Pieplant: A Taylor Park Mining Camp

 By Steven W. Veatch

The story of the Pieplant mining camp, in Taylor Park, begins with the Ute people who hunted and roamed this land of dense forests, rushing streams, and imposing mountains. During the summer of 1860, a prospector by the name of Jim Taylor was rounding up stray horses when he rode into this remote region. The area soon became known as Jim Taylor's Park, then as Taylor Park. With the discovery of gold in 1867, placer mining began to appear (Parker, 1992). 

Figure 1. Taylor Park Reservoir is a 2000 surface acre reservoir located 29 miles northeast of Gunnison. Photo date 7/2020 by S. Veatch.

The directions to Pieplant are easy: from the north end of Taylor Park Reservoir, head north several miles on road 742. Watch for a forest road on the right-hand side. There is a sign pointing to the town/mill site. Turn right and follow this dirt road for about four miles to a clearing where several old log cabins mark the little settlement of Pieplant. 

Miners built the town beside a wide meadow near Pieplant Creek, below the summit of Jenkins Mountain (13,432 feet). Both the town and creek were named for the clumps of rhubarb (pieplant) growing wild along the banks of the creek. Pieplant Creek flows southwest from Jenkins Mountain and ranges from less than one foot to seven feet across.

Prospectors worked gold placers along Pieplant Creek as early as the 1890s. These placers did not produce much gold. Miners later established the mining camp of  Pieplant around the turn of the 20th century (Vandenbusche, 1980). Over forty men worked at the Pieplant mine, which was about a mile away from the settlement (Vandenbusche, 1980). 

By 1903, Pieplant had 100 residents, a post office, and a stamp mill (Vandenbusche, 1980). Four-horse teams hauled ore in wagons down a steep road on Jenkins Mountain to the mill (Wolle, 1962). The mill, built by Wood's Mining and Milling Company of Kansas, handled 200 tons of ore each day from the Pieplant and other area mines (Pieplant, n.d., Eberhart,1969). The mill was 280 feet long and 110 feet wide, and employed 50 men (Vandenbusche, 1980). Day (1906) mentions that gold bullion was shipped from Pieplant’s “cyanide plant” in 1905.

 

A newspaper article from the Turret Gold Belt (1905) describes some of the excitement of the mining camp:

"Just a year ago (1904) the Burton brothers of Virginia sold to John Lynch of this city [Turret] and J. W. Harrison, a capitalist of St. Louis, a group of four claims known as the Clinton group and which adjoins the property of the Woods Gold Mining company at Pieplant. The consideration of the sale was $16,000, and the claims are practically undeveloped. That the judgement of the purchasers was good has now been proven, as their tunnel a few days ago cut a lead [vein] which is fourteen feet between walls and from which highly satisfactory assays have been had. The average of the entire lead is good, and a portion of the vein carries gold and copper to the value of $120 per ton, while picked samples run way up into the hundreds. As soon as the assay certificates were received Mr. Lynch started at once for the East, where a plan of development will be decided upon. . . .While this district is rich in minerals lack of transportation has held it back for a number of years."

According to the Twin Lakes Miner (1906), J.W. and M.H. Woods had driven a 1,700-foot tunnel that ran along a gold vein for 1,300 feet. The best gold values, according to the article, were ahead of the tunnel where the “ore shoot widened to 4 to 7 feet in width.”

The town began to decline after 1908 as the veins thinned out and transportation costs exceeded profits from mining (Pieplant Mill, nd). Soon after 1910, Pieplant was abandoned and cows grazed there. A few of the log cabins (figures 2 and 3), the collapsed ruins of the Pieplant mine, and part of the mill building (figure 4) remain today—reminders of the early mining operations that occurred there.

Figure 2. In 2006, the Forest Service and Passport in Time put a new roof on this Pieplant cabin in their preservation efforts. Photo date 7/2020 by S. Veatch.

Figure 3. A Pieplant miner’s cabin along a meadow. The long poles supported a porch roof. Photo date 7/2020 by S. Veatch.

Figure 4. View of Pieplant mill ruins. The Pieplant mine is located about one mile north of the mill on Jenkins Mountain. Photo date 7/2020 by S. Veatch.

Pieplant is located on the western flank of the Sawatch Mountains, below Jenkins Mountain. Grizzly Peak (13,281 feet) is to the east. Locally, Paleozoic sediments mask folded and faulted Precambrian rocks. The area experienced uplift, folding, and thrust faulting during the Laramide Orogeny. Sometime in the Miocene Epoch crustal movement began again, resulting in a series of faults. 

During the Pleistocene Epoch, ice was the last major geologic agent to shape the area. Alpine glaciers moved down the mountains—carving preexisting fluvial erosional valleys into distinctive U-shapes or filling them with unsorted glacial till. 

Gravity and alluvial processes concentrated native gold in local placer deposits (Parker, 1974). The gold, hosted in Quaternary alluvium, appears as wires, small flakes, and as sporadic small nuggets (Parker, 1992). Early miners in the area worked Pieplant Creek gold placers below 9,850 feet in elevation (Parker, 1992). Despite careful prospecting, the source of the placer gold has never been discovered.

However, other minerals besides gold and black sand (magnetite) are found in the area. Pan concentrates yield columbite-tantalite, the ore of tantalum (Parker, 1992). This black mineral is not magnetic and is the principal ore of tantalum (Ta), a rare metallic element discovered in 1802 by a Swedish chemist, A.G. Ekeberg. The hard, malleable blue-gray metal has several industrial uses. 

Monazite, a slightly radioactive mineral, shows up as blackish to greenish grains in gold pans (Parker, 1992). Monazite is the primary ore of the rare earth metals cerium and lanthanum. These metals have multiple industrial uses. Because of monazite’s high density (specific gravity is 4.6 to 5.7), monazite grains, along with the gold, collected into placer deposits. Other heavy minerals that appear in pan concentrates are zircon and garnets (Parker, 1992). The sources of the heavy minerals are local granites and pegmatites (Parker, 1992).

Today Pieplant is a quiet place where a few cabins and structures remain near the edge of an open meadow. Pieplant Creek, which flows nearby, is still a good place to search for flakes of gold, especially in ravines and outwash terraces, on slopes, and in gulches.

References and Further Reading:

Day, D. T., 1906, Mineral Resources of the United States Calendar Year 1905: Washington, Department of the Interior, United States Geological Survey.

Eberhart, P., 1969, Guide to the Colorado Ghost Towns and Mining Camps: Chicago, Sage Books.

Parker, B. H., Jr. 1974, Gold placers of Colorado: Colorado School of Mines Quarterly, Vol. 69, No. 3.

Parker, B.H. Jr., 1992, Gold Panning and Placering in Colorado: Denver, CO Information Series 33. Colorado Geological Survey.

Pieplant Mill. Retrieved from https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/gmug/landmanagement/resourcemanagement/?cid=stelprdb5432060/ on July 12, 2020.

Turrett Gold Belt, 1905, Taylor Park Producers: Turrett Gold Belt, November 1, 1905, p.1, c. 3.

Twin Lakes Miner, 1906, Good News for Pieplant Gulch: Twin Lakes Miner, Aug. 11, 1906, p. 1, c. 3.

Vandenbusche, D. 1980, The Gunnison Country: Gunnison, B&B Printers.

Wolle, M.S., 1962, Stampede to Timberline: The Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of Colorado: Denver, Sage Books.

 

 

The Shadowgee

By Steven Wade Veatch
     
During the school-free months of summer my mother, brother, and grandfather stayed at our cabins in the mountains north of Divide, Colorado.  Mother’s cabin was next to my grandfather’s cabin. These were simple times where we passed the summer days with pleasant recreations. This was a time where relationships and memories were made—a time when my life was shaped. The two cabins marked some of the most memorable scenes of my boyhood.
     

Sunrise in the mountains. Watercolor © by S. W. Veatch

There were no malls or shopping centers, only a simple country grocery store six miles away. There were no toney, high-end country clubs; instead we went to the Divide Community club, which was built during the Great Depression, for a weekly diversion of bingo or a dance that alternated each Saturday with the bingo game. The mountain folks referred to the dance as “goin’ to the fights” as some of the rowdy cowboys liked to throw down and mix it up out back during the dances.
     
At our cabin I would stay up late and read. Before turning in for the night I would go out on the porch and look at my grandfather’s window to see if his bedroom light was on. It always was on—he would read into the dark and quiet hours of the night.  He liked to read, he liked words and working with words. I got that from him.

***

On this particular summer morning I got up at daybreak and looked out the window of our cabin to see welcoming smoke coming out of my grandfather’s chimney. I ran down the porch steps to start a morning with my grandfather—my mother and my brother would soon follow.
     
While my grandfather made breakfast I watched the meadow, forest, marsh, and granite rocks through his kitchen window. The July meadow grass waved rhythmically from wind while the wildflowers painted a splash of purple along the edge of the meadow. A chipmunk sat on a weathered stump and worried a seed.
     
After our breakfast of pancakes with Mickey Mouse ears, Log Cabin syrup poured from a tin, bacon, and orange Tang we eased into the main cabin room. The burning pine crackled, popped, and hissed in the Ben Franklin fireplace.  Angry red embers warmed the room. The calming aroma of the burning wood filled the cabin while the morning sunlight streamed through the windows where light, skipping off little specs of dust, created pinpoints of reflected light.
     
I curled into the couch and my grandfather relaxed next to me in an easy chair. He put a mug of black coffee on an old wooden barrel with a round top painted a deep red. Old liquor bottle labels, covered with clear shellac, decorated the top. He filled his pipe with Half and Half pipe tobacco, stuck a wooden match and lighted the bowl of his pipe. Soon a tendril of smoke climbed from his pipe. It was time for stories to be tossed around. I can still hear the deep, articulate, and measured sound of his voice—certain, knowing. He fired my imagination by telling erudite tales of mining days all the way back to territorial Colorado. His grandfather and father were pioneers in the windswept mining camp of Caribou in Boulder County.

***

Following our morning round of tales my grandfather took an old, gallon-sized Half and Half pipe tobacco can and reworked it into a lantern. He attached a wire at either end with the loop on the outside of the can. The wire stretched from end-to-end.  This made a handle and held the can on its side. Next he punched an inch-round hole on the underside of the can. Finally, he shoved a candle in the hole. The candle flame would reflect off the shiny, inside bottom of the can and shine out through the open top, creating a beam of light. Now the empty tobacco can was a makeshift candle lantern. I sat upright, engrossed. I waited with held breath and hoped that he would hand me whatever he was making. What could it be?
     
I said, “What the heck is that?”
     
Grandfather said, “It’s called a shadowgee, this is what the miners used in mining camps before flashlights. Would you like one?”
   
 “Heck ya!”
   
My grandfather reached over with the Shadowgee and handed it to me. I carefully took it from him and held it in my hands. I slowly looked it over. It felt so cool and seemed like the best thing ever made.
     

The shadowgee my grandfather made for me. Note how the handle is offset from the top. This way, when the lantern was carried, the candle would tilt away from the wire handle and not burn the miner’s fingers. Photo © S. W. Veatch.

View of the shadowgee in operation.  Photo © S. W. Veatch.

     
The empty can kept the mountain winds from blowing out the candle flame. The burning candle provided a steady light so the miner carrying it could check his corral in the dark or to see his way on a late-night trip to the outhouse. Grandfather used his shadowgee to find our two-holer outhouse at night.
     
The shadowgee speaks about mining life: miners were careful in spending their money; lamps and kerosene were costly; and miners were resourceful and had to improvise and use discarded tin cans as a resource, repurposing them into shadowgees or other useful artifacts.

***

That night, I waited to test my shadowgee. The wind quieted down so it could hear the alluring sounds of the forest. Shadows whispered across the meadows. The evening became a lingering twilight of layered crimson in the clouds. The night turned eggplant dark and the countryside calm. When the summer stars were bright it was time for me to test my shadowgee and follow the worn path to the outhouse. Out I went, into the night, shadowgee in hand. What I learned was that spending time with my grandfather was the best part of those summer days so long ago. He always had something new to show me or teach me. What I didn’t appreciate then was that his stories of living in a mining camp and the shadowgee sparked the beginning of what turned into a lifelong fascination with mining.

*** 

Today my grandfather is gone. My mother is gone too. The other day I was going through some of my mother’s boxes. I opened a cardboard box and saw a real treasure, a shadowgee—a battered tin can that was an affectionate throwback to the world of my grandfather. It brought me back, forty-nine years ago, to that moment when I first learned about the shadowgee, now a symbol of my grandfather and an intensity of life, a time of stories and where I could really relate to someone, a time before distractions of smart phones and other technology.
   
I know the time my grandfather spent with me enfolded me into something larger than myself. I emerged changed—nearer the person I longed to be. In this way he reshaped and repurposed my life, just like the tobacco can being made into lanterns—something better. I carefully put the shadowgee back in the box, and smiled.