1. Colorado Gold Rush
1859

2. Rumors
Franciscan Priests Dominguez and Escalante traveled through S.W. Colorado.
When they returned to Santé Fe, their journals were filled with information about the region including references to “precious metals” in the rivers.
In 1807, Pike met trapper James Purcell in Santé Fe.
Purcell told Pike that he had found gold in the region North of where he was captured.
The unorganized territory became known as the Pike’s Peak Territory after Stephen Long returned to the East.

3. California Gold Rush
Gold was discovered in California after the Mexican American War.
300,000 people flocked to the California territory.
1850 California Statehood.
By 1855 The California Gold Rush had largely ended.
1857 Economic Recession in U.S. due to slowing demand for U.S. goods in Europe.

4. Ralston Creek
In 1850 Lewis Ralston, a prospector in route to California dipped his sluice pan into a Creek in modern Arvada.
There he found about $5 worth of Gold.
His company named the Creek after him, but they left the next morning for California.
In 1857 Cherokee Indians returning to Oklahoma from California found some gold near modern Denver.

5. Russell Party
In late 1857 early 1858, William Green Russell a former prospector from Georgia met up with some Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma.
Rumors of Gold on the South Platte River led them to head for the “Pikes Peak Territory.”
They gathered supplies at Bent’s Fort and went Northwest, reaching the confluence of the Platte River and Cherry Creek on May 29.

6. Early Prospecting The Russell party initially found very little gold.
Of the original 100 members all but 13 left by July.
On July 8, the Russell party found several small pockets of gold on the “Little Dry Creek”

7. Pikes Peak or Bust
When word reached the Missouri Valley towns, thousands began flocking to Pikes Peak territory in search of Gold.
“Pikes Peak or Bust” became the slogan that was painted on prospectors wagons in 1859.
Following the prospectors, were businessmen anxious to make a living off of the gold rush.

8. The First “Claim Jump”
Having failed to make Larimer City the great metropolis of Nebraska, politician and hotel keeper William H. Larimer set out to try his luck in Colorado
Seeing a town site marked out but virtually undeveloped, Larimer gets the town caretaker drunk and convinces him to sign over the town to his ownership

9. The First “Claim Jump”
The next day Larimer forms the Denver City Town Company after James W. Denver, former governor of Kansas Territory
Town promoters then devoted long evenings to writing tantalizing accounts of gold strikes, fame, and fortune for eastern newspapers to attract additional settlers

10. Who Got Rich?
Seeing opportunity, every Kansas town on the Missouri River promoted their location as the best, cheapest, most expedient point of demarcation for gold seekers
Urging local merchants to sell, sell, sell, several towns employed agents to frequent the train depots and steamboats of western states in search of customers
In February and March of 1859, 1,000’s of gold seekers sat in Missouri River towns waiting for the Spring thaw and spending more and more of their hard-earned savings
Ironically up to 40,000 “go-backers” were stampeding back east at the same time when rich ores were being found in the mountains just 40 miles from Denver.

11. Push Pull Factors
Despite the low probability of finding riches, thousands flocked to Denver in 1859.
Push Factors:
Poor Crop yields in Missouri Valley.
Heavy pressure from debt collectors
Pull Factors
Everybody believed they were the exception that would make it rich.
Outlandish reports of the abundance of Gold.
The chance to make a new life as either a miner or a town proprietor.

12. The Great Bamboozle
Nobody knows exactly how many people came to Colorado.
By mid-May as many as 40,000 prospectors that had arrived a month earlier were on their way back to the Missouri Valley.
Many thought that they would find gold immediately and were disappointed to find that the situation was much different than they had been led to believe.
Stories in the newspapers called the Pikes Peak Gold Rush “The Great Bamboozle.”

13. Gregory Gulch
In May 1859 the Colorado Gold Rush was given a major boost.
John H. Gregory brought back a vile containing $80 worth of Gold.
He had discovered a major vein of Gold only 40 miles from Denver up Clear Creek.
The area became known as Gregory Gulch and the town that formed from it eventually became known as “Central City.”

14. Mountain Discoveries and More Rushes
The Gregory discovery convinced Denverites to make another run for the hills. But skeptics back east required more evidence
Albert Richardson of the Boston Journal and Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune set out on the 40 mile trip to Central City to see for themselves
Their report in the Rocky Mt. News confirmed a sluice might yield between $21 and $500 a day and was widely copied in eastern newspapers
Greeley’s name gave the article legitimacy.
One paper stated, “We never cared for him as a politician, but as a businessman, his opinions are as good as the gold”

16. Methods of Mining

17. Placer Mining: Mining from streams
Tiny bits of gold settled in the dirt along the banks of creeks.
Miners recovered this gold by shoveling the dirt into pans and washing it with water from the creek.
This kind of placer mining worked best with two men.
One man shoveled while the other used the pan, like the men in the photo.
Tiny bits of gold also settled in the dirt along the banks of creeks. Miners recovered this gold by shoveling the dirt into pans and washing it with water from the creek. This kind of placer mining worked best with two men. One man shoveled while the other used the pan, like the men in the photo.

18. Sluice Box
The pioneer prospectors found that a rough wooden sluice with raised wooden slats worked best and was easy to build.
The principal behind the sluice box is the same no matter what design is used.
Water carries gold laden gravels down the box and gravity ultimately separates the gold from the lighter rock and sand.
In theory, it sounds simple, in practice, there is a little more to it.
The men in this photo are using a long sluice box built in the middle of a stream. They are washing out the dirt from the banks of the stream, leaving only bare rocks and boulders behind. Mining changed the landscape of the Colorado Mountains.

19. Changes to the Landscape
The amount of dirt that could be washed in a sluice box depended on the number of men operating it.
The photo shows at least seven men working at this sluice box.
Longer sluice boxes had even larger work crews.
The amount of dirt that could be washed in a sluice box depended on the number of men operating it. The photo shows at least seven men working at this sluice box. Longer sluice boxes had even larger work crews.

20. Cradle or Rocker
 Like a sluice box, the rocker box has riffles and a  carpet in it to trap the gold.
It was designed to be used in areas with less water than a sluice box.
The process involves pouring water out of a small cup and then rocking the small sluice box like a cradle, thus the name rocker box or cradle.
Cradle or Rocker: a more sophisticated method of placer mining.

21. The Long Tom
A long tom usually has a greater capacity than a rocker and does not require the labour of rocking.
It consists essentially of a short receiving launder, an open washing box 6 to 12 feet long with the lower end a perforated plate or a screen set at an angle, and a short sluice with riffles
Even more elaborate than the cradle rocker

22. Quartz Mining: Mining Becomes Big Business
"The present condition of the Gregory Diggings is somewhat different from what it was some four or five weeks ago. Then hundreds of claims located on leads of decomposed quartz of a gold bearing character yielded regularly, handsomely and in some few instances, marvelously. But since then the decomposed quartz had given out in many of them and nothing remains but the solid rock, which cannot be possibly worked without the use of blasting and crushing apparatus."

23. Quartz Mining
The silver ore in this photo came from deep inside the mountain. The mine owners used horse-drawn or mule-drawn carts that ran on rails to remove the heavy ore. Removing gold or silver from the quartz rock inside a mountain took more men and equipment than placer mining in streams.

24. Adits
Miners dug tunnels called adits deep into the mountains to find gold-bearing rock. They used logs and heavy timbers to keep the walls and roof of the tunnels from falling in on them. Hard rock mining was very dangerous.