Wade's City: An Early Gateway to Cripple Creek

 Steven Wade Veatch

A researcher at the Cripple Creek District Museum recently examined a tattered photo album that once belonged to a family who lived in the Cripple Creek Mining District. One photograph (figure 1) in the album, probably taken in 1901, shows a building at Wade’s City, a rough-and-tumble settlement on the Old Stage Road near Colorado Springs. The person in the photograph might be Joel Hayford Wade, the man who established the place. Joel H. Wade arrived in the Colorado Springs area 14 years after its founding by General Palmer. After looking around for land, he settled at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain in 1885. Soon after gold was found in Cripple Creek, and that area boomed, the Cripple Creek stage stopped at Wade’s place, making it a busy spot.

Figure 1. One of the buildings at Joel H. Wade’s stage stop on the Old Stage Road. On the front of the photo this is written in pencil: “Wade’s Inn, Cheyenne Mountain Stage Road, old landmark.” This is not a photo of Wade’s Inn, but more likely a photo of a storage building due to the lack of windows. Photo date circa 1901. Modified from a cyanotype. Photographer unknown. Photo courtesy of the Cripple Creek District Museum. 

The photograph reveals many things. It shows a man standing alone, in stiff silence and edgy exhaustion. He is a massive man, built like a barn door. He is shaved clean as a smooth stone, wears a jacket that does not fit, and sports a hat with a bit of swagger. Perhaps he is looking at his place one last time. 

At the center of the photograph is the ramshackle cabin Wade built with heavy, hand-hewn logs notched at the ends and laid one upon another. Mud chinking fills the spaces between the logs. A tattered tarp covers the roof. Inside, the cabin is dark—tarps hang over windows. We can imagine that spiderwebs fill some cracks and smokey smells linger by the open door. 

Outside, a handsaw rests on a weathered granite rock covered with splotches of lichen. A broken lantern sits nearby. Boulders behind the cabin are waiting the ages out. Helen Hunt Jackson wrote about one gigantic granite boulder at Wade’s place when she passed through (Conte, 1984).

There are things not seen in the photo. Perhaps there are horses that nosed one another in a pole corral. There might be a downed log crumbling into soil, and on the north side of the cabin, piles of pine needles and cones covering the moss-cushioned ground. Possibly silence fills the pine scented air until an agitated chickadee starts a fit of chirping.

Joel Wade was born in New York in 1827. In 1885, at the age of 58, Wade homesteaded at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain. He chose land on the south branch of south Cheyenne Creek by the Cheyenne and Beaver Park Toll Road (Gazette Telegraph, 1934). 

Figure 2. View of Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. From the S.W. Veatch postcard collection.

The toll road began as a work road, evolved into a road for scenic trips to local resorts and hiking trails, and then was extended to reach the goldfields of Cripple Creek (Conte, 1984). The road ultimately became known as the “Old Stage Road.”

Wade’s place was four miles west of the road’s tollgate. Wade thought there would be enough people traveling on the road to support a saloon. His saloon, or Wade’s Inn, became a popular place to stop (Peterson 2002). He stood behind the bar and poured drinks for travelers who stopped by for a break (Peterson 2002). As stage traffic increased, Wade added several more buildings. 

Blackhawk Davis came to this area and built a blacksmith shop (Peterson, 2020). Davis maintained the machinery of the men who worked on the toll road. Davis’s surprising strength was well known. According to one account, he slung a 40-pound sack of flour over his shoulder and carried it on his back all the way from Colorado Springs to his cabin at St. Peter’s Dome, a hike of over 11 miles (Conte, 1984). 

After a prospector discovered gold at Cripple Creek in 1890, a rush to the gold fields started. In the early days of the district there were only stage and wagon roads to the gold camp. El Paso County Commissioners worked on a plan to extend the Cheyenne and Beaver Park Toll Road to Cripple Creek (Conte, 1984). Once the road was completed, there was regular stage service to Cripple Creek.

The Cripple Creek stage started its run to the gold camp from the corner of Colorado Avenue (then called Huerfano Street) and Tejon Street in Colorado Springs. A team of horses pulled stages that carried card sharps, snake serum sellers, miracle medicine men, merchants, and fortune seekers.

With the blacksmith shop and tavern in place, the Cripple Creek stage stopped at Wade’s place regularly during the mining camp’s boom days (Horgen, 1923; Patterson 2002). With the steady traffic of travelers, Wade added rental cabins for visitors to rest or spend a night or a few days to enjoy the scenery before traveling on (Conte, 1984). By one account, Mrs. Moore ran a small brothel in one of the cabins (Peterson, 2002). By the early 1890s Wade’s settlement, known as "Wade's City," had twelve buildings and covered 6 acres (Conte, 1984). However, this stage stop never became an official town or had a post office (Conte, 1984).

A story has been told that a drunk miner entered Wade’s cabin one night when it was cold outside. He was too drunk to build a fire in the stove; instead, he started the fire in the middle of the cabin’s floor. The flames quickly spread and burned the cabin down (Conte, 1984).

Over time Wade developed a problem with the liquor that he sold at his inn. He often came home late and stumbled through the front door, drunk. According to an article that appeared in the August 10, 1893, edition of the Colorado Springs Weekly Gazette, Wade checked into the Keeley Institute at 18th and Curtis Street in Denver, a facility established by Dr. Keeley to treat alcoholism (Public Opinion, 1916). The institute promoted the injections of “bichloride” or “double chloride” of gold into the patients. By the late 1800s, there were 200 treatment centers nationwide and boasted a 50 percent success rate. Dr. Keeley used an early type of group therapy for his patients that contributed to their recovery (White, 2016). 

By 1900, the Colorado Springs and Cripple Creek District Railroad, known as the Short Line, started service between Colorado Springs and Cripple Creek. The Short Line replaced the stagecoach, and there would be no stops at Wade City or stages running after 1905 (Conte, 1984).The railroad tracks followed the same general route of the stage road (Peterson, 2002). 

Figure 3. View of At. Peter’s Dome on the Cripple Creek Short Line, now the Gold Camp Road. From the S. W. Veatch photograph collection.

As time passed, Wade’s life changed. The stage no longer stopped, and Wade’s City was quiet as a deserted mine shaft. His days dwindled, and sand slipped through the hourglass. He knew he would soon be gone. That day almost came for him in February 1913, while he still lived in the settlement named for him, when he got lost in a snowstorm and nearly froze to death (Conte, 1984).

By this time, he was 85 years old. Mountain life had put its brand on him. Although tougher than boot leather, he was feeling the botherations of old age. Time blew away like leaves in a fall breeze, and it was time for Wade to move on. Joel Wade took a deep breath when he took his last look at his settlement and then turned to leave.

The Colorado Springs City Directory shows Wade living at the county poor farm from 1913 until 1916. Although there is no record that Wade’s grandson, Fred Barr, who built Barr trail to the summit of Pikes Peak, visited him at the poor farm, it is likely that he did.

Wade died in 1916 at the age of 88. He is buried in Colorado Springs’ Evergreen Cemetery. By 1934, all of Wade’s City was gone, now part of Cheyenne Mountain’s buried memories. This old photograph of Wade’s Inn now belongs to the past, and Joel Wade has stepped into yesterday.

Acknowledgments

I thank Eric Swab for his help with this manuscript. I thank the Colorado Springs Oyster Club critique group for reviewing the manuscript, and Dr. Bob Carnein for his valuable comments and help in improving this paper. 

References and further reading:

Colorado Springs Weekly Gazette, August 10, 1893.

Conte, W. R., 1984, The Old Cripple Creek Stage Road: Colorado Springs, Little London Press.

Gazette Telegraph, 1934, Famous Hotels and Inns of Long Ago Now Only Memories, Sunday April 8, 1934.

Horgen, I.S., 1923, History of Pike National Forest. Ms. on file, National Park Service, Midwest Archeological Center, Lincoln, Nebraska.

Peterson, H. K., 2002, Colorado Stagecoach Stations, A thesis submitted to the University of Colorado at Denver in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History.

Public Opinion Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1916, Keeley Institute: Public Opinion Colorado Springs, Colorado, February 26, 1916, pg. 3, col 2.

White, A., 2016, Inside a Nineteenth-Century Quest to End Addiction, retrieved from https://daily.jstor.org/inside-a-nineteenth-century-quest-to-end-addiction/ on September 9, 2021.