Gold started Colorado's growth; gold kept it growing; but gold is only one of many factors that will forever keep it growing. What busy scenes were enacted here in those memorable years when the attention of the entire country was centered on this region! Pike's Peak was the objective point of the gold seekers—not Denver which was then unknown. When James Purseley, Colorado's earliest white inhabitant, first found gold in 1805, at the foot of Lincoln Mountain, it did not assume the importance of a discovery. He had no use for the gold nuggets he picked up; the Indians did not know or appreciate the value of gold, and there was no one with whom he could utilize it, as he could in the exchange of ponies and furs. It is said that he finally threw the nuggets away because of the uncomfortable weight in his pockets. No doubt he thought he would live his life among the Indians, the wild, free life that was so fascinating, and would never return to the East, and perhaps never see a white man again. He was content with his lot, had no use for gold and why should he hoard it, when the Indian blanket he was now wearing had no convenient place in which to carry it.
Green Russell is said to have found gold on Cherry Creek in August or September, 1858, just ten years after its discovery in California. It was also found by a party of six men on January 15, 1859, on a branch of Boulder Creek, which occasioned the location of the present City of Boulder. George Jackson went into the mountains on January 7, 1859, and discovered gold at the mouth of a branch of Clear Creek, and on April 17th organized at that point the first mining district; later, on May 1st, he found gold at Idaho Springs. But it remained for John H. Gregory to fan into a never dying glow the flame that had been gathering volume by these desultory discoveries. He found gold on Clear Creek, near the sites of Black Hawk and Central City, in February, 1859. Lacking provisions, he went to Golden for supplies, returned May 6th, and started a sluice on May 16th, from which he took as much as nine hundred dollars a day. He sold his discovery for twenty-one thousand dollars and set the country afire with excitement. From nearly every eastern community, the people came, and from many parts of the world. It is estimated that fifty thousand people poured into this mountain region the first year after the discovery of gold. Many of those who remained, and many who came later, made fortunes, some to keep them, some to lose them. Those who hurried out of the country did not witness the growth of Cripple Creek, of Leadville, of Camp Bird or of the San Juan and Clear Creek Districts.
There are two smelters in Denver and one each in Golden, Leadville, Canon City, Pueblo and Salida. None but zinc ores are sent out of this State. The annual output of gold in Colorado is about twenty-two million dollars, or about six million dollars a year greater than California. There are three operated Mints in the United States: Denver, Philadelphia and San Francisco. At Denver there are six hundred million dollars of gold deposited in the vaults beneath the foundations of the Mint, and upon this reserve the paper currency of the Government has been issued. No such amount of gold is stored in any other building in the world. The Denver Mint will always remain the storage depository for the gold reserve of the nation, because of its inland location, where it is remote from attack by sea. Colorado has already produced in gold four hundred and eighty-eight million five hundred thousand dollars, and there is no indication of a diminution in the supply. Of the seven billions of the world's gold, nearly one-fourth, or approximately one billion six hundred million is held by the United States.
When Columbus first started on his voyage of discovery there was less than two hundred million dollars of gold in the world; now, more than double that amount is produced in a single year. In 1500 the annual gold production was four million dollars, and it took two hundred years before the yearly output was doubled. Now, nearly five hundred million dollars in gold is taken out of the earth each year. Only in the past few years has the production of gold assumed such gigantic proportions as to be alarming. In 1800 it was but twelve million dollars annually. In 1900 it was two hundred and sixty-two million dollars yearly, and in the past ten years it reached the enormous output of more than four hundred and fifty-seven million dollars every year. The Transvaal country alone turns out over one hundred and fifty million yearly. This great increase is due to improved methods of mining. Machinery unknown ten years ago, has done away with the primitive methods that kept the production of gold constant and within bounds. In the Transvaal, the hills and valleys are being ground up by powerful machines that separate the gold from the earth and rock. Then, too, a giant stream of water is now turned against the base of a mountain that melts away like mist before the sun, and sends a stream of gold to the mint.
Gold has always been the standard of values among all civilized nations. But its quantity is increasing so fast that its purchasing power is diminishing, and prices of all commodities are increasing correspondingly. When we will be producing one billion dollars of gold annually, which will be in about ten years at the present rate of increase, there must be a new standard of values agreed upon among the nations of the earth to fit the purchasing power of gold, or there will be an upheaval in the financial affairs of the world that will shake it to the very foundations, and affect the lives of every one of its inhabitants.
The over-production of gold is relieved in a measure by the utter disappearance of a part of it. What becomes of all the gold? Nearly one million five hundred thousand dollars a day is taken from the mines of the world. Only a portion of this output is consumed by the arts and in jewelry, and in the natural legal reserve of Governments. From the best information obtainable, much of the surplus goes into the hoarding places of all classes. The people in poor and medium circumstances hide it away, and it is treasured in the vaults of the rich princes of India, and the dynasties of China and Egypt, who for centuries have been building vast burglar proof receptacles underground, where it is stored, and its hiding places are never allowed to become known. It is wrested from out of its hidden recesses in mountain fastnesses, by pick, drill, dynamite and arduous toil, flows through the arteries of trade, and again goes into its burial places to remain hidden for ages.
CHAPTER XIII.
SOME MEN OF VISIONS.