Unique Ghost Towns and Mountain Spots

THE PARK’S MINING GHOSTS ARE MANY

The Leavick terminus of the Last Chance and Hilltop mines’ tramway was at the above mill. Ore buckets swung in the second story (right), emptied and back along the towers. Below is an arastra in Buckskin Creek.

From Cripple Creek

Next to Leadville, the Cripple Creek district has the most fascination for the preterist. It had the most fabulous gold production of any camp in Colorado—nay, in the United States. According to historian Marshall Sprague, the district created twenty-eight millionaires as a modest estimate. One of those who made a million was lumberman Sam Altman. Formerly he ran a sawmill in Poverty Gulch but in 1893 he founded a town, Altman.

His town was close to three big producers, the Pharmacist, Victor and Buena Vista, and to his own mine, the Free Coinage on Bull Hill. By November of 1893, the town was supporting four restaurants, six saloons, six groceries, several boardinghouses and a telephone. A school house and two hundred frame or log houses had been erected, and the loyal citizens claimed a population of twelve hundred.

From its high perch Altman could look down on Independence, Goldfield, Cameron and many another mushrooming settlement that burgeoned in the Cripple Creek excitement of the early ’90’s. It was not a dressy camp, but a workaday place peopled solely by miners. These miners were workers—hard workers—and they thought they should be more justly rewarded for their labor.

One of Altman’s miners was John Calderwood, a Scotsman and a graduate of the McKeesport School of Mines in the class of 1876. He elected to be an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners, a newly formed union born in Butte, Montana, in May, 1893. He was no firebrand but a dignified conscientious worker. Within two months he had signed up every Altman miner for his Free Coinage Union No. 19, W. F. M., and promised them a standard eight-hour three-dollar day.

ALTMAN CLAIMED TO BE THE HIGHEST TOWN

Altman was platted by Sam Altman in 1893 on the short saddle between Bull Hill and Bull Cliff and soon had a population of fifteen hundred (including Midway a hamlet to the northwest). Its altitude was 10,620 feet. It claimed to be the highest incorporated town in the world and probably was, in North America. Both upper and lower shots were taken near the crest of Bull Hill with Pikes Peak looming in the background. Bull Hill was the scene of one of the early skirmishes of labor-capital battles and was notable as the first significant victory for labor. Part of the maneuvering was comic opera and part, raw violence.

The mine owners were enraged at his demand. In February, 1894, twelve of them banded together in an agreement that their mines would operate solely on a nine-hour three-dollar day. One of the signers was Sam Altman who sat back to see what the residents of his town would do next.

Under Calderwood’s bidding five hundred men walked out of the nine-hour mines. Bull Hill, practically in Altman’s back yard, was one of the areas most affected because a number of nine-hour mines were located there.

Calderwood organized a central kitchen at Altman to feed the out-of-work miners. He collected funds, trained pickets, assessed the working miners and addressed daily meetings. By March the Bull Hill mine owners were no longer scoffing. Winfield Scott Stratton, richest operator in the district, sent for Calderwood and offered a compromise of $3.25 for a nine-hour shift by day and the same wages for an eight-hour shift by night.

Calderwood accepted the compromise and signed a contract. A contract with a union leader was an unheard of thing in that day and stirred the whole state into editorials and epithets. It made the mine owners of Bull Hill bull-headed, and they attempted force to re-open their mines. But Calderwood made a fortress out of Altman.

He kept order but he also kept anything in the way of a scab or a mine owner out. The mine owners appealed to Governor Waite for militia which arrived and was withdrawn, leaving Calderwood in possession of Altman and Bull Hill. Unfortunately, Calderwood decided to tour the state on behalf of the miners’ cause. Without his calm wise leadership the criminal element drifted in and violence took over.

The final peace treaty was signed at Altman on June 10, 1894, after one hundred and thirty days of the strike—the longest in American history up to that time. The nine-hour mine owners gave in on the question of an eight-hour day.

The Battle of Bull Hill was over, and Altman went back to the business of mining. Later on it was the hang-out for the Jack Smith gang and saw some shootings. But mostly the town just mined until the second Cripple Creek strike occurred a decade after the first.

It maintained a steady population until that time. But after the ill effects of the second strike, mines shut down and miners moved out. In 1910 its population had dropped to one hundred. After that it fell off consistently until there was no one.

Altman is unique in our collection—and in the United States—as the scene of the first major strike war and of the first workers’ victory—a truly unique presage of the twentieth century.

THE CRIPPLE CREEK DISTRICT HAS MORE GHOSTS

Goldfield was platted in January, 1895, and had a population of thirty-five hundred. It served rather as a suburb to Victor but did build a few substantial buildings, including this fire house. Its quaint engine has been removed to Victor for display. The Bull Hill station (below) is a reminder of three railroads that formerly served Cripple Creek and also of the Independence station blown up by Harry Orchard, 1904.

From Canon City

Two interesting mountain spots may be seen in this locality. Rosita, which dates from 1873, is a true ghost town with no one living there in 1960 save the postmistress. But Silver Cliff is no ghost, despite the fact that it was for a decade or more from 1910 on. Both are former county seats of Custer County, and both lost the honor as their silver mines gave out.

Silver Cliff is five years younger than Rosita and experienced a much greater boom than any other mining camp in Colorado with the exception of Leadville. Its first shipment of ore from the gargantuan and unique silver cliff (site of both photos) was in 1878. The population rose to some fifteen thousand in 1881 at the peak of its three-year rush. The Denver and Rio Grande Railroad reached there in May, 1881, and was welcomed with celebration.

Its fire department, established in 1879 in the Town Hall (the lonely building facing this way in the 1960 shot, and now a museum), soon distinguished itself as a frequent winner in the state tournaments of hose cart races for volunteer firemen....

Rosita (which means “Little Rose” in Spanish) was the principal town in the Wet Mountain Valley for five years before Silver Cliff and Westcliff (now the county seat) usurped its priority. It had the honor of being the subject of an article written by Helen Hunt Jackson and published in Scribners Monthly for May, 1878. The author (“H. H.”) claimed there were three hundred mines at the time—but she probably did not know a mine from a prospect hole. She stayed at an inn called The House of the Snowy Range, and her descriptions made Rosita and its setting sound as poetically unique as its name.

ROSITA’S HANDSOMEST HOUSE LIVED ON

In the 1890 photo the ornate two-story house (seen below) stood at the righthand end of the main street, facing this way. In 1960 the house next was gone except for some lumber on the ground; the third house still stood. The mansion bore a sign Post Office which was tacked up in 1957 during the filming of Saddle the Wind, a movie that starred Robert Taylor and used Rosita for atmosphere. Both are now gone.

SILVER CLIFF CHOSE A MAGNIFICENT BACKDROP

Silver Cliff boomed in 1879 to such an extent that it rivaled Leadville for a decade. For a short period it was the third largest town in Colorado and it has never been a true ghost town, although much fallen from its former opulence. What has never changed is the view from the silver cliff, facing the town, across the Wet Mountain Valley to the spectacular reddish Sangre de Cristo Range (Blood of Christ in Spanish).

From Salida

Turret was a gold camp that was discovered very late—in 1897—and experienced a boom the following spring. It was located on the south side of Nipple Mountain (which is a spur of Turret Mountain) in a valley at the head of Cat Gulch. The Rocky Mountain News for May 14, 1898, carried a long article describing the excitement in “Turret City” and the possibilities of the various lodes.

Houses were going up fast, and lots were in great demand. Stores, an assay office and saloons were doing business, and a hotel was planned. A post office was open, and daily mail was arriving from Salida. The article was exuberant at the gold showing in hematite, jasper and schist and spoke of the Monterrey lode as having great promise.

The town’s population, after the usual boomers and drifters departed, was around three or four hundred. In 1900 the Denver Republican ran an article devoted largely to Turret’s mines and spoke of the mineralization being in the “Salida Copper Belt” and of the Gold Bug mine’s fine shipments of ore. The town was prospering.

By 1907 the population had slipped to two hundred fifty. Still it hung on with a steady flow of gold, gradually lessening to a trickle, until 1939 when there were but twenty-six residents. In 1941 the post office was discontinued, and finally Turret died.

Steve Frazee, prolific Colorado author, two of whose books have become films (Gold of the Seven Saints and Many Rivers to Cross) and whose 1961 offering was More Damn Tourists, has this provocative recollection:

TURRET FACED THE COLLEGIATE RANGE

The cliffs which gave Turret its name are to the rear of the photographer in both shots. These photos look across the Arkansas Valley to Shavano and Antero Peaks. When the 1902 picture was taken, Turret had a population of one hundred ninety-five and was reached by stage from Salida. Note the residences on the hill at the far end of the main street where the 1960 shot caught a sod roof and amateur chimney.

“When I went to Turret in 1932 to operate a mine, there were thirty-seven inhabitants, three of whom were old timers, since they had been there from the 1890’s. One, Pete G. Schlosser of Illinois, claimed to be the first man to eat tomatoes and thus prove they were non-poisonous. Another, Emil Becker of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had been the most active prospector of all, discovering mines and selling them. He was a former big league ball player, having pitched to Connie Mack. One of his old teammates, Billy Sunday, visited Becker when the latter was running a saloon in Turret, and that is a story in itself.”

In 1960 Turret had fifteen houses standing. The largest (which may have been the Gregory Hotel) was painted white, cared for, and evidently inhabited as a summer home. Two or three others appeared also to have been redeemed from the mountain rats by weekend sojourners. But the remainder were true ghosts.

Turret has a stimulating view of Shavano and Antero Peaks and the Collegiate Range. It is unique for the castle-like cliffs which stand guard to the east and which gave the town its name....

Bonanza, or Bonanza City, dates from early in 1880 when gold was found along Kerber Creek. An episode occurred about the naming of Bonanza which is probably unique in the annals of Colorado. The city fathers decided on Bonanza City as a name. In consequence the town was so incorporated in December, 1880, but they changed their minds. One month later, in January, 1881, the town was re-incorporated as Bonanza. This has led to considerable confusion during the years—some historians claiming that Bonanza is one of Colorado’s seven incorporated “cities”—which it is not.

The town’s boom began in the summer of 1880 when there was a rush to Kerber Creek. Four towns sprang up of which Bonanza is the sole survivor. For a few it had a population of some fifteen hundred while thirty-two businesses tended to Bonanza’s needs. But the district’s ore was a disappointment—far from bonanza. It proved to be low grade and also refractory. In the mid-1880’s the town almost died.

Then Mark Beidell imported new machinery for the Michigan mine and mill and proved that the ore values could be recovered for small but adequate profit. Slowly others emulated this example, and by 1900 the Bonanza, Exchequer and Eagle mines had been re-opened. More mines such as the Wheel of Fortune, St. Joe and K. O. also produced steadily. The ores were largely lead, zinc and silver with a little copper.

Bonanza has never died. In 1910 it had a population of one hundred. Some thirty people were still living there the year around in 1960, the men actively mining and hoping for the price of metals to rise. Many buildings were standing, at least half of them deserted.

Bonanza is unique in our collection because of the anomaly of its name—a real misnomer.

BONANZA

Bonanza City was actually no bonanza. It had many mines and quantities of low-grade ore which supplied some good fortunes but no millions. It spread for over a mile along Kerber Creek and absorbed an early rival, Kerber City.

KERBER CREEK IGNORES THE GLORIOUS PAST

The 1960 shot was at the upper end of Bonanza and depicts the farthest house in town, opposite a well and the Wheel of Fortune mine dump.

From Buena Vista

A drive up Chalk Creek around the south side of Mt. Princeton and past the Chalk Cliffs (as famed in their way as those of Dover) will bring you to St. Elmo. This mining camp was located first as Forest City in December, 1880, but shortly after received a post office under the name of St. Elmo. Its main reason for existence was the Mary Murphy mine which had been located five years before and was sold in 1880 to a St. Louis company. There were other gold and silver mines in the locality, such as the Brittenstein group, but many did not warrant the capital expended.

St. Elmo’s second reason for existence was the arrival of the narrow gauge, Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad, which was building toward Gunnison. The grade required a tunnel under the continental divide, west of St. Elmo. In the face of howling blizzards and much labor trouble, work on the Alpine Tunnel went on while St. Elmo acted as a supply depot. The tunnel was completed the following year in December, 1881, and regular service through the tunnel commenced in the summer of ’82. According to the Colorado Business Directory, St. Elmo’s population was three hundred in these years but dropped to two hundred and fifty when some of the mines proved to be mirages.

But the Mary Murphy held up through the years, employing around one hundred men. According to Louisa Ward Arps (Chalk Creek historian), its peak year was 1914 when a crew of two hundred and fifty was hired. The mine had a tramway nearly 5000 feet long which ran down Pomeroy Mountain from the tunnel outlet at the fourth level to the railroad grade in the gulch. The Mary Murphy finally ceased operation in the 1920’s with a total production of around $14,000,000.

SAINT ELMO HAD A CLIFTON HOTEL

The upper view shows one of the two main blocks that was destroyed by fire in 1890. The Clifton Hotel was the large white building in the center of the upper view. The white building at the right was a saloon—note bartenders with white aprons and man holding a beer keg. In the original picture, the stage road to Tin Cup Pass can just be discerned, wending its way up through the timber at far left.

During its heyday St. Elmo was a little hub, having in addition to its railroad, toll roads west to Tin Cup, north to Aspen and south to Maysville. Accordingly it was a favorite spot with the miners for Saturday night celebrations. But when trips through the tunnel stopped in 1910, and trains up Chalk Creek were halted in 1926, St. Elmo was doomed. Finally there were only two residents of St. Elmo, Annabelle Stark and her brother, Tony, who were to be the subject of many articles. Until their deaths, each one’s mounting eccentricities made them legendary, and St. Elmo unique....

Winfield started in 1880 and had a post office, one store, two hotels, two saloons and enough cabins to make a population of around thirty. By 1883 it had a number of mines operating which were shipping their silver and copper ore to Leadville for smelting. One of these mines was the Augusta, owned by Jacob Sands (the lover of Baby Doe who brought the beautiful Colorado divorcee to Leadville). Jake was a friend of Horace Tabor’s and eventually lost his sweetheart to the Silver King (as Tabor was called). But what made Jake name his mine after Tabor’s first wife? Probably Tabor gave him some money for development since the claim was located on May 10, 1880, several weeks before Tabor and Baby Doe met. The mine is a long crosscut tunnel in Hummel Basin about two miles northwest of Winfield. The Augusta made money for a while but produced no fortune.

Still, the strange puzzle of the mine’s name and hidden history does give Winfield a unique quality.

WINFIELD

The Clear Creek district of Chaffee County had seven mining camps rivaling each other in 1881. Only two survived, Vicksburg and Winfield. Today both have been changed into summer resorts where fishing is the principal sport and main attraction.

From Gunnison

Tin Cup was “a wild ’un.” Probably Creede, Leadville and Tin Cup attained the worst reputations (and rightfully) of Colorado’s many mining camps. Tin Cup was particularly hard on marshals. The first two officeholders were weak and completely under control of the vice element who ran the gambling dens, sporting houses and saloons full tilt. The marshals’ orders were to give an appearance of law and order so as to make it easier to fleece the suckers.

Finally conditions grew so bad that a sincere attempt was made to straighten up the corruption. The first strong marshal, Harry Rivers, was shot in a gun battle. His successors were shot, resigned, went insane, or got religion and changed their calling to that of the pulpit. Their infamous story has been very ably portrayed by Rene Coquoz, Leadville historian. “Frenchie,” the saloon keeper who shot one of the marshals, ran a place across from the Town Hall at Washington and Grand Streets. The saloon still stands.

Tin Cup’s history begins very early in 1861. A prospecting party that consisted of Jim Taylor and two companions was camped on the Taylor River. One of the men brought back to camp some promising looking gravel in a tin cup which suggested the idea of a name for the region. They did a little placering; but in the next years the Civil War curtailed mining activities throughout Colorado. Nothing much happened in the region until the late 1870’s when strikes were made on the Gold Cup, the Tin Cup, the Anna Dedricka and the Jimmy Mack. Immediately there was a rush to the area, and in 1879 the town of Virginia City was surveyed and platted.

TIN CUP’S TOWN HALL LOOKS CHURCHLY

During Tin Cup’s revival a Town Hall was erected in 1906 and used for a variety of community affairs. The Town Hall was renovated and re-painted in 1950 by the Civic Association. Tin Cup had no church.

Frank Hall, one of Colorado’s most eminent historians, says in Volume IV of his comprehensive work that the surface ores were high grade silver, ranging from 114 to 600 ounces of silver per ton, and that all had admixtures of gold. In addition there were some excellent placers and gold lodes. In 1880 the Gold Cup mine sold for $300,000, and the town was firmly on its way.

By 1881 when George Crofutt wrote his Grip-Sack Guide of Colorado he reported that Virginia City had changed its name to Tin Cup to conform with the name of the region. He added that Tin Cup was a prosperous mining town of six hundred population with twelve stores, several hostels and one smelter. (He omitted the more flagrant business emporiums.) He stressed that game was very abundant and gave the fare for the daily line of sleighs running to St. Elmo.

The Colorado Business directory puts the population figure for 1881 at five hundred, a hundred less than Crofutt. It is interesting to note on this matter of population that present-day writers have a habit of enlarging the figures enormously, especially so-called historians of ghost towns who generally add a zero to any number they encounter. If Colorado’s hundreds of mining camps had as many people living in them as is claimed by post-World War II writers, the state would have been as populous then as it is now. But it was not.

Tin Cup, despite the fact that it has had enormous publicity through Pete Smythe’s radio and TV show of the same name and through the building of an amusement park west of Denver called East Tin Cup, must be seen in the same light. It was just another mining town, although colorful in its own way, and by the late 1880’s was very much in decline.

In 1891 it had a revival and kept going fairly well through that decade. It picked up even more after the turn of the century when the gold mines put on larger crews and when dredging machinery was moved in to operate the placers. But following the usual pattern of these towns, World War I ushered in a growing paralysis, and by 1917 the Gold Cup mine, Tin Cup’s mainstay, shut down.

Tin Cup slumbered on in a complete trance except for an occasional sportsman. Little by little its quaint charm, including fire hydrants that date from 1891, attracted more people. By 1960 it was a substantial summer resort with more people taking over the many deserted cabins and buildings and telling of its unique wild past....

Gothic is reached by returning down the Taylor River to Almont and taking the road up the East River to its junction with Copper Creek. Crofutt described it in 1881 as the most important mining camp in Gunnison County with a population of nine hundred and fifty. It was established June 8, 1879, and made rapid progress, having many large stores, hotels, restaurants, saloons, shops of all kinds, a public school, a smelter (which Frank Hall says never operated), three sawmills and a weekly newspaper. Shortly its population rose to fifteen hundred.

But, as one old-timer recalled, the Gothic district was the paradise of prospectors but not of miners. It was streaked on every mountainside with protruding veins of quartz. A blind man could locate a claim. But the ore values were not high enough for exploitation. The district had only its unusual beauty amid its surrounding peaks—Treasury, Cinnamon, Galena, Baldy, Belleview and Italian—and to the north the towering Elk Mountains.

Gothic died. Only one resident remained until Dr. John C. Johnson, a former dean at the Western State College in Gunnison, saw its possibilities in 1928 for a fully accredited six-weeks summer school—the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory—and bought the two-hundred-acre town. Each year its distinguished staff of scientists invites other eminent scholars in the biological field to a conference and symposium at the end of the regular teaching session. Such topics as “The Living Balance Between Flora and Fauna” are discussed. The laboratory has brought Gothic into a national prominence never attained by its mines.

The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory with its nine hundred and five acres of primitive spruce and fir land, which sweep up the side of Baldy Mountain, made Gothic unique in 1960. It was the only ghost town that had turned into a school.

GOTHIC HAS TURNED FROM MINES TO PLANTS

Garwood Judd, variously known as “The Man Who Stayed” and “Mayor of Gothic,” lived off and on in the Town Hall until his death in 1930.

From Lake City

Capitol City is unique for two reasons—the odd spelling of its name and the sad ruin of one man’s dream to have his town the capital of Colorado. He was George S. Lee, a mill and smelter operator.

Frank Fossett wrote in 1880 in his Colorado that Capitol City was located at the junction of the two forks of Henson Creek, nine miles west of Lake City, in a park most of which was embraced by the Lee townsite patent. The park was surrounded by rugged, towering San Juan peaks, rich in silver, lead and iron ores. Two smelters were in operation at each end of town. Fossett added:

“Right here ... where one would least expect to find it is the most elegantly furnished house in Southern Colorado. The handsome brick residence of George S. Lee and lady, distinguished for their hospitality, is a landmark of this locality.”

George Lee suffered from the same disease that characterized so many of the pioneers—a compound of boundless optimism and grandiose ambition. He pictured his remote town as the capital of the state and his home as the governor’s mansion. Perhaps it was an idea spoken in jest; perhaps it was his sincere dream. Folklore leans to the latter version—but he never campaigned for his idea nor introduced any bill into the legislature.

The name of his town is equally confusing. After Lake City was started in 1874 and platted in 1875, prospectors streamed up Henson Creek, and a town was built at its forks. The newspapers of 1876 and ’77 referred to the town as Capital City, and the Colorado Business Directory for the late 1870’s used interchangeably the two spellings of Capital and Capitol. Yet in 1961 the Postmaster General’s office in Washington wrote that “a search of the records for 1876 and ’77 reveals that the spelling of the town referred to was Capitol City.” To confuse matters still further the Colorado State Archives office has recorded a communication, dated May 2, 1887, from the county commissioners of Hinsdale County in which they petition for permission to change the name of Galena City to Capitol City.

Why is this petition eleven years late? Poor Capitol City—the whole situation seems as confused as George Lee’s dream! And who was it did not know that “capitol” is a building, not a town?

According to the historians, Jean and Don Griswold, Capitol City had two prosperous periods when mining and smelting were booming—a silver boom in the mid-1880’s and a gold boom around the turn of the century. Two factors prevented Capitol City from attaining any major growth. Early litigation discouraged and slowed up the first business activity of the late 1870’s and early 1880’s, and later the gold deposits of the 1900’s were not very large. The population of around three hundred in 1880 became discouraged and drifted away. In 1885 there were but one hundred people residing there, and in 1900 there was the same number again.

In 1960 there were not many remaining signs of human habitation in Capitol City. Above the junction of North Henson Creek with Henson Creek there were some log cabins in what used to be the upper end of town. On the townsite proper there was only the derelict mansion which was being destroyed from every angle. Henson Creek had altered its course and was eating away the embankment on which the Lee house stood while at the same time human hands were carting away souvenirs. At the lower end of town only the foundations could be seen of the smelter on which George Lee had based his great dream.....

Continuing up Henson Creek in the direction that the stagecoach used to travel from Lake City to Ouray, the visitor will come to the ruins of Rose’s Cabin. Henson Creek was named for Henry Henson who prospected the valley in 1871 prior to the Brunot Treaty of 1873 which took the land away from the Utes. Rose’s Cabin was named for Corydon Rose who built it in 1874. It was a hotel and bar with outlying stables and shed and served as a welcome stage stop on the hard ride over Engineer Pass, the most spectacular pass in Colorado, the road now altered to another ridge to make a popular jeep ride....

Returning to Lake City the visitor will pass the Ute and Ulay mine. At one time this was such a large operation that a town grew up around its workings. The mill is disused and defunct, and the dam which supplied its water power is broken. But the superintendent’s house is occupied by a caretaker who guards the property summer and winter.

THE GRANDEUR OF CAPITOL CITY IS DUST

The elaborate layout of George S. Lee was depicted in Frank Fossett’s 1880 publication. The outlying barns, pastures and corrals are now gone. It is evident from this sketch that the course of Henson Creek must have been at the southern limit of Capitol Park. Today Henson Creek is flowing so close to the mansion that it is about to undermine the foundation. The 1960 view looks up the valley toward Rose’s Cabin.

The Ute-Ulay is now part of the holdings of the powerful Newmont Mining Company which also owns the Idarado Mining Company of Ouray and Telluride and the Resurrection Mining Company of Leadville. There is always the off chance that the price of metals will rise, and, should this be the case, many a Colorado mining property would throw off its ghostly pall and throb again with activity....

From Lake City a number of ghost towns can be seen but the most exciting one requires a jeep. This is Carson which during the years of its history was also known as Carson Camp and Carson City. Since Carson City’s population during the score or so years of its existence from the 1880’s to the early 1900’s was at no time more than fifty and generally around twenty, one is inevitably reminded by Bayard Taylor’s words:

“I only wish that the vulgar snobbish custom of attaching ‘city’ to every place of more than three houses, could be stopped. From Illinois to California it has become a general nuisance, telling only of swagger and want of taste and not of growth.”

Bayard Taylor wrote these words in 1866. The “city” that called forth his ire was Gate City, or Golden Gate City, a string of four or five cabins, at the mouth of Tucker Creek on the stagecoach road to Central City. He included these words the next year in his book Colorado: A Summer Trip, and I first quoted the passage in my 1943 Master’s Thesis about Central City for the University of Denver. In 1960 when I was re-visiting many ghost towns, I thought of Bayard Taylor’s wish frequently and smiled because Taylor never attained his wish. The vogue of adding “city” to the name of any little hamlet continued unabated through the whole nineteenth century and even into the twentieth.

Carson, or Carson City, deserved its appendage more than some at the time of its naming and particularly deserves it today. Of all the towns in our 1960 selection it gave the greatest feeling of being a ghost town. Its buildings have been preserved by the cold and by the fortunate fact that it is in an unusual spot which is not subject to snowslides. This aspect is very rare in the San Juans where thundering snow is man’s greatest enemy.

J. E. Carson discovered a mine in 1881 on top of the continental divide some sixteen miles southwest of Lake City on the headwaters of Wager Creek. He staked claims on both sides of the divide, the claims on the south side being at the head of Lost Trail Creek which flows south into the Rio Grande River. With the arrival of other prospectors the Carson Mining district was organized, and in 1882 a camp started. The Griswolds in their Colorado’s Century of Cities have remarked that Carson was thrown like a cavalry saddle across the continental divide with one stirrup hanging on the Atlantic slope and one on the Pacific—a most apt description.

The construction of both segments of Carson is very good—all the buildings are nicely shingled and show care in their carpentry. But the Atlantic slope, or higher, section of Carson is in much greater disrepair and will not survive very long.

In the ’80’s Carson mined silver, and after the Panic of 1893 the camp mined gold. But the problem of transportation to a town which lay at various levels from 11,500 feet to 12,360 was almost insoluble. Its ore was gold, ruby silver and copper, running sometimes as high as $2,000 a ton. Despite the richness of the ore the deposits ran in pockets, occasionally as high as $40,000 in a pocket of only forty feet depth. But when a pocket was stoped out, then the ore was completely gone. Among the best mines were the Maid of Carson, Big Injun, Saint Jacob, Dunderberg and Lost Trail.

And today Carson, although it is unique in its preservation, is a place where riches are indeed a lost trail!

CARSON SNUGGLES AGAINST THE DIVIDE

This section of the town lies on the Pacific slope side of the divide and is in much better condition than the camp on the Atlantic side.

From Creede

Bachelor’s beginnings followed the silver rush to the Creede area in the autumn of 1890. The town was heralded by an amusing paragraph in the Creede Candle for January 21, 1892, which ran:

“The latest townsite excitement is in a park on Bachelor Hill, around the Last Chance boarding house. Two saloons and a female seminary are already in operation and other business houses are expected soon. It is to be called Bachelor.”

By April the 10,500-foot-high town had a post office (Teller, because of a conflict with Bachelor, California), a theatre, eight stores, a dozen saloons and several boardinghouses, restaurants and hotels. A number of two-story buildings were being erected. By June the town had been incorporated and was holding an election of officers. By December it had a new opera house which was packed when the Bachelor City Dramatic Club presented the drama Wild Irishman, interspersed with several divertissements and followed by a dance, in an effort to raise money for a Catholic church.

But the efforts of the better people failed. The character of Bachelor remained tough. At the height of its population of around twelve hundred, two hundred residents were prostitutes. It was a nightly custom for patronage of the soiled doves to include not only the local boys, but miners from Creede, North Creede and Weaver, who tipped the hoistmen of the Last Chance and Commodore to lift them up to the wild, brawling and drunken delights of Bachelor.

The crash of silver in 1893 affected the whole Creede area. The population of Bachelor (according to the Colorado Business Directory) was down to eight hundred in 1896 and one hundred and fifty by 1910.

BACHELOR WAS FULL OF BRAWLING “BATCHERS”

The mining camp was already declining when this picture was taken. Its population had fallen from twelve hundred to one hundred and fifty.

Still Bachelor hung on as a town after that for a number of years. But the winters were so harsh, and transportation over the two-and-a-half mile road that climbed nearly two thousand feet up was so difficult that in the ’teens the last residents gave up. They moved down to Creede.

In 1960 there were only three cabins left standing on what was formerly Bachelor’s residential street and a few remnants of the boardwalk on its main street. Among the trees on the east side of the meadow, where Bachelor once lay, was a narrow picket-fenced grave, shaded by trees. A local story says that three bodies are buried there, one on top of the other, because of the difficulty of digging in the frozen ground the day after the tragedy that claimed all three.

It seems that a reforming minister, determined to alter the town’s ways, moved to Bachelor at the height of its wickedness. He was a widower with a sixteen-year-old daughter. Hardly had they become settled in their cabin, than the girl caught bronchitis, and the minister was called down to Del Norte to conduct a funeral. As he left, the father cautioned the daughter to stay in the cabin, keep warm and admit no one, since he was afraid of the town’s violent riff-raff.

When the minister returned three nights later, he was alarmed to see a saddle horse tied outside their door. He rushed inside and found a strange young man bending over his daughter who lay in bed. Whipping out a gun, the minister shot and killed the stranger. His daughter screamed and explained that the man was a doctor who had come to tend her. In her father’s absence her bronchitis had deepened into pneumonia. Worn out by the effort of speaking, the girl fell back on her pillow and died shortly after. In remorse the minister turned the gun on himself. The three bodies were found together the next morning and buried amid swirling snow.

Bachelor’s site is still tossed by storms. You can leave Creede with the top of your jeep down and the world bathed in sunshine to arrive in Bachelor forty-five minutes later beneath racing clouds and pelting rain. But its location has probably the most magnificent view of our selected ghost towns. It looks out across the Rio Grande Valley to Snowshoe Mountain and down the river to Wagon Wheel Gap. From here the gap shows more pictorially than from any other angle. On the return trip there is a perpendicular sight of Creede and a view of the continental divide with its mountains around Wolf Creek Pass and Summitville. This is a breathtaking experience when the autumn colors are at their height. Yes, you will find Bachelor unique for its view....

Spar City’s location may also be seen on the Bachelor trip. It lies on the south side of the Rio Grande River up Lime Creek, about fourteen miles from Creede. It was originally named Fisher City after John Fisher who went prospecting in June, 1892, and found a rich float of silver and lead by climbing up Palo Alto Creek to the lower reaches of Fisher Mountain. The news electrified the latecomers to Creede, and a rush ensued. By August the boomers had changed the original name to Spar City because of quantities of spar (or feldspar) in the area.