“‘Hold on there, stranger! When ye go through this yere town, go slow so folks can take a look at ye!’
“No money circulated there; gold-dust served all the purposes of trade, and every merchant, saloon-keeper and gambler had his scales. The phrase was not ‘Cash up,’ but ‘Down with your Dust,’ and when a man’s buck-skin wallet was empty, he knew where to fill it again. It was not long, however, before the placers were all staked off, and the claims began to be exhausted. Then the town so dwindled that, in half a dozen years, only a score were left of the turbulent multitude, who, in ’60 and ’61, made the gulch noisy with magical gains and unheeded loss. Among the last of their acts was to pull down the old log gambling hall, and to pan two thousand dollars out of the dirt where the gamblers had dropped the coveted gains. This done everybody moved elsewhere, and the frightened game returned to thread the aspen groves and drink at the once more translucent streams of California gulch, where eight millions of dollars had been sifted from the pebbles.
“One striking feature of this old placer-bar had impressed itself unpleasantly upon all the gold-seekers. In the bottoms of their pans and rockers, at each washing there accumulated a black sand so heavy that it interfered with the proper settling of the gold, and so abundant that it clogged the riffles. Who first determined this obnoxious black sand to be carbonate of lead is uncertain. It is said that it was assayed in 1866, but not found valuable enough to pay transportation to Denver, then the nearest point at which it could be smelted. One of the most productive mines now operated is said to have been discovered in ’67, and in this way: Mr. Long, at that time the most poverty-stricken of prospectors, went out to shoot his breakfast, and brought down a deer; in its dying struggles the animal kicked up earth which appeared so promising that Long and his partner Derry located a claim on the spot. The Camp Bird, Rock Lode, La Plata and others were opened simultaneously outside the placers, but all these were worked for gold, and though even then it seemed to have been understood in a vague way that the lead ores were impregnated with silver, nobody profited by the information. Thus years passed, and I and many another campaigner in that grand solitude, riding over those verdant slopes, passing beneath those somber pine woods, camped, hunted, even mined at what now is Leadville, and never suspected the wealth we trampled upon.
“Among the few men who happened to be in the region in 1877, was A. B. Wood, a shrewd, practical man, who, finding a large quantity of the heavy black sand, tested it anew and extracted a large proportion of silver. He confided in Mr. William H. Stevens, and they together began searching for the source of this sand-drift, and decided it must be between the limestone outcropping down the gulch and the porphyry which composed the summit of the mountain. Sinking trial shafts they sought the silver mean. It took time and money, and the few placer-washers there laughed at them for a pair of fools; but the men said nothing, and in the course of a few weeks they ‘struck it.’ Then came a period of excitement and particularly lively times for the originators of the enterprise. Mr. Stevens was a citizen of Detroit, and finding a chance for abundant results from labor, but no laborers wherewith to ‘make the riffle,’ he went back to Detroit and persuaded several scores of adventurous men to come out here and amuse themselves with carbonates.
FREMONT PASS
“They came, hilariously, no doubt, with high anticipations of sudden wealth and the fulfilling of wide ambitions; came to find the snow deep upon the ground, and winter bravely entrenched among the gray cliffs of Mosquito and the Saguache. No one could work; everyone was tantalized and miserable; discontent reigned. It was the old story of Baker and the San Juan silver fields. They took Wood and Stevens, imprisoned them in a cabin, and even went so far toward the suggestion of hanging as to noose the rope around their necks. At this critical moment, reprieve came in the shape of a capitalist who appeased the hungry crowd with cash and stayed their purpose until the weather moderated and digging could be begun.
“As spring advanced and the mountains became passable, there began a rush into the camp, for the report of this wonderful rejuvenation of the old district had spread far and wide. The Denver newspapers took up the laudation of the region. The railways approaching nearest, advertised the camp all over the East for the sake of patronage; and many an energetic prospector, and greedy saloon-keeper, and many a business man who wanted to profit by the excitement, started for Leadville. It was early spring; the snow lay deep on the lofty main range of the Rocky mountains which had to be crossed, and filled the treacherous passes, but the impatient emigrants could not wait. To be first into Leadville was the aim and ambition of hundreds of excited men, and to accomplish this, human life was endangered and mule flesh recklessly sacrificed. Companies were organized, who put on six-horse stages from Denver, Cañon City and Colorado Springs, and ran three or four coaches together, yet private conveyances took even more than the stages, and hundreds walked, braving the midwinter horrors of Mosquito pass.