By Steven Wade Veatch
Cripple Creek is Colorado’s most famous and storied gold camp. High-grading, or the theft of gold ore by miners who worked in Cripple Creek’s gold mines, was rampant. These miners were called “high-graders,” and they sneaked out small pieces of rich ore in their hair, secret pockets in their clothes, boots, toolboxes, lunch pails, and anywhere else they could (Veatch, et al. 2017). Many people were involved in high grading—from those who stole the ore to those who bought it—assayers, bank tellers, and merchants (Sprague, 1979). It was a dilemma that mine owners had to deal with constantly.
A letter, written by a high grader, was recently found in the Union Gold Mining Company’s collection of correspondence at the Western Museum of Mining and Industry in Colorado Springs. The letter was addressed to the company treasurer. In the letter, the writer, George Dandignac, confessed that he took some ore from the Porcupine mine during the month of June 1895. Dandignac wrote that a year later he found God, and that he is compelled to return it “as an atonement for the crime.” The high grade was returned with the letter. Dandignac also confessed to stealing a specimen of quartz the size of a walnut but could not return it as it was “back east.”
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| A letter (dated July 25, 1896) to Mr. Morse, treasurer of the Union Gold Mining Company, from George Dandignac, a Cripple Creek miner. His letter was about gold ore stolen from the Porcupine mine. Source: Dandignac, 1896. |
This crumbling letter, more than 12 decades old, attests to how Dandignac’s newly found faith produced such an amendment of his life that he could not keep his ill-gotten gold.
References and further reading:
Dandignac, G. T., Letter to Mr. Morse. 25 July 1896. Union Gold Mining Papers, Western Museum of Mining and Industry, Colorado Springs. Manuscript.
Sprague, M., 1979, Money Mountain: Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, p. 205.
Veatch, S.W., B. Elick, and J. Salvat, 2017, Cripple Creek High Grading: The Untold Stories. 38th Annual New Mexico Mineral Symposium, Socorro, NM, November 11-12, 2017, Program with Abstracts. New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources. pp. 26-28.