A Gold Hunter's Experience

by Chalkley J. Hambleton

Small flocks of antelope, fleet and graceful, were frequently seen gliding over the plain. They were very shy, and kept several gunshots away. But their curiosity was great, and if a man would lie down on the ground and wave a flag or handkerchief tied to a stick till they noticed it, they would first gaze at it intently and then gradually approach. In this way they were often enticed by hunters to come near enough for a shot.

Forty or fifty miles below Denver we came in view of one picturesque ruin—old Fort St. Vrain—with its high, thick walls of adobe situated on the north side of the Platte. It was built about twenty-five years before, by Ceran St. Vrain, an old trapper and Indian trader. These adobe walls, standing well preserved in this climate, it seemed to me, would be leveled to the ground by one or two good eastern equinoxial storms.

We reached Denver on the 18th of September about noon, being forty-nine days out from St. Joe. Stubbs met us five or six miles out on the road. This gave him and me a chance, as we walked along, to talk over the condition of things and our plans for the immediate future. He had been in Denver over a week waiting for us and had had no tidings of the train since I wrote him from Fort Kearney. He had considerable liking for display and had evidently told people in Denver that he was waiting for the arrival of a large train of machinery and goods in which he was interested. He thought it would be a scene to be proud of to see fourteen new wagons, heavily loaded and drawn by forty yoke of oxen, come marching into town in one close file. When he saw only nine wagons straggling along over the space of a mile, covered with dust that had been settling on them for weeks, with oxen lean, footsore, limping and begrimed with sweat and dirt, and teamsters in clothes faded, soiled and ragged, his pride sank to a low level, and he did not want to go into town with the wagons. The train did not tarry, but crossed Cherry Creek—then entirely dry, though often a torrent—drove up the Platte a mile or so and camped for the day on the south or east side of the stream. Stubbs and I spent a couple of hours looking over the town and calling on some acquaintances and then went to the camp.

Denver was at that time a lively place, with a few dozen frame and log buildings, and probably a thousand or more people. Most of them lived and did business in tents and wagons. A Mr. Forrest, whom I had known in Chicago, was doing a banking business here in a tent. The town seemed to be full of wagons and merchandise, consisting of food, clothing and all kinds of tools and articles used in mining. Many people were preparing to leave for the States, some to spend the winter and to return, others, more discouraged or tired of gold hunting, to stay for good.

When I went to the camp in the afternoon Sollitt and all the drivers wanted to go back to the town to look it over and make a few purchases. I told them I would look after the oxen till evening, when the herders for that night would come and relieve me. The afternoon was clear and warm, though the mountains to the west were carpeted with new-fallen snow. I went out in my shirt sleeves, without a thought of needing a coat. The oxen wandered off quite a distance from camp in search of the best grass, and I leisurely followed them. Late in the afternoon, and quite suddenly, the wind sprang up and came directly from the mountains, damp and cold. Soon I was enveloped in a dense fog, and could see but a few yards away. I lost all sense of the direction of the camp or town, and the men at camp did not know where or how to find me. When night came it grew so dark that I could not see my hand a foot from my eyes, and could only keep with the cattle by the noise they made in walking and grazing. Later the fog turned into a cold rain, with considerable wind, and was chilling to the bone, so I was booked for the night in a cold storm without supper or coat. To keep the blood in circulation I would jump and run around in a circle for half an hour at a time. Sometimes I would lean up against one of the quiet old oxen on his leeward side, and thus get some warmth from his body and shelter from the wind. When the oxen had finished grazing and had lain down for the night, I tried to lie down beside one of them to get out of the wind, but the experiment was so novel to the ox that he would get up at once and walk off. During the night the oxen strolled off more than a mile from camp. When morning came I was relieved by the men and was ready for breakfast, and especially for the strong coffee. In times of exposure and extra effort, coffee was the greatest solace we found.

When on a visit to Denver, twenty-three years afterwards, I tried to find out just where I spent that night. An old settler of the place decided with me that it was on the elevated ground now known as Capitol Hill. During the day we crossed the Platte and went forward with the train to the foot of the mountains, and camped some two or three miles south of where Clear creek leaves the foot-hills. Next morning Sollitt took twelve yoke of oxen with two drivers, and started back for the four wagons and two men that had been left behind on the plains. Our teamsters, who had volunteered to drive oxen to the mountains without pay, had now fulfilled their agreement, but most of them were glad to stay with us for awhile at current wages—about a dollar and a half a day. The prospect was not as golden, and the men were not as anxious to get to mining as they had been when a thousand miles further east.

Stubbs had spent a month among the mines and mills, and his observations made him rather blue. The accounts he gave me were most discouraging. He was inclined to think that the best thing for us to do was to go into camp for the winter, look around, watch the developments, and in the spring decide where to locate, if at all, or whether to sell out, give up the enterprise and go home. The proposition was not a bad one, by any means; but I was too full of determination to do something, to think of sitting down and quietly waiting six months, after all we had gone through, to get there. I thought we would all be better satisfied if we were to pitch in and make a vigorous effort, even if we failed in the end, rather than to quit at this early stage of the hunt.

The usual route from Denver to the gold fields, was to the north of Clear creek, by Golden City to Blackhawk, and then to Mountain City. Stubbs selected a route further south, because there was a fine camping place, with good grass, about fifteen miles, or half way up to the gold fields, from the foot of the mountains. The roads were quite passable up to this camp, though the hills were steep. With the drivers and oxen that were left after Sollitt started back, the wagons were gradually taken up to this mountain camp, while he was back on the plains and Stubbs and I were looking over the gold region to decide on a final location. The weather was pleasant and rather warm during the day, but frosty at night. We still slept in the open air, and our blankets were often frozen to the ground in the morning.

There was more or less gulch mining and prospecting[2] going on over a large section of the mountains, but the principal part of the lode mining, and most of the mills that had been located, were confined to a field not over five or six miles in extent, the center of which was Mountain City, now Central City. There were fifty or more mills already up and in running order. They varied in capacity from three to twenty stamps. Some were running day and night crushing quartz that was apparently rich in gold; some were running a part of the time, experimenting on a variety of quartz taken out of different lodes and prospect holes, and generally not paying, and some were idle, the owners discouraged, "bust," and trying to sell, or else gone home for the winter to get more money to work with.

[2] "Prospecting" included the searching for gold in almost any way that was experimental. Going off into the unexplored mountains to hunt new fields of gold, whether in gulches or lodes was prospecting. Digging a hole down through the dirt and loose stones in the bottom of a gulch to see if gold could be found in the sand was prospecting. Sinking a shaft into the top dirt of a hillside in search of a new lode, or into the lode when discovered to see if gold could be found there was prospecting. And manipulating a specimen of quartz by pulverizing and the use of quicksilver to see if it contained gold was also prospecting.