High Country Life

The 1860s gold rush brought dramatic transformation to the High Country environment. Staking mining claims and building flumes, cabins, sluices and railroads significantly eroded mountainside hillsides while dislodging sediment that blocked streams and formed pools within streams.

John Campion was a Denver miner who amassed one of the finest collections of crystallized gold specimens ever assembled, such as his famed 102 troy ounce piece known as Tom’s Baby now housed at Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

Placer Mining

Placer mining was the original way of extracting gold in early times. Miners used river beds for alluvial deposits of sand and gravel that they would carry downstream while lighter materials settled at the bottom of the stream bed, which miners then worked using either traditional hand tools they brought with them, or newer innovations like rockers, cradles, or sluice boxes.

High Country was home to its initial placer mines along Wood’s Creek, Curtis Creek and Sullivan’s Creek in 1848; after California became a state this period saw additional alluvial gold strikes at Spaulding District and Jacksonville.

These early mining camps quickly expanded and attracted people from a wide variety of places – Americans, deserters from the Civil War and various nationalities of foreign immigrants all came seeking fortune in mining. While some were successful, many died while trying to fulfill their dreams or returned home empty handed.

By 1852, alluvial gold had all but vanished and mining companies took control of most mining operations. Industrialization drove independent miners towards wage labor.

Once railroads arrived in the late 1860’s, mining companies started shifting away from placer gold mining towards deeper lode deposits within quartz veins. Lode mining required more skill, hard work and capital than alluvial methods.

As opposed to the dry desert areas of the West, the Rocky Mountains provided plenty of water for powering ore-crushing stamp mills. Central City formed just below Gregory District while Black Hawk, just down gulch a mile or so later, quickly provided necessary infrastructure for mining operations.

On the other hand, alluvial operations continued their secretive work for years or decades in locations such as Jacobina, Rio de Contas and Minas Novas (Rio de Ouro), Gentio do Ouro and Itapicuru – now part of Gilpin County-Black Hawk National Historic District and protected under the Federal Antiquities Act to preserve our nation’s gold mining history.

Lode Mining

Silver miners once filled western mountains with the sound of pickaxes and steam-powered hoists as they worked on what later became known as the Comstock Lode, an expansive silver deposit found under Mount Davidson in Virginia City (then western Utah Territory) discovered in 1859 and which set off a silver rush across America – rivaling even that seen during California Gold Rush of 1849 – with towns popping up throughout Utah Territory–even one near what is now Bears Ears National Monument in Southeastern Utah.

Downtown Bozeman hosts the Ironstone Heritage Museum, which showcases historic mining equipment as well as providing insight into life during 19th-century mining operations. On display there is also a stunning 44-pound specimen of crystalline gold found within Mother Lode.

This crystalline gold specimen once belonged to famed newspaper publisher and heir to the Hearst fortune, George Hearst of San Francisco who amassed an extensive mining empire across Colorado and California. Additionally, the museum showcases a fascinating collection of letters written by early miners revealing intimate details about life on the frontier.

Hard-rock miners lived a perilous and treacherous existence in the mountains, from risking freezing depths of Blue River Valley all the way to summits where altitude and weather became factors while using explosives to chip away at rocks with dynamite. Their experience could be likened to John Wayne in “The Alamo.”

Today, most minerals extracted from federal land are controlled by large corporations; back then most mineral claims were sold directly by claimants to investors or larger companies that could develop them. Unfortunately, most bonanza kings staked worthless claims that were then quickly sold off for quick profits.

Malakoff Diggins State Park in Nevada City was once home to an open-pit gold mining operation using hydraulic canons to blast away at earth in search of golden treasure. Today, you can explore what remains of what was formerly an incredible open pit gold mining operation with water cannons to blast through it all and unearth gold treasure in what now resembles a miniature Bryce Canyon-esque pit.

Hydraulic Mining

Goldfields communities were vast and multicultural, featuring people from various places around the globe. Due to lax law enforcement, extrajudicial actions often became the norm among miners against other miners for crimes such as theft, claim jumping, or violence.

The Gold Rush unleashed a period of mining which was highly destructive of both landscape and environment. Hydraulic mining became one of the primary methods used during this era, using high pressure water jets to dislodge earth from placer mines where hillside gravel deposits were being utilized – commonly seen during California, Klondike/Yukon and Alaska gold rushes; furthermore it caused massive erosion, farmland burial, major controversy that eventually resulted in national regulations (Greenland 2001).

Miners first arriving on a new goldfield typically lived in tents or makeshift bark huts which could easily be taken apart when moving on. Diggers who remained for an extended period or brought their families usually built more permanent structures such as adobe homes or wattle and daub (poles plastered with mud or clay) houses with one or two rooms featuring only beds for each family member and furniture made from salvaged wood or recycled boxes.

On the goldfields, education initially occurred in tents before more permanent structures could be built. Once schools had been constructed in larger camps and church services were held within churches, traveling teachers taught classes daily in tents before more formal schools opened in towns and mining centers.

Food was often scarce and monotonous on the goldfields. A typical diet included meat and damper – a dish composed of flour, baking powder, salt, and water – with mutton being the staple meat option but occasionally being found alongside beef or pork as well. There was no refrigeration, therefore meat should be eaten within several days after slaughtering.

Crystallized Gold

Gold has long been revered as an elegant material, prized for its natural beauty, soft texture and resistance to corrosion. Historically used as decorative jewelry and early coinage, its workability made it valuable material in creating and measuring wealth; today however technological applications have taken precedence as an indicator of wealth and status.

Early placer miners harvested shallow, low-level gravels of the upper Blue River and its tributaries with simple ground sluicing techniques. Once these deposits had been exhausted, prospectors turned their focus toward lode gold deposits located within mountain beds.

Prior to the mid-1880s, most gold mining in High Country consisted of small boomlets punctuated by periods of near collapse and consolidation. But during the 1860s and 1870s there were a number of significant discoveries as well as improvements in technology – such as hydraulic mining.

After using up their low-level river gravels, the Breckenridge mining community turned its attention to deeper gravel deposits found along mountain terraces of French Gulch district. Ben Stanley Revett operated his first steam-powered dredge to mine these terraces – however within a few years several vastly improved electric dredges would be mining these hillside gravels with greater efficiency, recovering far more gold than before.

Deep-level placers produced an unusual variety of gold. Not rounded grains but rather flattened crystals reminiscent of herringbones, dendrites, and leaf gold formed parallel intergrowths of thin, octahedral or cube-shaped masses that weighed 10 times more than traditional placer gold flakes.

Farncomb Hill’s “wire gold” revolutionized how mineral collectors valued golden treasures. Prior to this discovery, all gold mined from around the globe had only ever been assessed on purity and weight to determine its bottom-line bullion value.

By the late 1880s, many Breckenridge miners had become expert high-graders – experts at isolating crystalline gold from other ore and shipping it off to Denver where wealthy collectors could build private collections of it. A Colorado School of Mines geologist noted that Farncomb Hill miners were so adept at this art form that they sent more crystallized specimens as “stolen” specimens than high-graded bullion bullion to Denver.