Cripple Creek’s Mule Skinners

By Steven Wade Veatch

In the late 1890s, Cripple Creek was the site of Colorado’s last gold rush and soon became known as the World’s Greatest Gold Camp. Ore from Cripple Creek’s gold mines was hauled in large wooden wagons by four or six mules or horses to a team. Skilled drivers, known as mule skinners or simply skinners, could “skin” or outwit stubborn mules and compel them over rugged roads hauling ore, goods, and materials in and out of the gold camp.

Some mules were as mean as a surprised grizzly. Other mules were more obliging to the skinner. A good skinner could control his team and drive heavy, cargo-laden wagons along winding mountain roads raising dust at two to two-and-a-half miles per hour.

A group of scrubbed up, dressed up mule skinners relax on a boulder in a rugged mountain clearing. In the background is a large tent and several horses grazing in the meadow. These skinners worked for A.E. Carlton’s Colorado Trading and Transfer Company in Cripple Creek. By the time this photo was taken (1906), the company had a thriving business transporting ore from the mines to the Midland terminal railhead. Photo © Cripple Creek District Museum.

A mule skinner’s job was arduous. It took dogged determination and an understanding of a team of mules to make an efficient driving outfit. The work, sometimes dangerous and always hard, had long hours, starting at five in the morning and lasting long after the sunset. Young, ready men who could take the punishing work performed this job the best. Though no mules were ever skinned, these men would boast, “I can pop my initials on a mule’s behind.”

Most of the skinners were as lonely as a seagull in an Iowa cornfield, and some skinners were as mean and stubborn as their mule. The skinners, in their quest for company, headed for the dancehalls that lined Cripple Creek’s notorious Meyers Avenue.

This imagined scene applies to so many of these trips:
It’s Saturday night, the sun has gone down behind Mt. Pisgah and a full moon is beginning to rise at the bottom of the sky. Coyotes prowl behind Mineral Hill in howling packs while the mournful whistle of the Midland Terminal locomotive wails through the city of Cripple Creek. 

A chill shivers the night air as a small cadre of mule skinners walk down Bennet Avenue on their way to Meyers Avenue to spend the evening in a dance hall—a place more alluring than the dream of buried gold. It’s time for a big night. On Bennett Avenue, they walk past Kurth’s music store and peek through the window at the phonographs and pianos on display. The skinners continue to a grocery where the pungent smells of coffee, cheese, and pickles in this cornucopia of plenty spill out onto the street. One skinner walks in to buy a plug of Brown’s Mule chewing tobacco and carefully counts out the money for the grocer. Next, they go past a hardware store where the window displays new picks and shovels with white-pine handles. As the skinners turn onto Meyers Avenue, a cat creeps along the boardwalk and then zooms into the dark alley. The skinners are as free as the night and stand together looking at the lights that flash and flare along the rip-roaring pleasure street. The wooden stomp of horse hoofs, the rolling wheels of buggies, and the sound of music fills the night air.

The group of skinners choose a likely dancehall to enter, a hopping hive of humanity. The young men step into the smoke-filled, raucous dancehall and eagerly part with their hard-earned cash. Girls bring whiskey and beer to miners sitting at the tables. Men jam around the bar while drinking and talking about gold mines. The piano player pounds away while other musicians play their fiddles. Most of the dances were too complicated for the skinners, unlike the other fast-drinking, fancy-stepping clientele, so they wait for the musicians to play the Monterey, a more straightforward dance they knew.

The interior lights illuminate the dancehall girls who appear as enchanting beauties—a sight for the skinner’s wearied eyes. The skinners, with work-roughened hands and hammering hearts, each grab a girl and step out on the wooden dance floor where they join the others, dancing to the band’s rendition of Mule Skinner’s Delight. They go around and around in a circle—markedly self-aware—as the caller proclaims, “honors to your partner, honors to the corner, swing your partner and all promenade.” When they finish the dance, the skinners and their girls line up at the bar for a few drinks. The mule skinners, full of brag, talk about their mules or horses and the perils their jobs until a work-worn miner yells: “another Mule Skinner’s Delight!” The dance was on, with skinners spinning in a whirl as a happy reverie fills their minds and the night drifts on.

The mule skinners in the Cripple Creek Mining District played an essential role in bringing goods to the district and hauling gold ore to mills for processing or to railroads for shipment. The skinners did not disappear like yesterday’s snow but stepped into the pages of history. They even became folk icons when, in 1930, Jimmy Rodgers and George Vaughn wrote a song called Blue Yodel No. 8, also known as Mule Skinner Blues. Bill Monroe’s 1939 version of Mule Skinner Blues became a hit, and since then a variety of recording artists, including bluegrass and folk musicians, have performed the song. These songs immortalized the skinners who played a vital part in Cripple Creek, the “World’s Greatest Gold Camp.”