It had long been predicted by those most familiar with the general characteristics of the Rocky Mountains, that eventually they would be found rich in mineral wealth. One of the earliest and most sanguine advocates of this idea was Colonel William Gilpin of Missouri, whose predictions, when viewed in the light of later knowledge, seem like the gift of prophecy. Reports were indeed more or less current at Salt Lake of the finding of gold among the mountain streams of the Great Basin, as far back as 1848, but all search for it was discouraged by the Mormon leaders as tending to bring upon them a swarm of adventurers whose presence would inevitably work the ruin of their isolated republic, and so render all previous toil and hardship of no avail. We have seen that such reports had reached the Mormons in California, who were preparing to go to Salt Lake in consequence of them.
Then, the existence of rich silver-mines among the mountains of New Mexico, which the Spaniards had been working for an unknown period of time, in the rudest possible way, was a thing of common knowledge from the time of La Salle, though the secrecy observed in regard to them effectually shut out inquiry as to whether the business were profitable or not. But California was so long the goal of all seekers after gold, that it was not until her gold-fields began to give out, and people began to ask "What next?" that the great backbone of the continent, over which the emigration had rushed so long and heedlessly, suddenly stopped them with the question, as one might say, "Why not search me?"
The first report of the finding of gold at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains reached the Missouri River in July, 1858, but did not gain much credit till several months later. By October, however, the fever was at its height on the frontier, and had made some progress toward the east. Though several parties started out from the border towns of Kansas and Missouri, the lateness of the season prevented many from going at this time. Meanwhile, however, reports continued to come in, each seemingly well authenticated and more conclusive, as to the main fact that gold existed in paying quantity not far from the foot of Pike's Peak. The region where report located the discoveries therefore took to itself the name of this magnificent mountain, whose sides were vaguely supposed to be veined with the precious metal found in the sands of the Platte.
After much prospecting, the ground along Cherry Creek, a small tributary of the South Platte, was fixed upon as one promising the best results to the miner. It accordingly became a base for future operations which were to be pushed up into the heart of the mountains. First known simply as Cherry Creek, the camp of the earliest comers soon took to itself the name of Denver City,[1] from James W. Denver, governor of Kansas, of which this gold region then formed part.
With the coming of spring, and opening of navigation on the Missouri, emigrants began to pour into the various points of departure for the new gold region. From Omaha to Independence unprecedented bustle prevailed all along the border. Many started off on a journey of seven hundred miles on foot. Some put their worldly goods in hand-carts to which they harnessed themselves. One man is said to have trundled a wheelbarrow from Kansas City to Cherry Creek. Most emigrants, however, went in wagons over the now well-marked roads of the pioneers, and by night the prairies were lighted up far and near with their camp-fires.
In view of the rush to Pike's Peak, the firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell, which had for years transported supplies to the military posts of Kansas, Utah, and New Mexico, now put on a line of daily coaches from Leavenworth to Denver, which were run up the Republican, and thence to the Platte. Thus, after the Indian pony, the trapper's caravan, the explorers' and emigrants' cavalcade, comes at last the modern stage-coach with its promise of greater things to follow in its track. On the 21st of May the first coach reached Leavenworth on its return from the mountains, bringing only a few thousand dollars in dust; but in that month John H. Gregory, an old Georgia miner, found rich deposits of gold in the mountains among the headwaters of Clear Creek. This discovery established the value of Colorado as a gold-bearing region.
When visited in 1859 the Gregory Diggings were found in a gulch along which log cabins, tents and camps, hastily covered in with boards or pine boughs, were scattered for miles. There were then five thousand people in them, and more were coming in every day.
Here the experiences of California life were repeated. Some men were taking out two hundred dollars a day; others who worked equally hard did not get five dollars a day for their labor. It resulted that a stream of confident and cheerful ones were constantly going in, while not a few who had failed to find fortune in the diggings were as constantly coming out, crestfallen and in rags.
In 1859 Denver had about one thousand people, who lived in three hundred rough-hewn log houses. Very few of them had glass windows, or doors, or other floors than the bare ground. Hearths and fireplaces would be built of adobe, as in New Mexico, and chimneys of sticks laid crosswise one on the other, with the interstices filled with mud, as the New-Englanders of 1630 were accustomed to make theirs. As no rain falls except during the summer months, life in the open air caused little discomfort to people who, being obliged to make the most of every thing, easily learned to do without what are called luxuries.
Picturesquely set up among these homely dwellings of the whites, one saw many skin lodges. These belonged to a band of Arapaho Indians, who had thus pitched their camp in the heart of the growing city. Golden City in the north and Colorado City in the south were soon founded. The first was an intermediate point on the route to the Gregory Diggings; the second was started at the foot of Pike's Peak, near to the famous Fontaine qui bouille,[2] or Boiling Spring, and on the route to Santa Fé.
In a few months more Denver had grown to a city of brick and frame buildings, with two theatres, a mint coining the gold of its own mines, and rival daily newspapers. It had quite reached the second stage of development of frontier cities.
The surface, or placer, diggings of Colorado were soon exhausted, but in their place belts of gold mixed with quartz were struck all the way from Pike's Peak in the south to Long's Peak in the north. Above this gold belt, rich silver ores were sometimes found on the very summits of the mountains. These discoveries soon changed mining from a pursuit in which every one could engage, and which had drawn such numbers into Colorado in the beginning, to the larger operations of capital, with all the appliances modern science brings to its aid.
[1] Denver City. Green Russell, a Georgian, with a company of gold-seekers, pitched the first camp on Cherry Creek in the summer of 1858. They called it Auraria after a mining town of Georgia. The party which named Denver City came with General Larimer, of Leavenworth, Kan., in the winter of 1858-59. The gold region first formed a county of Kansas called Arapaho, though distant six hundred miles from Junction City, then the nearest settlement of Kansas. The nearest post-office was Fort Laramie, two hundred and twenty miles north of Denver.
[2] Fontaine qui bouille, French. "The three fountains bubbling up from the ground, and not boiling with heat, are strongly impregnated with soda." They were visited and described by Pike, Long, Fremont, and others.