vein of “fabulous” gold values.3
Mine “salting” happened far too often. This could be done in various ways, such as enriching samples with coin fillings or some other materials, planting proven ore from another mine, hiring an unethical mining engineer, or relying on old-timers’ “expert reports.” Fraudulent assay reports were not uncommon, either; some assayers could find “marvelous” amounts of gold and silver in any rock submitted to them. Offering a mine with plentiful ore reserves for sale and then gutting it before the sale was consummated was yet another way to separate unwary investors from their money. Only the perpetrator’s imagination limited the possibilities.
Stock watering and manipulation also occurred all too frequently, in both large and small districts. With an infamous history of bubbles and scams, Colorado mining stock exchanges were perceived by many as no better than casinos. A Colorado judge agreed, and in 1901 he shut down the Denver Mining Stock Exchange by enforcing an anti-gambling law! Insider trading, as happened at Leadville, depressed stock values and left those not in on the plan holding stock that was worthless or nearly so. Insiders fleeced outsiders and even other insiders. As T. A. Rickard wrote in the Mining and Scientific Press (December 24, 1898): “A man usually buys a mine not because it is worth the price he gives for it, but because he is justified in the expectation of finding someone who will pay more for it.” He concluded: “So the game proceeds. When the sequence has been exhausted, some one gets badly bitten.” As with most such ventures, greed was the force driving both the scammers and the scammed.
By the 1900s, the schemes were focused more on getting money for development or from stockholders who did not want to lose their investment. In the 1920s, when many Americans were spending beyond their means and investing heavily in the stock market, fast-talking mine speculators had a field day. The cons might have been small-time affairs compared to earlier frauds, but the victims did not feel or fare any better.
In the end, Rice was right. Greed, naïveté, slick-talking owners and stockbrokers, along with the fact that most mines and mining properties never developed into profitable ventures, led the gullible, voracious, and incautious to make investments in ventures far beyond their level of knowledge or experience.
These scams were not limited solely to mines. Throughout Colorado and the rest of the mining West, promoters of “wonderful, miraculous, amazing, economical” new smelting methods attracted—and fleeced—unwary and sometimes desperate mine owners. Numerous buildings and smelting relics littered the Colorado landscape, monuments to some process that had failed to work.
Meanwhile, underground miners risked their lives working in both profitable and unprofitable mines. They probably knew better than some of the owners what the future held for the property, but the most important matter to them was their pay. In the flush opening days of a district, when there might be a shortage of skilled miners, the pay was sometimes higher than the typical late-nineteenth-century wages of $3 a day (or $3.50 in a wet mine). In isolated mines or those tucked high in the mountains, where miners roomed and boarded on company property, a dollar of their daily wages went for living expenses.
In 1902, the Colorado Bureau of Labor Statistics published a report on wages. Miners received $2.50 to $4 a day, with an “average of about” $3 per day. Machine men were paid $4, trammers $3, blacksmiths $4, timbermen $3.50, and engineers $4. These wages were for eight hours, except for the blacksmiths, who worked nine, and the engineers, who put in twelve-hour days.
Despite the appearance of unions and a slowly rising cost of living, miners’ wages improved only slightly from the turn of the century into the 1920s. Reports to the Colorado Bureau of Mines in the 1920s give a picture of the wage scale. For a day, or eight-hour shift, timbermen received $4.50 to $5, trammers and muckers $4, shift bosses $5 to $6, miners $4.50 to $5, blacksmiths $4.50 to $5, superintendents $10, and millmen $3.50 to $4. Some miners chose to receive a percentage of the value of what was mined monthly; others agreed to a contract for a specific job or time period rather than daily wages. They always had to watch the company, though, because some closed quickly and left their workers in the lurch. The miners could always resort to legal action, but, as the saying goes, “you can’t get blood out of a turnip.”
Accidents continued to take a toll on underground and surface workers alike. Falling rocks, machine failures, unexploded dynamite, carelessness with blasting caps, hoisting-cage problems, company negligence regarding working conditions, and general rashness and lack of care all caused mishaps. In Tomboy Bride, Harriet Backus described her husband’s work in the Tomboy’s lead and zinc mill. George developed lead poisoning, “and for several weeks suffered excruciating pain and was unable to work.”
Many miners coughed away their days, victims of silicosis from filling their lungs with rock dust. Silicosis led to other health problems and, very frequently, to death. The problem became particularly acute with the introduction of power drills that literally surrounded the miners with clouds of dust. Eventually, to reduce the dust, drills were designed with hollow cores that had water running through them, producing a muddy mixture as the drill dug into the rock face—but the innovation came far too late for countless old-time Colorado miners.
The Trail of Gold and Silver Page 23
