The Cripple Creek District, known on its heyday as the world’s greatest gold camp, lies on the back side of Pikes Peak in Colorado and what is commonly known as the Cold Era. This ancient volcano located in the 39 mile volcanic field, measures roughly 6 square miles and is surrounded on all sides by a roughen crumbly combination of quartz, feldspar, and mica.
At the edge of the Cold Era, is what is known today as Mt. Pisgah. Over 35 million years ago, 10,400 foot tall Mt. Pisgah, was just another small volcano. When the larger volcano collapsed, after erupting through older rock, giant boulder shattered around the basin. Mineral-riched solutions including gold flowed into the faults and fissures created by the collapse. The veins cooled, condensed and hardened over time.
Unlike 95% of the gold on the planet, Cripple Creek Gold actually looks gray on its natural form due to the intense heat from this process.
E.H.: This gold deposit is unique in some ways. It’s very large. It’s not as rich as some say the golden mine in Australia but I think for total ounces that have been and will be produced, that it ranks I would guess among the top 4 or 5 gold districts of the world.
In 1891, Cowboy Bob Womack convinced others that gold existed in this district and the boom was on. In time, the Cripple Creek District expands 24 square miles with 25 towns and counties as well as 100 of mines.
33 millionaires including Winfield Scott Stratton, James Byrnes, Ed Dela Vern, Albert Carlton, Spencer Penrose, and Charles Tutt regenerated in the next 15 years.
By 1896, over 19 million dollars of gold had been produced. There were 350 working mines and about 30 assayers work in the district.
The word assay or cupellation as it is known today means to separate valuable metals such as gold or silver from base materials such as lead. During the 1800’s, cupellation was known as fire assay. Surprisingly, the assay process has not changed much over the last 100 years. Gold ore is still blasted, crushed, separated, powdered, and assay to assess the value of gold for a ton of ore.
100 years ago, assayers supply the variety of chemicals such as mercury, carbon, and acid for use in the assay process. They were mixed with crushed ore to find out the pure gold content. Assaying is an important part of the mining process since the technique tells how much pure gold is in the rock as well as its value.
Today, the Cripple Creek and Victor Mine has picked up where the gold boom left off. The mine’s majority owner, AngloGold Ashanti mines gold in ten other countries including Russia, China, Australia, and Brazil. The Cripple Creek – Victor Mine is its only North American operation. Since 1995, the Cripple Creek and Victor Mine has processed over 20 million tons of gold ore in the Cripple Creek District. By 2004, the mine has produced an amazing two million ounces of 99 or ½% pure gold.
Back in 1899, the United Mine Tunnel was built to process gold ore lying in the city of Victor. The tunnel emptied out into what was later called Eclipse Gulch. Victor fathers, Harry and Frank Woods, finance the construction of a huge mill called the Egonomic Gold Extraction Company. In its time, the Egonomic gained prominence as one of the first mills to use a chlorination process to refine gold in the district. Furnaces at the mill were fired by crude oil brought up on the Florence and Cripple Creek Railroad which ran nearby. Up to this point both the Florence and Cripple Creek and Colorado Midland Terminal Railroad had serviced the mines by hauling ore out of the district to be processed. At its peak, the Egonomic was processing 300 tons of ore daily. Even Theodore Roosevelt was impressed during a visit in 1901.
Unlike the old days of processing large amounts of gold, open pits are blasted and bulldozed to mine the ore. Today, the Cripple Creek and Victor Mine uses the heap leaching process to remove gold from the earth. After the gold is assayed, ore is heat on to a padded leach pad with cyanide and other chemicals. Next, the gold is processed through carbon columns and kilns. After passing through a tilted furnace and electrolytic tank, the gold is then poured in to cones. This last process varies slightly from the days when miners muck the gold themselves – shipped at above ground and settled by a wagon or train to be processed. During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the closest mill was The Golden Cycle located at the Colorado City and the west side of Colorado Springs.
In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt successfully requested congress to set the price of gold at $35 per ounce. The actual result of it, increased mining but hard rock mining in the Cripple Creek district became increasingly expensive. For the construction of the Carlton Mill in 1949, the Golden Cycle mill in Colorado City fell in to disuse. Although the Cripple Creek District still ranks as the 5th most valuable gold camp in the world, hard rock mining became too expensive and the mines of the Cripple Creek District closed down one by one.
Some say it was singer John Denver who revived an interesting Colorado in 1970’s. But the revival included a new interesting mining especially under President Richard Nixon eradicated President Franklin Roosevelt’s gold standard so that the price of gold could rise in 1970.
Today the Cripple Creek and Victor Mine is the largest operation in Teller County and the biggest open pit mine in Colorado. Smaller mining operations also continued to work around the district.
Here at the Cripple Creek District Museum, the 1890’s assay office offers the only glimpse into mining techniques in the past.
E.H.: I think that today the geologist, geophysicist, and engineers who’ve worked on these deposits can learn from the work that has been done in the lifetime. They learn and have been able to do some of the things today because they didn’t have to repeat what people did 100 years ago.
Loading ...