Secrets in the Shadows: A Mystery at Black Mountain, Colorado

1894 found Spencer Penrose and his partner Charles Tutt immersed in the Cripple Creek gold rush. They worked tirelessly to extract gold from their COD (Cash on Delivery) mine and broker real estate deals in the gold camp. Spencer’s brother, Professor Richard Penrose, a renowned expert in geology and mining, would occasionally visit the two partners in Cripple Creek, offering them valuable advice on the operation of their gold mine.  

Sometime in 1894, after a few too many drinks at Johnny Nolan’s saloon, the three men decided to escape from the town’s hustle and bustle and embark on a prospecting trip to the scenic Black Mountain area in Park County.  Leaving from Cripple Creek with minimal equipment, the trio planned to stay for a week. 

After riding about two days and covering 40 miles, they entered a canyon with blood-stained walls—scarred with the remnants of a gun battle, a chilling reminder of the bloodshed that occurred there years ago. The sounds of the wind whistling through the canyon seemed to echo the cries of the fallen warriors.  The canyon opened into the Black Mountain area, and seeing nothing there to warrant any prospecting, the three men rode on to look for a favorable spot for camping before nightfall claimed them. 

Stopping, around 5 p.m., they stood before a strikingly large and impressive house. It was a surprise for all of them. Its construction implied wealth and success. They stopped at the property’s entrance, where a broken gate and damaged fence hinted at neglect. As the three men looked around, they found the house’s front door and several windows open, with no signs of life. The sight of scattered debris and broken glass hinted at the possibility of a sinister event. The sound of the wind whispered through the towering pines, creating a haunting symphony that pierced the silence. The soft scent of damp earth and decaying aspen leaves mingled with what they saw and enveloped them in an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue. 

Image of what the abandoned house in the Black Mountain area of Colorado may have looked like when the Penrose brothers and Charles Tutt came upon it in 1894. Art by the author using AI.

The three men entered the house. One room opened to the right, its door slightly ajar, revealing a glimpse of what was inside. Another room opened to the left. A hall staircase separated the two rooms. Someone had evidently used the room to the right as a library or den. The silent rows of dusty bookshelves, holding a dozen forgotten books, looked like a tomb of lost stories. A mineral cabinet, holding some specimens, was built into the wall; someone had thrown other glittering mineral specimens onto the floor. A well-used riding crop, the leather polished smooth, hung beside a pair of elegant fencing foils and masks. This dusty room held the faint scent of leather and metal and echoed with the absence of laughter and life; only the rug on the floor hinted at past warmth. Then came a cold and unsettling surprise.

A chill snaked down their spines as they saw a woman’s long brown hair spread across the floor, its presence heavy with unspoken dread. Someone had squeezed the hair, hacking the ends off with a dull knife—the cuts jagged and rough—and then violently threw it. “Well, we had come there for mineral, not murder,” said Richard Penrose.  The entire scene was dreadful. 

As twilight descended, casting long shadows, the Penrose brothers and Tutt walked outside and saw kitchen utensils scattered across the ground. Peering into a barn they saw, that like the house, it was deserted. As it was getting late in the day, the trio decided not to investigate further, but rode on beyond this abandoned property into the open country a few miles away in order to select a spot to camp before night settled in.

At nine o’clock a loud snap of a twig sounded over the comforting crackle of the campfire, making everyone jump up from their blankets, where they’d been enjoying the fire’s warmth after their supper. A weathered prospector, his face tanned and lined, walked into the camp with a Winchester rifle slung across his shoulder. A burro, laden with supplies, followed close behind. “Hello partners; what luck?,” said the prospector. The conversation soon turned to the abandoned house. ‘Well boys, said the visitor, “I saw it go up. And the owner was always around. He was one of them English dude arrangements, wore an overgrown cap and yellow boots—kind of a sport. Never took no notice of nobody. Had one of them God Almighty airs with him.”   As recounted by the prospector, the Englishman spent money on the house and furnished it with items he hauled in from Balfour and Alma. The prospector claimed the English “dude” left for three months and then came back with a woman. “I’ve seen them many a time riding together, and damn me, I never saw such hair as that gal had. It was just about two years ago this spring, they both skipped God knows where. Some say they didn’t skip.”  According to the prospector’s account, another Englishman, an older man, showed up at the house. “That was the last of the young fellow and the girl with the fine locks.”  The prospector said that rumors suggested the old man was her husband, and she had run away with the younger Englishman. The old man—her husband—had followed and caught up with them at the Black Mountain property, after which the house was abandoned. 

The Penrose brothers and Tutt were lost in thought after the old prospector’s chilling tale. A hush fell over them as they listened to the whispers of the wind in the trees. The crackling fire cast an orange glow on the faces of the group as they sat around the campfire, pondering the old man’s tale. What happened to the woman? Why was her hair cut off? These questions lingered in their minds: why had the owners left the house and its sprawling grounds behind? The unanswered questions hung heavily in the chilly night air. The old prospector spent the night with the three men, saying he would not stay overnight at the Englishman’s house “for all the gold in Colorado; for the damn place is haunted.”

As dawn broke, the old prospector, armed with his Winchester, disappeared into the shadowy hills of the Black Mountain district with both his burro and his tales. The three men from Cripple Creek eagerly mounted their horses and left. The horses’ hooves resonated in the air, stirring up a cloud of golden dust that danced in the sunlight as they rode back to the gold-crazed Cripple Creek mining district, where ambition and the promise of riches fueled the energy of the town. 

In the years that followed, the Penrose brothers and Charles Tutt forged a path of tremendous success through minerals—copper and gold—and found their way into the history of the West and the American imagination. No one heard or wrote anything more about the mysterious woman and her lustrous locks. The old prospector slipped into oblivion.

Acknowledgments: I thank Bob Carnein for his insightful comments and help improving this manuscript.

References and Further Reading:

“Mystery of Colorado.” The Denver Press, September 7, 1894. p.6.

Veatch, S. W., 2017, The World’s Greatest Gold Camp: A Concise History of the Cripple Creek Mining District, in L.C. Kleinhans, et al., eds., Gold and Silver Deposits in Colorado Symposium: Golden, Colorado, Colorado School of Mines and others, p. 78-83.

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 Cresson Mine: The Untold Stories

By Benjamin Hayden Elick and Steven Wade Veatch

The Cresson mine (figure1), situated between Cripple Creek and Victor, Colorado, was established in 1894 (MacKell, 2003). No one is certain who started the mine, but records show that two brothers, insurance agents J.R. and Eugene Harbeck from Chicago, were early owners. After a hard night of drinking, they sobered up the next day and learned of their new acquisition (MacKell, 2003). The Cresson Mining and Milling Company was organized a year later, in 1895, to raise capital and operate the mine (Patton and Wolf, 1915). The mine continued operating through several leases with low but steady proceeds.

Figure 1. Early view of the Cresson mine, Cripple Creek, Colorado. 

Photograph date circa 1914, courtesy of the Cripple Creek District Museum. 

The Cresson mine became profitable when Richard Roelofs, a known mining innovator, was hired by the Harbecks as mine manager in 1895. Roelofs wrote on an undated letterhead: “I was a prospector, a leaser, a miner, an assayer and chemist, an underground shift boss, foreman, superintendent and then general manager of one of the greatest of Colorado’s mines” (Roelofs, n.d.).

Roelofs (figure 2) was a newcomer to Colorado, as many were when the Cripple Creek gold rush ignited in 1891. He moved to Cripple Creek in 1893 with his wife, Mabel. They had one child, Richard Jr., who was born on August 19, 1894 in Cripple Creek.

Figure 2. Richard Roelofs, manager of the Cresson mine. 

Photograph date 1914, courtesy of the Cripple Creek District Museum.

Not only did Roelofs have to manage the Cresson mine, he had to raise his son alone. Shortly after the birth of Richard Jr., Mabel left her husband and went to Philadelphia, taking their infant son with her. She left Cripple Creek to pursue riches. Then, in July 1895, police arrested Mabel Roelofs for passing bad checks (Keels, 2018). Richard Jr. was sent back to Cripple Creek to join his father. Mabel Roelofs later fled to New York, where she continued a life of crime working con after con. As authorities began to close in, she committed suicide by poisoning in 1908 (Keels, 2018). Richard Roelofs, in his employment contract, earned a percentage of the Cresson mine’s profits, making him a very rich man. If Mabel Roelofs had stayed with Richard, she would have shared in his fabulous wealth.

Roelofs introduced new technology and mining techniques at the Cresson mine, including an aerial tramway he designed that transported ore to a railway at the bottom of the large hill on which the Cresson sat. The tramway reduced the costs of transporting ore (Sprague, 1953). Roelofs deepened the shaft and enlarged the mined-out voids (or stopes). The Cresson’s stopes were the largest in the district, at almost 100 m in width and hundreds of meters high. It is estimated that several houses could fit inside the stopes of the Cresson (Jensen, 2003; Sprague, 1953). Roelofs’s work allowed the mine to be debt free by 1911, and it earned $150,000 annually between 1912 and 1913.

Miners discovered the famous Cresson vug by accident on November 25, 1914 (Smith Jr., Feitz, and Raines, 1985). While following large ore shoots on the 12th level, miners broke into the large chamber (or “vug”) which was in the shape of a pear (Patton and Wolf, 1915). It was approximately 12 m tall, 7 m long, and 4 m wide. The walls were lined with delicate, sparkling crystals of gold tellurides. However, many had fallen to the floor—disturbed by nearby blasting (Jensen, 2003).

The ore minerals in the vug were mostly the gold tellurides sylvanite and calaverite. Sylvanite is comprised of gold, silver and tellurium, while calaverite contains only gold and tellurium. The tellurides within the Cresson vug occurred as crystals, varying in length from 1 mm to 3 mm. On some crystals of calaverite, pure gold was found, suggesting chemical alteration (Patton and Wolf, 1915). These ore minerals penetrated beyond the surface of the vug into the surrounding rock to depths of up to 1.5 m (Mehls and Mehls, 2001).

The gold camp was soon buzzing with conversation about the vug and word of the discovery spread across the nation. National newspapers said the vug “staggers the imagination,” and another paper declared it “the most important strike ever made in the Cripple Creek District” (Various period newspapers: Cripple Creek District Museum, n.d.). This astonishing discovery supported Cripple Creek’s claim that it was the “World’s Greatest Gold Camp.”

The vug, and a considerable amount of Cresson ore, was a part of the Cresson pipe, or blowout. The Cresson pipe is an elliptical cylinder of lamprophyric material (mafic rocks) 100 m to 150 m in diameter (Jensen, 2003). The lamprophyric matrix graded into a lighter colored carbonate matrix (Jensen, 2003). The entire blowout is encased inside a diatreme, a carrot-shaped volcanic complex, emplaced in the Oligocene (about 30 Ma) that reached deep into the crust (Jensen, 2003). The perimeter of the pipe produced 2,000,000 ounces of gold, indicating major deposits of gold-bearing solutions along the contact between the Cresson pipe and the diatreme (Jensen, 2003).

The gold ore from the vug was so valuable that Roelofs quickly took measures to prevent theft or high grading. He ordered a storehouse built underground (on the same level as the Cresson vug) into an old drift and secured it with solid steel doors. Bags of gold ore were stacked by hand and securely locked inside. A newspaper article described the magnitude of ore as “they had stacked between 80 to 100 tons of the phenomenally rich ore at the time of my visit, and from all indications, will continue stacking this ore for some time” (Various period newspapers: Cripple Creek District Museum, n.d.). At times, up to $500,000 (1914 value, or $36,250,000 in today’s dollars) worth of gold ore was stored there.

The Cresson vug’s valuable gold ore also needed special handling. Roelofs hired guards to protect the vug and ore. The guards watched over the ore on every part of its journey through mining, transportation and processing—keeping it safe from thieves. Two to three armed guards worked each shift underground, providing constant protection for the ore and vug. To prevent high grading, Roelofs allowed only two of the most trusted and senior miners to work the vug at a time, and always under close supervision.

The Cresson mine took precautions to secure the ore while it traveled on the railways to smelters. These measures included locked box cars and guards carrying sawed-off shotguns and rifles, who rode inside and on the top of the cars (Newton, 1928). Accounts claim that gold ore was scraped off the vug’s walls and then shoveled into large canvas bags (figure 3). It took four weeks to mine the vug out (Cunningham, 2000).

Figure 3. Canvas bags of gold ore from the Cresson vug are brought to the surface. 

Men are getting the bags ready for shipment. 

Photograph date 1914, courtesy of the Cripple Creek District Museum. 

There were two main grades of ore from the Cresson vug: the first grade included ore worth over $5,000 (1914 dollars) per ton and the second grade from $1,000 to $1,500 (1914 dollars) per ton ("$10,000,000 Strike in Cresson Mine Proves Again that Colorado is the Paradise for the Gold Hunter," 1914, p. 5). The higher-grade ore had 250-plus ounces of gold per ton, while the second grade of ore had 75-plus ounces per ton, based on the 1914 gold price of $20 per ounce (Historical Gold Prices, 2015).

In all, a whopping 60,000 ounces of gold was recovered from the vug (Hunter, 2002). The total value of the vug’s ore in 1914 gold prices was $1,200,000 (Smith Jr., Feitz, and Raines, 1985). Based on today’s gold values, the vug’s rich ore would be worth over $87,000,000.

The discovery of the Cresson vug prompted other mines in the district to deepen their shafts, since the vug was found on a deep level of the Cresson. Mine owners also expanded exploration in their mines.

Roelofs, at the age of 50, sold out in 1917 and spent the next 30 years comfortably in New York while spending time abroad, mostly in Paris Richard. He died at the age of 82 in 1939 (Sprague 1953).

The Cresson mine was operated for 66 years, finally closing in 1961 (Munn, 1984). After finishing as one of the top producing mines in the district, its buildings were torn down and the head frame and its machinery were moved to a park in Victor.

In the early 1990s, exploration geologists discovered a 2.5 million-ounce gold deposit in the same area as the historic Cresson mine, called the Cresson deposit. The Cripple Creek and Victor Gold Mining Company submitted permit applications in 1994 for open pit mining of the Cresson deposit and surrounding areas. Mining started in December 1994 and, by the end of 1995, 76,500 ounces of gold were produced. The Cripple Creek and Victor Gold Mining Company is still mining the area today under the ownership of Newmont Goldcorp with headquarters in Greenwood Village, Colorado.

The original Cresson mine shaft is long gone and, in its place is the Cresson open pit at 518 m deep (Poulson, personal communication, 2019). Newmont will deepen the pit another 91 m for an ultimate depth of 609 m. At this point, a portal for underground exploration is planned at the bottom of the pit. This project is planned in two phases. In phase one, a decline drift is planned with 762 m of easterly exploratory drifting underneath the Cresson pit. The intention is to establish drill bays at the end of the drift for core drilling below the historic Orpha May and Vindicator mines. The estimated cost of this phase is $26 million. Phase two includes 3,048 m of exploration drifting and positioning core drilling bays at an additional $100 million cost. The goal is to prove the potential for underground mining projects. If Newmont Goldcorp’s investment council approves this plan, the project would start as early as the first quarter of 2020 (Poulson, personal communication, 2019).

The Cresson mine took its place among the important mines in Cripple Creek as a result of its early establishment in the district, an innovative mine manager, expansive underground workings and the discovery of the rich Cresson vug. Mining continues at the Cresson today.

References Cited

$10,000,000 Strike in Cresson Mine Proves Again that Colorado is the Paradise for the Gold Hunter. (1914, December 30). Denver Post, p. 5.

Cunningham, C. (2000). Cripple Creek Bonanza: From Gold to Gambling. Ridgway, CO: Wayfinder Press.

Historical Gold Prices. (2015). Retrieved from Only Gold: http://onlygold.com/Info/Historical-Gold-Prices.asp

Hunter, E. T. (2002). A Thumbnail Sketch of the Cripple Creek/Victor Mining District's History. Manuscript on Newmont Gold Corp website: https://www.newmontgoldcorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/ccv_history.pdf.

Jensen, E. P. (2003). Magmatic and Hydrothermal Evolution of the Cripple Creek Gold Deposit, Colorado, and Comparisons with Regional and Global Magmatic-Hydrothermal Systems Associated with Alkaline Magmatism.  PhD Thesis. Departement of Geosciences, University of Arizona.

MacKell, J. (2003). Cripple Creek District: Last of Colorado's Gold Booms. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing.

Mehls, S. F., and Mehls, C. D. (2001). Goin’ Up to Cripple Creek: A History of the Gold Belt Byway. Lafayette, CO: Western Historical Studies.

Munn, B. (1984). A Guide to the Mines of the Cripple Creek District. Colorado Springs: Century One Press.

Newton, H. J. (1928). Yellow Gold of Cripple Creek: Romances and Anecdotes of the Mines, Mining Men, and Mining Fortunes. Denver: Nelson Publishing Company.

Patton, H. B., and Wolf, H. J. (1915). Preliminary report on the Cresson gold strike at Cripple Creek, Colorado. Golden: Colorado School of Mines Quarterly. Vol 9, No. 4, p. 199-217.

Poulson, B. (2019, Febuary). Cripple Creek and Victor Gold Mine . (S. Veatch , Interviewer)
Roelofs, R. (n.d.). Undated letter, Cripple Creek District Musuem. Retrieved 2018.

Smith Jr., A. E., Feitz, L., and Raines, E. (1985). The Cresson Vug Cripple Creek. The Mineralogical Record, Volume 16, p 231-238.

Sprague, M. (1953). Money Mountain: The Story of Cripple Creek Gold. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Various period newspapers: Cripple Creek District Museum, n.d. (n.d.).

The Mining Machines of the Greater Alma Mining District, Colorado

While staring into the campfire on a quiet summer night, I was thinking about the old mines I had explored during the day.  All of them were in rugged areas: canyons, gulches, or at the end of a two-track road that climbed above timberline. Underground mining used excavation, drilling, blasting, extracting, support, hoisting, ventilation, and drainage technologies to mine ore. Once the ore was mined, it was processed in mills for valuable metal deposits. A variety of machines were designed to use in these mining processes.

This tubular boiler was built by the Erie City Iron
Works in Erie Pennsylvania. Robert Kane photo.

The few surviving machines in the old mining camps are important artifacts that provide a way to understand mining and miners of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Tubular Boilers
Large, rusted boilers are among the physical remains of mining in the Greater Alma Mining District. There is a boiler in Buckskin Gulch and another one at the North London Mine, both have an interesting pattern of holes at the front—identifying each as a tubular boiler.

Side view of tubular boiler. Robert Kane photo.

Tubular boilers were popular in mining districts. Their name came from the long tubes running the horizontal length inside a cylindrical-shaped boiler. Inside the boiler the tubes were surrounded by water. Below the boiler a fire was kept burning. The heat and smoke from the fire was drawn through the long tubes—heating the water—and continued on, rising up through the smokestack. This process created steam very efficiently and powered mining and milling machines.

These boilers were built by the Erie City Iron Works in Erie Pennsylvania. The company started in 1851. After several mergers and acquisitions, the company is known today as Indeck Keystone Energy.

Air Compressors
The air compressors left behind in the Greater Alma District show that miners used machine drills rather than tempered hand drills. Machine drills were used as early as the last quarter of the 19th century. At first steam was used to power drills but there were problems. Steam drills were replaced by compressed air that powered pneumatic drills. Mines that used air compressors and other machinery were sufficiently capitalized to purchase expensive equipment and ship it to the remote goldfields of Colorado.

On its side is embossed “Ingersoll Rand Co., New York, Imperial Type 10.” Ingersall Rand was founded in 1871. The Ingersall Rand name came into existence in 1905 when Ingersoll-Sergeant Drill Company and Rand Drill Company merged. Robert Kane photo.

Snowstorm Dredge

The Snowstorm Dredge operated in the goldfields between Fairplay and Alma from 1941-1960s. It is the largest and last dragline dredge in Colorado and in the nation. The dredge processed about 600 tons of gravel an hour.

Side view of the Snowstorm dredge. Photo by Robert Kane.

Snowstorm dredge. Photo by Robert Kane.