IDAHO SPRINGS
WHAT: Idaho Springs Fam Trip Itinerary
WHEN: Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Welcome to the Idaho Springs FAM tour! Idaho Springs was the site of the first important gold discovery in the Rocky Mountains. You can still feel the presence of the miners and see how the town looked during the mining days of the 1890’s. From an early settlement of only 400 people, Idaho Springs has grown to 2,000 today. Discover the life and times of this booming gold mining town with colorful characters like the Butchers of Idaho Springs; Charlie Tayler (Charley Taylor), claiming his good health was due to never kissing women or bathing; to pastimes like our Cowboy Band, baseball teams and the Fire Laddies!
8:45 a.m. – Meet for carpooling at Colorado Mills Shopping Center in Lakewood, north end of Target parking lot on the Colfax side of the Mall. If you plan to drive directly to Idaho Springs either on your own or with a pre-arranged carpool, please notify Ed Weising in advance.
9:30 a.m. – Idaho Springs Visitor Center & Museum. Free guided tour of the museum plus the watershed exhibit. The Visitor Center is located at 2060 Miner Street.
The Heritage Museum exhibits a number of artifacts from the 1860's to the 1940's that tell the story of George A. Jackson's discovery of gold in 1859 and the resulting rush that transformed the valley. In addition to our mining story, the Museum has a collection of Indian artifacts, fire department equipment, 10th Mountain Division Ski Exhibit, Berthoud Pass Ski Area history, geological specimens, mining tools, and features early day life and hand crafts from the local people.
The Heritage Museum is also home to the Clear Creek Watershed Exhibit. The atershed Foundation operates their non-profit organization from this location and shares the important message of preserving, restoring and improving the ecological, aesthetic and recreational conditions in the Upper Clear Creek Watershed.
11:00 a.m. – Free Walking Tour of Idaho Springs (starting from the Visitor Center) by an experienced guide, including the Underhill Museum. Dr. James Underhill came to Idaho Springs in 1897 and was a prominent Colorado surveyor and mining engineer. Underhill was a Harvard graduate who wrote a number of books on surveying. He surveyed many of the city plots and mines in and around Idaho Springs. He was also a professor at the Colorado School of Mines, and it is worth noting that he was the first person in Colorado to earn his doctorate in geology.
1:00 p.m. – Group Lunch at TommyKnocker Restaurant, 1401 Miner Street. Buy Your Own Lunch. 20% Discount for Fam participants.
2:30 p.m. – Free Guided Tour of the Phoenix Gold Mine in Idaho Springs by the owner of the mine himself, Alvin Mosch. This mine has been featured in National Geographic, Ghost Hunters, and Globe Trekkers magazines, as well as in many other medias such as television, newspapers, and even Educational Software! This claim was originally discovered in 1871! After the tour we will be instructed in the art of gold panning. It is a walking tour on a slight grade. No ladders or skips are used in the tour.
3:30-4:00 p.m. – FAM OVER. Leave Idaho Springs to return to Denver or stay in Idaho Springs and wander through the shops.
Guide Line Review
Idaho Springs
April 11, 2012
We met with several of the officers and members of the Idaho Springs Historical Society including Bonnie Hammet, the new Director of Marketing in Idaho Springs and Don Allan, Vice President of the Historical Society. Don started us off with a short history of how Idaho Springs was started. George Jackson was camped by the creek in early 1859 and saw gold in the creek bed. In the first week of panning, George found 190 ounces of gold; worth about $1,900 (gold was $10/oz at the time). And so the town was built around mining. Within a year there were 50,000 people living here but that era was short-lived and the current population has been about 2,500 to 2,900 over the past 50 years.
Don told us how panning was done – the first method for obtaining gold. You might get “color” but you couldn’t make “day’s wages” by panning. Don also gave us a demonstration of how ore was mined. There is an ore cart in the visitor center loaded w/ore from the Phoenix Mine. When the panning played out, the miners had to go underground. Don told us that there might be ½ oz of gold/ton of rock from underground mining. The miners dug and then chiseled holes in the rock using a “Dago” hammer which weighs four pounds and is slightly curved at the top, allowing for a less physically stressful stroke as they made holes for explosives – generally dynamite – to break out the rock. This hammer was invented and named by Italian miners. The miners used candles at first in the mines, then carbide lamps which could be attached to their headgear and provided about 5-6 candlepower. Later star drills were developed and used in stead of the hammer. Hard rock mining (gold) is easier than coal mining because there is no methane gas associated with it. Don showed us a 1 oz nugget that came from the area.
Don also explained that the piles of rock we see spilled on the hillsides outside mine entrances is just rock dump, unusable for ore. A miner would break out the rock and put it in a cart and take it outside to look at it more closely to see if it was worth sending down the hill to the mill to extract the gold. If not, it was just dumped down the hill. There are no sulfides (yellow rock) in this rock but it will not grow grass. Mills were located along the streams. The mills broke up the rock to find the gold. A lot of what we see in a mine is actually “fool’s gold” or pyrite. The rocks would be crushed into gravel size, mixed with an amalgam or cyanide to get the gold out. Cyanide does not last long in nature, it dissipates, however; mercury, which was also used to extract the gold, will last at least one hundred years. There were a few smelters in the area but most were down below in the city and the ore was transported by narrow gauge rail to the smelters. This basin is the richest mineral deposit in Colorado and 2/3rd to ¾ of the wealth of the State of Colorado is still here. Park, Clear Creek, Gilpin and Boulder Counties are the most mineral filled in Colorado. There is also rare earth in these mineral deposits – China does not have all of it.
The detritus we see along the streams is really the mill tailings and this needs to be pulled away from the stream and capped to stabilize it and to clean up the watershed. Watershed consists of water and minerals. The water here runs toward the Standley Lake area and 350,000 people in the north Denver area use it.
The Visitor Center has a chart showing how much minerals, metals and fuel each person uses daily. This includes 3.6 ounces of aluminum and several other minerals.
It takes collaboration and cooperation among many government agencies to clean up the water. There is a listing of thirty or so agencies that might need to sign off on each project. So far, over 120 projects have been completed to clean up the watershed. A major project it to clean up Clear Creek to make it a “world-class” fishing stream. Coors Brewery uses Clear Creek water in its beer production but the brewing water comes from deep wells owned by Coors. Along Clear Creek, the Argo mill had a drainage tunnel that went 21,000 feet to Central City. The Freeland Mine has been cleaned up as well as the McClellan Mill and the Brazil Mill. Clear Creek is the second most rafted river in Colorado and this industry was developed here.
All the “abandoned” mines we see are called “orphan” mines. They are not abandoned, they are owned by someone. When we returned to the Gold Standard in 1893, many of these mines were closed. The owners are now waiting for new technology to be able to get the gold out of the mines.
Don told us about the Henderson Mine (molybdenum) which is considered the most responsible mine in the U.S. It provides 65% of Clear Creek County’s tax base. The mine tailings from the Henderson Mine are benign and this mine is the third largest user of energy in Colorado. (#1 and #2 are the smelters in Pueblo). When copper is mined, moly is a by-product which is used in steel making. Moly is also used in very small amounts to slow the speed of the deployment of the airbag in your car. This mine uses a conveyor belt to transport ore out of the mine. The land the mine is on may be more valuable than the moly. Currently there are 500 employees who work three shifts with as many as 250 people underground each day. At one time there were 1,500 employees though technology has made it easier for fewer people to produce more ore. Henderson Mine rarely allows or takes people on tours through the mine.
Don talked about the Phoenix Mine –which you can tour and can also pan for gold. The Argo Mill has a place to pan for gold as well.
Then, we caravanned to the center of town and were led on a walking tour by Marjorie Bell, Curator of the Historic Society Museum and fourth generation Idaho Springs resident. We started our tour behind City Hall. City Hall was once the Grass Valley School. There was another school at the other end of town and both were dedicated on the same day (the day that President McKinley was shot). The school was moved up the street to its current location in 1986. Behind City Hall is Engine #60 and one passenger coach (1885) and they sit on the original rail right-of-way. The first rail line to Idaho Springs was opened in June of 1877 and this line was extended to Central City that same year.
Marjorie told us that the entire town has been undermined in many places but so far has not fallen in. As we walked up the street, Marjorie pointed out various buildings starting with the Masonic Temple across the street from City Hall. Marjorie noted that many buildings have plaques that tell a very short history of the building and its original date of construction and uses up to the 1980s. There are many photographs of these old buildings, many of which were made from local brick. Many of the early resident miners were Cornishmen who had little money so the buildings are decorated with brick dentil and decorative details. There were two buildings with bay windows along Miner Street (the main street) and most of the buildings were constructed between 1870 and 1890. Many of the buildings have recessed doorways because of the wind though residents think that the wind in Georgetown is much worse. Idaho Springs was originally the county seat for Clear Creek County but in 1867 the seat moved to Georgetown because of the mining boom there.
As we progressed up the street, Marjorie gave is interesting facts about the buildings as well as famous residents and visitors. We passed the Buffalo Bar which was established in 1906. Buffalo Bill is reputed to have had his last drink here but in actuality he was in a bar across the street. Casper Weinberger’s father graduated from high school in 1903 in Idaho Springs.
We could see the water wheel, an Idaho Springs landmark, from many of the cross streets. The wheel is shut off in winter and usually operates from Memorial Day through the summer. Originally, this water wheel ran a stamp mill. Charlie Taylor owned the wheel. When he died in 1938, the property was given to the city and the wheel was moved to its present location in 1946. Charlie was really not a miner, he was a gold thief. He owned a mine that his descendants discovered had no ore. But Charlie was wealthy. Charlie worked in many mills and he stole ore by secreting it out in his felt cap.
The Colorado Hotel is now the side of a park where concerts are often held in the summer. This park also has a fountain and public restrooms. The area from City Hall up Miner Street for three blocks is designated a historic area. There are many fine examples of Victorian architecture in the local housing.
Marjorie pointed out an 1860’s hotel off Miner Street on Virginia Street that had Generals Sherman and Grant as guests. Idaho Springs has a Carnegie Library which cost $10,000 (donated by Carnegie) to build and is city supported. It was built in 1904 and has a Civil War cannon outside. The exterior was remodeled in 2011 and the interior is now being remodeled. The town claims that a Civil War battle was fought here – the miners were both Yankees and Southerners and they decided to fight it out to decide who would win the war. They started with a friendly drink before they shot their friends and one led to another and in the morning they decided they had better just go on home.
Next door is one of the five original hose companies where firefighters would roll the hose wagon to the fire. This building needs some restoration. The hose wagons were manned by men, not horses and were vitally important to the community. These hose houses had communication apparatus that would indicate to the firemen where the fire was. There were pull boxes around town and in case of fire, someone would pull the handle on the box and it would start the bell in the hose house ringing and let the firemen know which pull box had been activated. Pretty ingenious for the times!
Another building she pointed out was the Methodist Church which was started in 1868, moved into this building in 1869 but a neighbor paid them not to have a bell in the belfry because he did not want to get up early on Sunday after a Saturday evening on the town. The bell and steeple were installed in 1909.
Idaho Springs had plumbing and a sewer system very early. They also had two electric suppliers and telephone service very early. As we passed the Roburts grocery building, Marjorie told us that there were several Roburts brother and the family operated grocery stores in Silver Plume, Cripple Creek as well. There are several organizations still in existence that help those in need in town, including the Odd Fellows and the Woodmen of the World. Donnelly’s was a grocery store until the 1970s and Elliott’s next door was a drug store.
Augusta Tabor lived in Idaho Springs. When she and H.A.W. (Horace) Tabor first arrived with their baby she cooked and baked for all the miners. When winter came, the other miners told Horace not to leave her up in the mountains over the winter so the Tabors moved to Denver. When they came back in the spring, Horace discovered that someone had jumped his claim. The Hanchett Building (1890) was owned by a man who grubstaked miners. He made a lot of money with his shares of their finds. His son lived in Salt Lake City and thee are many buildings with the Hanchett name there. The Queen Hotel (1878) was originally a frame building and was rebuilt in brick after it burned.
We visited the Underhill Museum which was the home of the Underhills. He was a surveyor and they were the only family to live in the house. Marjorie remembered visiting Mrs. Underhill with her mother when Marjorie was a child. This house is now a Museum/bookstore and is used also for fund-raising events. The garden and building can be rented for catered parties, weddings, etc. There is no set price, appropriate donations are requested and the cost can be tax deductible because the money is used for restoration, not profit. This year’s first open event will be mid-June and the cost is $25-$50 and is all-inclusive except for donations to the bar.
The names and dates and other information about those buried in the cemetery has recently been recorded and will be posted on the town website.
After our long walk through town, we had a wonderful lunch at the TommyKnocker. There was lots of good food and great conversation. Then we drove up to the Phoenix Mine, owned by Al Mosch. Al is a third-generation miner and has owned the Phoenix Mine for many years. He allows tours through the mine and also there are demonstrations of panning and you can try it for yourself. Al is a fascinating character and can tell you stories and more stories of things that have happened and people that have visited his mine. All is also very active in the community and has taken on the federal government on occasion. He has written two books about his experiences as well. He discovered a rich vein of gold and copper in the Phoenix which he showed us as well as areas that he is developing.
--- Nancy Brueggeman