The Trail of Gold and Silver

by Duane A. Smith

  Though neither the Gold Belt nor the Josephine properties had been particularly noteworthy or figured prominently in Clear Creek County mining history, the Stevens Mine had had its moments of fame—but not in the 1930s. In 1933, it was leased, and the “present work consists of cleaning out ice and snow.” Then the lessees planned exploration “seeking new ore bodies,” an enterprise that echoed throughout mining history. Nor did the mine’s fortunes improve much after the war, going through tenants and hopes almost as fast as the changing seasons.

  The Georgetown Courier, like its contemporaries throughout Colorado, continued to boost local mines and encourage hopes, although it no longer carried a regular mining column. Such headlines as “Silver Hopes High” did not promise production, but anything that looked encouraging merited an article. The Santiago Mine, at 12,000 feet, seemed promising in 1937. Eight miners worked there and fifty tons daily were taken to the mill for concentration. The next year’s report found only the dumps being worked, although the following year, a reduced crew again was underground.

  “Working the dumps”—that phrase had long been an epitaph for a mine. Granted, low-grade ore had been thrown out earlier, because it could not be profitably milled or smelted. That changed in the 1930s, when even small profits were considered worth going after. Still, salvage projects did not augur well for a mine’s long-range future.

  An example of a district that tried to capitalize on the mining excitement was La Plata, as prospectors/miners nosed around its canyon and mountains. The Gold King had raised hopes in the late twenties and early thirties, but drew more money from investors’ pockets than from ore. The problems there, as with its neighbors, were narrow veins and only a few high-grade ore pockets.

  The Red Arrow Mine, on the western slope of the La Plata Mountains, sparked a “rush” of prospectors into the district, with its “sensational discovery of an exceedingly rich” gold vein in 1933. Montezuma County, never noted as a mining district, suddenly found itself in excited headlines and in a “rush.” Eager miners staked claims, blasted adits, and dug into the mountainsides. Occasional shipments of gold and silver from “seven lode mines” created brief local flurries of excitement.

  Reports in the Durango News, on August 10 and September 7, 1934, typified the rousing stories. The “famous” Neglected Mine, on nearby Junction Creek, started shipping ore and rated publicity as “one of the most encouraging pieces of mining news to break in this section in recent years.” That announcement meant “much to Durango,” because “money brought” into town “in supplies and wages,” the editor enthusiastically predicted, would be in the range of “$10,000-20,000 per month.” As with so many projects in bygone days, the Neglected neither became famous—perhaps infamous for disappointing investors would be a better description—nor did it bring in anything close to that amount of money or jobs to Durango or La Plata County.

  Two events did remind old-timers of years gone by. A 1937 news story forecast that a “modern flotation plant” would be built in the canyon; there was nothing like a projected new mill to get folks stirred up about coming prosperity. (The “modern plant” never saw the light of day, by the way.) Meanwhile, the year before, another story had reminded people of the dangers of mining, when a snow slide killed six men and a woman at the Doyle mine.7 Like the coquette it had always been, La Plata Canyon teased and promised but yielded little. Each excitement briefly rekindled golden hopes and, if nothing else, provided a few jobs and purchases in the otherwise depressed days of the 1930s.

  With support from the New Deal, unions throughout the country gained new power and influence. This led to a few tense days for Silverton, Charles Chase, and the Shenandoah-Dives mine. An extraordinary talented and skillful individual, Chase had come to Silverton in the late 1920s from Telluride to manage the mine. Just as he finished building a boarding house at the portal, a two-mile tram, and an underground crushing plant, the crash of 1929 hit. Suddenly, with prices of lead, copper, and silver collapsing, only gold kept the mine open.

  Realizing he could not keep going, and knowing how much the mine meant to Silverton, he asked his 150 miners to agree to a 25-percent wage reduction. They did. Then he called on local merchants and landlords and asked them to voluntarily lower prices. In both cases, he explained that without help the mine would close, and Silverton’s plight would be worse. They agreed, as did some out-of-town creditors after a bit more persuasion. Chase laid no one off and fed out-of-work “tramp” miners, who hiked to the high mine, a meal even when he could not hire them. In 1935, he restored the old wage scale. His mine, the Colorado Bureau of Mines reported in 1939, was “up-to-date in every detail.” On top of this, Chase was one of the few prounion mine managers in the region.

  Despite all these things, a bitter episode broke out in 1939, when the CIO called a strike for higher wages. Meetings and explanations solved nothing. Finally, fed-up local miners ran the organizers out. After a tense and confrontational episode, Chase won the day and kept the mine and mill operating into 1953.8

  December 7, 1941, ended an era in Colorado mining. On that “date which will live in infamy,” the attack on Pearl Harbor changed mining everywhere. Colorado miners were already leaving to take higher-paying jobs elsewhere, particularly in the West Coast defense industry. As the country and state confronted the military crisis, mining would be called upon to play a strategic role—but with its base-metal and coal mines, not precious-metal gold and silver mines.

  As war descended on Colorado in 1941–1942, The Colorado Year Book took time to pause and consider some of mining’s contributions to the state, besides the wealth that had poured forth since 1859. Thanks to the industry, the mountains, long serious barriers to transportation, had been penetrated by road and rail, and water had been harnessed for hydroelectric power. Cities had been born and matured; some had died. Industry and agriculture had taken root and profited for decades, and several generations of Coloradans had found work in the mines and mining-related industries. Even tourism had been profitable. It had been an exciting run, even in the dark days after World War I. Now the industry came to a watershed as another world war broke out.

  The Colorado mining recession, which dated back to the late teens, eased as the United States went to war, but the revival was not for the precious-metal industry. Regulation had been a fact of mining life since the early New Deal, and now gold and silver miners found out what government oversight could mean.

  A series of government fiats overwhelmed the industry. Even before the United States entered the war, the Metals Reserve Company, created in June 1940 to build stockpiles of “strategic and critical metals and minerals,” paid premiums for copper, lead, and zinc. This helped some fortunate gold miners, who mined those substances as byproducts, to make a profit. Then came Order P-56 (March 2, 1942), which stated that any mine, whose value in gold, silver, or both exceeded 30 percent of its total output, would “no long[er] be entitled to a priority rating.” That deprived virtually all Colorado gold mines of the priority rating needed to purchase essential equipment and supplies. Many operators closed their mines before the next shoe dropped, because the industry already faced higher taxes, a loss of skilled miners, and equipment shortages.

  Then came the final blow—infamous, in some miners’ view. Gold Limitation Order, L-280, which went into effect on October 8, 1942, closed nonessential mineral mines by not allowing operators access to replacement parts or materials or to “break any new ore, do any development work, or start any new operations.” Furthermore, no ore or waste, “either above or below ground,” could be removed. Nothing could be done “except the minimum amount necessary to maintain buildings, machinery, and maintain equipment in repair.” Gold mining had been defined as “nonessential” to the war effort, with one exception. Mines that had produced less than 1,200 tons of commercial ore in 1941 could continue in operation, provided they did not exceed 100 tons per month.

  As if that were not enough to stop the precious-metals
industry in its tracks, skilled miners were shunted to the essential mining segment of the industry. The government gave them occupational deferments as long as they stayed in nonferrous mining jobs; if they moved elsewhere, the miners lost those deferments. The War Manpower Commission additionally ruled that no former gold miner could “obtain a new job west of the Mississippi without the approval of the United States Employment Service.”9

  Though miners and others argued, for a while, that gold was needed to pay for the war, patriotism carried the day. Other mining was more significant to the war’s outcome. Dredging and most small operations closed immediately. Operators in Colorado’s top district, Cripple Creek, appealed the date and were given a short reprieve, until June 8, 1943, to finish current projects. Then gold mining stopped, except for maintenance. Silver had never been a factor in all the discussions, as it had become primarily a byproduct rather than a principal ore. While other Colorado mining flourished during the war, both in production and exploration, inspectors’ reports simply listed production as “none” in gold and silver properties. Although some gold and silver were produced as byproducts, Colorado precious-metals mining had gone to war.

  In July 1945, with the war nearly over, the gold and silver mining industry was finally released from government sanctions. No boom followed, however. For a while, into the early 1950s, placer production briefly prospered, thanks to a large dredge operating near Fairplay, but in January 1952, the dredge ended its run. Low gold value and increasing labor, supply, and equipment costs all combined to do it in. That would become a familiar pattern in postwar mining.

  Underground mining was hurt initially by a shortage of skilled miners and equipment, a blow reflected in the fact that gold and silver production sank to lows unequaled since the 1870s. Indeed, much of what was mined came as a byproduct of base-metal mining, particularly out of the Red Cliff District in Eagle County.

  In the years that followed, the same problems continued to plague the precious-metals industry. Interest in mining only gold or gold/silver understandably waned. With the price of gold regulated, owners could not compensate for the increasing expenses of labor and materials, unlike with base metals. The days of high-grade deposits—the one factor that might have stirred interest—had vanished almost entirely years ago.

  A federal study dramatically showed what had happened. Gold held the top ranking from 1858–1873, when silver replaced it. Then, thanks to Cripple Creek, gold regained the number-one ranking from 1897–1942. After that, zinc grabbed the honor and held it into the 1950s. In 1941, gold and silver represented 77 percent and base metals 23 percent of the total value of Colorado’s five long-time significant metals: gold, silver, lead, copper, and zinc. By 1951, there had been a startling reversal, with gold and silver constituting only 17 percent of the total.10 Even that would soon change, as molybdenum and uranium surged to the front of the pack.

  How bad had the situation become? In 1958, Lake County, for the first time since the Oro City rush in 1861, reported no mines operating after a strike closed the Climax molybdenum operations. Low prices across the board were forcing the closure of base-metal mines throughout the state, and with them went their precious-metal byproducts.

  Despite all this gloom and despair, one long-lasting concern had been answered: a modern, up-to-date mill had been built. The Golden Cycle Corporation constructed one in the Cripple Creek district in 1950–1951, even as local mines shut down or worked only on development. When the mill opened, gold mining revived, thanks primarily to Cripple Creek, and topped $4 million. Teller and San Miguel led the way in producing more than 80 percent of that total, with the latter yielding much of it, once again, mostly as a byproduct from the Idarado mine, which led the state in base-metal production. Even with the Cripple Creek resurgence, 45 percent of precious-metal production came as a byproduct.

  While mining struggled, the state celebrated the centennial of the Pike’s Peak rush in 1959 with pageants, ceremonies, and tributes to the “stalwart” pioneers. The “Rush to the Rockies” centennial brought in tourists and profits, but no real understanding of the state’s mining heritage or of the people involved. Gold mining had given birth to the state, but few Coloradans now worked in, or made a living from, the precious-metals industry. The words on the drop curtain of Denver’s Tabor Grand Opera House seemed prophetic: “how fleet the works of men.”

  A far better tribute had debuted three years earlier at the Central City Opera House, near where it had all begun a century before. Douglas Moore’s opera, The Ballad of Baby Doe, caught the spirit of Colorado, mining, and the era, in a manner the written word could not. The Tabors once more became front-page news.

  In a curious coincidence, the Tabors rose to fortune and fame on silver, which was gaining new life. The hopes of the silverites of 1893, and of William Jennings Bryan in 1896, seemed about to be realized. In 1961, the federal government freed silver from government regulation and the price soon rose to $1.75 per ounce, the highest in Colorado’s history. For years, old-timers had been fond of predicting that $1.30 an ounce silver would bring back the great days. Did the rebirth really occur? No, no new Horace Tabors found their Matchless mines, and hopes went a-glimmering out once more. That price was not enough to offset the expenses, which had risen steeply since Horace’s day. No miners and prospectors roamed over and dug deep into the old silver districts. Only sightseers continued wandering about and wondering what had transpired there.

  Colorado poet laureate Thomas Hornsby Ferril perfectly caught the ambiance and the desolation in his poem, “Ghost Town”:

  Dig in the earth for gold while you are young!

  Here’s where they cut the conifers and ribbed

  The mines with conifers that sang no more,

  And here they dug the gold and went away,

  Here are the empty houses, hollow mountains,

  Even the rats, the beetles and the cattle

  That used these houses after they were gone

  Are gone; the gold is gone,

  There’s nothing here,

  Only the deep mines crying to be filled.11

  Just when things seemed to be looking up, Colorado received another jolt: Both the Golden Cycle mining and milling operations stopped operations in 1961. Cleanup operations the next year ended an era at Cripple Creek. The familiar reasons were proffered: increased costs across the board made it “almost impossible to mine and produce gold.” Thus closed “Colorado’s last gold camp.”12

  It had been an amazing run. Through 1961, Cripple Creek mines had poured out more than $424 million, ranking it as Colorado’s greatest gold producer and the second largest gold district in the United States. All that remained were the Molly Kathleen and El Paso mines, which remained open to mine the tourist trade. Colorado mining faced a stiff challenge in the 1960s, which Governor Steve McNichols clearly described in a 1962 address to the Western Resources Conference meeting at Golden:

  Here in Colorado the challenge to develop our mineral resources is an ever-continuing one. Colorado began mineral resource development after the discovery of gold by John Gregory near here in 1859 and the development of minerals has been synonymous with the growth of Colorado for more than 100 years.

  The governor might also have mentioned a challenge that was only peeking over the mountains in 1962: environmental issues. This subject was not completely new, of course. After all, Rossiter Raymond had raised some of those concerns back in the 1870s.

  The problem had been around for years, as shown by a 1909 lawsuit that involved a homesteader near Creede and a company that discharged waste into a stream. The mining interests lost that case, though they claimed that the industry was absolutely dependent on discharging waste material into the stream. Interestingly, they also advanced the idea that in time of water scarcity, the state constitution gave mining priority over agriculture.

  The matter came to the forefront during the depressed 1930s in a major fight between mining and agriculture. At issue was t
he water quality of the Clear Creek drainage, which encompassed the once-famous Central City and Georgetown Districts. After passing out of the mountains, the creek drained into the South Platte River, where it was used for drinking and public use. It eventually reached northeastern Colorado farmland, where the “mineral enriched” water (some members of the mining industry thought that was a bonus!) was used for irrigation.

  During the 1930s, though, small mining operations proliferated in old districts, which made the conditions worse. Operators with little money and less environmental concern made no provisions, or only weak ones, for impounding their tailings, which ran directly into the stream. A report published after an examination of mines along the stream summarized the situation with these terse comments: “no provision for impounding, sands and slimes flooded North Clear Creek, dump into stream, ponds not effective.”

  As noted earlier, Colorado had had statutes outlawing stream pollution since territorial days. Now mining companies found themselves in court, the key case being Wilmore v. Chain O’Mines, Inc. The Chain O’Mines was a late 1920s project that had combined numerous overlapping claims above Central City into one large-scale operation. Mining up from the older, lower operations, through controlled blasting, the company eventually caved in the mountain and created what became known as the “Glory Hole.” Milling everything in sight, the company discarded astonishing tonnages of waste, which became the central figure in this cause célèbre. The plaintiffs, who owned farms in downstream Jefferson County, claimed that the defendants had discharged “mill tailings and slime” into the stream and onto their land, thereby harming their property.