Rufus Porter, The Hard-Rock Poet of Colorado’s Cripple Creek District

c 2023 by Jan MacKell Collins

Parts of this article are excerpted from Cripple Creek District: Last of Colorado’s Gold Booms.

“I ask no miracles of the muse,

I would not write like an old Khayyam,

The little talent that I use

Must show me only as I am.”

                        —Rufus Porter

As Colorado history goes, Cripple Creek District in Colorado remains at the forefront as the site of the last great gold boom in the Centennial State. Between 1891 and 1920, hundreds of mines, 25 towns and camps, three railroads, and thousands of people infiltrated a 24-square mile area, and generated a history quite unlike no other. Today, collectors of Cripple Creek memorabilia can consider themselves lucky to have the works of Rufus L. Porter among their treasures. From his arrival in Colorado in about 1915 to his death in 1979, Porter served as a blue-collar historian for the Cripple Creek District. Today, his home-spun yarns and poetry about life as it really was in the Cripple Creek District have survived in the way of columns for the Colorado Springs Gazette, as well as his own self-published books, as a crucial part of the District’s history.

Born in 1897 in Minnesota, Porter’s family had moved to Colorado Springs by the time his sister, Vera, was born in 1915. Two years later, Porter visited the Cripple Creek District and became enamored with the fading gold district. For a time, he remained in Colorado Springs, marrying his wife, Martha, and working as a coal miner in one of the 50 mines in the Rockrimmon and and Cragmoor area. By the time the Porter’s second child, Robert, was born in 1926, the family had migrated to Cripple Creek District where Rufus leased his own mine. Porter would later recall that the family initially stayed at the once-prestigious National Hotel in Cripple Creek, as well as the Baltimore Hotel in Victor, before moving into a house in Cripple Creek.

Following the death of their young daughter Doris, in 1932, the Porters returned to Colorado Springs for a few years (another daughter, also had died at the age of four years in 1925). Several years and two more children later, the Porter family returned to the Cripple Creek District. This time they settled in Goldfield, and Rufus went to work for the famous Cresson Mine. By his own account, he also worked at the Jay Gould Mine on Tenderfoot Hill, the Little Longfellow, and the Rigi. In between, he leased properties on Bull Hill and in other areas. He was working at the Vindicator Mine in 1940 when he fell 50 feet down the No. 12 shaft, breaking four vertebrae.

It took some two years for Porter to recover from his injuries, during which time he returned to Colorado Springs and eventually got a job as Chief Metallurgist for the Golden Cycle Mill. But he had also taken up a hobby, writing. For the next several years, Porter scribbled scores of poems and anecdotes about the Cripple Creek District, writing ballads about the people he knew and focusing on the District’s many colorful characters. In 1953, he published his first book, The Fiddler on Wilson Creek. The tome was a collection of poetry illustrated with historic images and Porter’s own photos depicting landscapes and characters of the district. A year later, a second book, Gold Fever, was published as well, and included tales of local folklore, as well as Porter’s recollections of his time in the District.

Now, Rufus balanced his time in Colorado Springs with extended trips to the Cripple Creek District, where he was known as the “Hard Rock Poet” and quite a colorful character himself. Of Cripple Creek’s annual Donkey Derby Days celebration in 1954, he would remember attending with his beloved donkey, Esau. “We won first prize in the whisker contest and second in the parade,” Porter he said. Those who remember the well-known billboards of the past advertising Cripple Creek will recall a miner and his donkey proclaiming, “Yonder is Cripple Creek!” That was, indeed, Rufus and Esau.

Sadly, Porter’s son Robert, a Navy veteran, was working in a local mine when he was accidentally electrocuted later that same time. Rufus battled his grief by even more. In the interest of discretion, Rufus rarely “named names,” preferring his own self-styled nicknames for the people whose stories he told. Thus the true identities of such characters as Bohunk Stan, Honest John the High-Grader, Greasy Miller of Gillette, Buffalo Brown, Old Man Oliver, Bathless Bill, Sloppy Frank and Kettle Belly Martin have been lost to history. Careful examination of the works, however, will also reveal several true historic figures—Sam Stumpff, Pat McCain, Dan O’Hara, and Tom and Ace Morris, just to name a few.

The characters in Porter’s books added much flavor to his perspective on the very real aspects of gold camp life. His often humorous anecdotes covered a wide range of real-life adventures, from fishing and hunting to high-grading, from gambling to ghost towns. He even had a favored camping spot, which he called “Poet’s Peak.” Porter was blatantly honest, too. Of the bawdy district of Cripple Creek in the face of government officials trying to ignore their naughty past, Porter wrote,

“Now sin and lust I ain’t defendin’,

But history must be fair,

And there ain’t no use in pretendin’

That Myers Avenue wasn’t there.”

In 1961 Porter published yet another booklet, Pay Dirt. As with his previous books, most of Porter’s stories were told with a tongue-in-cheek style. The tales could, however, occasionally take a gruesome turn. In writing of the “big Swede” who suffered a stroke and died in a shaft of the Golden Cycle Mine, Porter wrote, “…after workin’ for an hour without bein’ able to budge him, we decided that the only way we’d ever get him out of there was to saw his legs off. But by that time rigor mortis had set in…since he had no known kin we considered it more humane to leave him where he was…”

Following the closing of the Carlton Mill in 1962, Porter’s writings eventually caught the eye of the Colorado Springs Gazette editors, and he was hired as a regular columnist as he continued writing his little books. In 1966 he published a fourth work, The Saga of Dynamite Dan. Now, Porter’s tales earned him notoriety as a popular guest speaker and exhibitor of his own extensive gold ore sample collection. He also wrote several more books. Each effort supported Porter’s hope and theory that someday, the Cripple Creek District would boom once more.

In about 1978, for reasons known only to themselves, Rufus and Martha moved to Riverside, California. A scribbled note from Rufus to Colorado historian, author and Cripple Creek District Museum curator Leland Feitz in January of 1979 noted, “I am writing for Western Publications, Inc. Got a check for $150.00. By the way, I may be back next year. I don’t like Calif.” The letter included an historic photograph from the Cripple Creek District. “I’m going to have a print of it framed and give it to the museum in Cripple Creek,” Feitz wrote back. In response, Rufus typed a cryptic reply on Feitz’s letter on February 16, ending with, “Hope to hear frrom [sic] you soon. Rufus.” Later that day Porter passed away at the age of 81. His body, as well as that of Martha’s a year later, were returned to Colorado for burial in Colorado Springs.

Rufus Porter’s legacy has indeed lived on in the Cripple Creek District. His series of booklets were later published by his late nephew, Forest Porter, and are now highly collectible. And, after years of sitting forgotten, his charming little cabin in Goldfield is now privately owned and lovingly protected and cared for. Most interesting is Rufus Porter’s prediction that some day, the Cripple Creek District would boom once more, has come to fruition. Today, Newmont Mining is the largest gold mining operation in the state, and the City of Cripple Creek has legalized gambling. It’s a far cry from the days when Rufus saw two fellows spitting at a crack in the sidewalk for $20 gold pieces.

Special thank you to the memory of Forest Porter, a nephew of Rufus who corresponded with me regarding his charming uncle.

Midway, a Halfway Point in Colorado’s Cripple Creek District

c 2023 by Jan MacKell Collins

Portions of this article first appeared in Lost Ghost Towns of Teller County, Colorado.

In the vast expanse of the historic Cripple Creek District, literally dozens of camps, placenames and whistlestops popped up within a radius of just 24 square miles. None were quite so important, however, as Midway. The community was so-named because it was conveniently located about halfway between Victor and Cripple Creek, and likely came about shortly after the Cripple Creek District Interurban Line, aka the High Line, was established. The line ran hourly between 5:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. daily, with stops at Midway. The elevation measured 10,487 feet, making the High Line the highest interurban railroad in North America. From Midway, one could see majestic views of the Cripple Creek District, as well as Pikes Peak and the Sangre de Cristo mountains some distance away.

Although Midway was never intended to be more than a stop for miners commuting between their homes and area mines, railcars that were meant to hold no more than forty passengers often carried upwards of one hundred men through the small camp. By about 1896, Archie McKillip and Ed Doyle had built the Grand View Saloon at Midway, providing a place for miners to stay warm and have a drink before catching a ride or, perhaps, after a long day’s work.

Eventually, a handful of cabins surrounded the Grand View Saloon. Their residents numbered about fifty people, many of them colorful characters. One of them was “Bathless Bill,” a “mucker, skinner, and dance hall sinner” who was particularly known for the pungent odor permeating his clothing, and body. Miner Rufus Porter, aka “The Hard Rock Miner,” wrote a most delightful poem about Bill. The ballad recounts that Bill’s claim paid off, and on a night while buying rounds of drinks, Bill’s friends challenged him to take a bath. Bill met the challenge for a refreshing change, filling his tub with bottles of expensive champagne at a cost of $1,400. Bill’s long-needed soaking turned the champagne black, but the story goes that:

“He dipped a handful up,

And damn his hide, his grin was wide

As he slurped sup after sup

At last all clean like a dance hall queen

Old Bill stepped out to rub—

He’d tasted the wine and said it was fine

And they all made a dive for the tub.

Bill stood there bright, his skin as white

As lilies in the rain—

Admirin’ his wealth, they drank to his health

In that filthy black champagne.” 

Midway never did have a post office; in 1900, residents could pick up their mail at the nearby town of Altman instead. Aside from the Grand View Saloon, there was also an eatery, appropriately named the Midway Restaurant. Things were relatively quiet at Midway for a number of years. A grocery and blacksmith were present by 1912, and remained in business through at least 1916. There was also “French Blanche” LaCroix, whose home was located across from the Grand View Saloon. A French immigrant and prostitute by trade, Blanche had once worked for Cripple Creek saloon owner Morris Durant. When Durant’s wife found out the two were having an affair, she threw acid in Blanche’s face, scarring her badly. Blanche moved to Midway, where she initially served miners before retiring and becoming somewhat of a recluse. Locals remembered seeing her from a distance, sitting in the afternoon sun so wrinkles would eventually mask her scars. They also noted that she wore a brown veil when out in public. 

Although Blanche’s face frightened certain children of the Cripple Creek District, others recalled visiting her and eating her delicious cookies. In time, Blanche’s only other neighbor was Robert T. “Monty” Montgomery, a miner who lived in a tiny cabin across from the Grand View Saloon. The two dated for a time, until Blanche caught Monty seeing another former working girl named Annie Bowers from Independence. Blanche and Annie stayed friends, but Blanche never spoke to Monty again. 

Blanche eventually moved to Victor. By the time she died in 1959, Midway was long abandoned. As late as 1994 much of the Grand View Saloon remained intact, but the building and the rest of Midway were bulldozed in 2001 by modern mining operations. The exception was French Blanche’s cabin, which the City of Cripple Creek was able to save and move to town. In 2010, the cabin was given to the Cripple Creek District Museum, where today it is furnished to illustrate the way Blanche kept it when she lived there.

Image: French Blanche LeCroix stands in front of the old Grand View Saloon at Midway.

An Ode to Elkton, Colorado

c 2022 by Jan MacKell Collins

I first dared to trespass over the chain across the road at Elkton many years ago. Creeping up the hillside, I hoped no passing car would see me or my bright red Chevy Nova, parked off the highway between Cripple Creek and Victor. Above me lay a handful of buildings in various states of decay. The empty cabins beckoned me with a whisper, asking me to remember the lives within their cozy depths. Elkton was inviting me in. With a last look around, I cautiously ducked into the first skeletal cabin I reached. Walking over the threshold was like entering a different world.

And so it went, for over a glorious decade. When other ghost towns seemed so far away, when imposing fences and signs created impassable barriers, Elkton was there for me.  Sometimes alone, and sometimes with others, I enjoyed the old town as often as I could. No matter the season or time of day, the thought of Elkton inspired me to grab my coat, umbrella or lantern and explore to my heart’s content. As I came to know the town, I learned to belong there. As I came to know Elkton’s history, I yearned to have seen its lively past.

It was much later that I learned about William Shemwell, an amateur prospector and former blacksmith, who partnered with two other men to register what became the Elkton Mining and Milling Company – so named because Shemwell spotted some elk antlers near his dig. Next, Shemwell talked Colorado Springs grocers George and Sam Bernard, into grubstaking him in exchange for his $36.50 worth of groceries. Later, the Bernards bought Shemwell and partners out, hired the revered Ed De La Vergne to run the mine, and made millions. Long before that happened, however, the town of Elkton grew up near the mine to house local miners and their families.

Elkton’s post office opened in 1895, when the town was very fortunate to be served by all three railroads in the Cripple Creek District: the Florence & Cripple Creek, the Midland Terminal and later, the Colorado Springs & Cripple Creek District Railway. The Low Line Interurban System also constructed a bridge over the Midland Terminal tracks. A station house and telegraph office were built below the Elkton Mine. In 1896, the railroad built a quarter mile siding on the outskirts of town, just to pick up the ore.

Elkton’s population in 1896 was about 800. There was a barber, a hay and feed store, a laundry, one boardinghouse, a saloon, a cobbler, two hotels, two grocers, and a depot. Meanwhile, tiny houses sprouted all around the business district, and by 1898

Elkton looked about as neighborly as you could get. Neat rows of roads were built along the hillside, with modest miners cabins lined up beside one another. In time, the town would also absorb the nearby communities of Arequa, Beacon Hill and Eclipse.

As of 1900, there were nearly three dozen business houses, from Jennie Allen the laundress to Sam Adelman the shoemaker, from Frank Bernard the assayer to Naufett and Kelly’s saloon. Several merchants felt it was important to put Elkton’s name in front of their business name; the city directory showed shops like the book and stationary store, grocery stores, a drugstore and pharmacy, and even a laundry pointing out how proud the owners were to be a part of the town’s business district. There was also a school and at least five rooming houses to house bachelor miners and the occasional visitor.

Over the next three years, Elkton grew to its peak population of 3,000 people in 1905. Yet the town retained its sense of community, even during the tumultuous labor strikes during 1903 and 1904. Here, neighbors talked freely about the local happenings, traded recipes and tall tales, gossiped about each other, speculated about how well the Elkton Mine was doing, and chatted amiably with each other over the back fence or while walking past the neat rows of little houses. Even when Elkton began shrinking as mining in the Cripple Creek District waned, those die-hards who remained in town went on about their daily business, chins up.

Like some of the other 25-or-so towns and cities in the District, Elkton received a brief reprieve in 1914 when mining engineer Dick Roelofs discovered a gigantic vug in the Cresson Mine about a mile above town. With the discovery, miners from all over the district were summoned to work the Cresson Vug. Roelofs built an overhead tram from the Cresson which extended down through Elkton and ended at Eclipse. Two years after that, the Elkton Mine topped out at $16,200,000 in gold production.

The lifeline of the town got smaller and smaller. By 1919 only a few businesses were left. The school closed down around 1920, and the post office closed six years later. That is when Elkton began its life as a tiny shadow of its former self. Some homes were abandoned, while others remained occupied off and on. Those who lived there treasured Elkton as an authentic, semi-ghost town from the long ago past whose charm included weathering buildings which somehow remained steadfast in the face of harsh, windy winters and pouring summer rains. As late as 1982, a few homes were still occupied. By the time I discovered the town, however, the buildings were empty and only some remnants of those who lived there remained.

During those times I visited, I sometimes used history books as a guide. It was not hard back then to stand in the streets and compare old images of Elkton to the contemporary scene. The history left behind challenged my imagination to picture how Elkton must have been. Wandering from building to building, I saw plenty of signs of a life long before mine. One house was strewn with vintage lingerie and a dressing table whose drawers still contained stationary, cold cream and bobby pins. Another home offered shelves of spices, canned goods and shoe polish. Yet another still had pictures hanging on the walls. In the last twenty years, some woman had left her checkbook on a closet shelf. Later, I saw a mining certificate bearing her name, up for sale at a shop in Cripple Creek. A wonderful old pair of catty sunglasses rested on the sink at that house, as if someone had just come in with groceries and laid them down.

Even the walls of some houses told a story, since many of them were covered with old newspapers for added insulation. Sometimes there was no newspaper, only loose strips of wallpaper reaching out like long wispy fingers on the breeze.  I looked under porches and poked around root cellars. My imagination furnished the empty front parlors and pondered over kitchens. In the house with the spices, a table was still set with a tablecloth and centerpiece.

Often I wished for the means to restore the old piano still reposing dismally inside what was formerly a prim and comfortable home. It was a cheap upright, painted white by some well-meaning housewife and left behind when the housewife departed. In its later life, the piano housed bird nests and rodent dens. Few of its ivory keys gave forth an audible note. My favorite memory about the house with the piano is the day a friend and I were caught in a rainstorm there.

Waiting out the storm gave us time to look closely at the scattered remnants of someone’s past. Magazines and other paper lazed in piles around the house. Pieces of wedding paper and bows also lay about, as if the bride in all her glee had run through the house opening her gifts in a frenzy and strewing paper as she went. Mixed with the bows were letters telling of the marriage—and of an accident following the ceremony which seriously injured the groom. What became of the couple is anyone’s guess, and I suppose I’d rather keep it that way. For imagination’s sake.

Outside of the houses were more pieces of history – old bottles, bits of broken china, chunks of old cookstoves, pieces of a chair. Old clotheslines where clothes once hung, and flower gardens once lovingly tended. Wind, people, and perhaps even animals had scattered other items about. It was not unusual to find a saucepan in the middle of the road, or someone’s shoe, or a discarded license plate. A garage with one door hanging precariously on one hinge and swinging in the breeze revealed an old armoire that was chock full of old magazines. I tell you, visiting Elkton was one of my very favorite things to do. Being there somehow made me feel at home, and I slowly but surely fell in love with that old ghost town.

Then came 1994.

Talk had long been coming about the Cripple Creek & Victor Mine wanting to take out Elkton. The company got their wish, and Elkton, along with the entire mountain upon which it perched, was bulldozed in the frantic search for more gold. Prior to the destruction an archaeological dig was conducted at the town, but any remaining artifacts were sent to an out-of-state university and local museums received nothing. It made me glad that I had picked and saved several items from Elkton over the years. Most of them made their way to the Cripple Creek District Museum, so others could enjoy them and Elkton’s history. But I saved the catty sunglasses for myself.

Still, the destruction of Elkton made me sad. I remembered the bird nests I spotted on porches. During the years that Elkton was left to the elements, plenty of other wildlife made the town their home as well. Then there was the matter of the way the faded yellow paint under the eave of one house shone as the sun was setting on it. And the broken china doll head I forgot to pick up. And the story of the old couple who lived there in the 50’s and proclaimed themselves Mr. and Mrs. Mayor of Elkton. And the memories of people who managed to survive quite nicely in primitive cabins with few modern amenities. All of that was destroyed when Elkton fell to the bulldozer.

There’s a story about a little boy walking down the beach among hundred of starfish that have washed up. The child begins picking them up, one by one, and tossing them back into the ocean. A man sees this and asks the boy, “What are you doing? You can’t save them all, you know.” The boy picks another starfish up, tosses it into the water, and replies, “Well, I just saved that one.” Elkton is my lost starfish, the one I couldn’t save. I know I’m not the only one to feel this way. That is why groups of us historians advocate, sometimes fiercely, to save history before it’s gone. So people will remember how important these places were, and how they got us to where we are now.

You can read more about the ghost towns of the Cripple Creek District and Teller County in Jan’s book, Lost Ghost Towns of Teller County.

Image c 2022 by Jan MacKell Collins

Reflections on the Cripple Creek District Museum in Colorado

c 2022 by Jan MacKell Collins

One email, one phone call and one video, and I’m right back where I was in 1960-something and beyond.

It was summer, and my family was visiting Cripple Creek, the “World’s Greatest Gold Camp.” The high altitude made the air drier than the Arizona desert, but the sky was lapus lazuli blue and the sun warmed my skin. All four of us bore the markings of typical tourists with our ’65 white Chevy station wagon, our best ratty tennis shoes for walking on dirt, mismatched outfits and lightly sunburned faces, a tell-tale sign of campers who have been out and about for a while.

As we piled out of our car in a parking lot, a train whistle blew. Dad was barking orders while Mom guided us to the safety of a dirt path that served as a sidewalk. My sister and I were of course a couple of young swivel-necks, hopped up on candy and wandering off in every direction as Mom grabbed our shirts and hustled us along. I had a stomach-ache, but was helpless as I was guided past a large, 3-story building with a balcony at the top and on towards a charming looking little train station. I had just started reading, so the word “museum” on a sign we passed meant nothing to me.

The three of us—my mom, my sister and me—huddled in a little wiggly group as my dad went into the little train depot and came out with some tickets in his hand. We stepped up onto a little train, which took off within minutes. My mom warned me to keep my hands inside, which was no problem since my hands were busy holding my aching belly. Mom tried to interest me in the ride and the beautiful scenery, but I started crying. She held me close for the duration of the ride, after which we left Cripple Creek in a hurry and headed towards Canon City.

The year 1982 or so marked the first of many returns to Cripple Creek. I loved the town with its Victorian air and gorgeous old buildings. I remembered the train, and Mom reminded me how I cried with my bellyache while riding it. I had forgotten. I did remember the big 3-story building, with a sign above the door reading, “Cripple Creek District Museum.” There were other old looking buildings nearby and some shops, but our trip was hurried since we had driven all the way from Colorado City south of Pueblo. Besides, the streets were incredibly crowded. I vowed to come back, which I did soon after making Colorado my permanent home in 1984.

The Cripple Creek of the 1980’s was marvelous to behold. Just 90 years before, the city and the district around it was the scene of the last great gold boom in Colorado. Thirty-three millionaires came out of this place, where dreams were realized as often as they were dashed as people crawled all over the hillsides making homes in camps, towns and cities. For some 30 years, the  Cripple Creek District reigned as one of the best-known places in America, as well as other parts of the world. Groucho Marx, Tex Guinan, Jack Dempsey and a host of other early day celebrities came here at the beginning of their careers. And then it began getting harder or more expensive to dig or blast the hardrock ore out of the mountains, and people began drifting away.

For a time, the whole area saw a huge downsize in population, but the remaining property owners realized the benefits of tourism beginning in the late 1940s. Now, Cripple Creek’s Bennett Avenue was lined with shops, ice cream stores, restaurants, bars, and plenty of other interesting places. You could pan for gold, sit on a bench and watch the world go by, take your picture with an old miner named Nugget and his donkey, explore the ghost towns around town, or take a trip to nearby Victor—the only other city that was home to live people, shops, restaurants and another museum. Back in Cripple Creek was the biggest museum of all – the Cripple Creek District Museum. It was the largest museum in Teller County then, and now. That 3-story building I saw as a child was the former Midland Terminal Railroad Depot, now part of the museum, which has proudly sat at the head of Bennett Avenue since 1895.

Cripple Creek and Victor became an escape for me from the dreariness of Colorado Springs. It was hard to get a decent job (military wives from Fort Carson south of town were willing to work cheaper than the rest of us), and I bounced around a lot. For me, lover of all things historic and buildings that told stories, Cripple Creek and Victor were the “it” places to be. I fantasized about what it would take to be able to move there. Where would I work? In one of the shops, or seasonally for the melodrama theatre at the old Imperial Hotel? Could I make it there? Probably not, but then something happened that was both a boon and a curse to Cripple Creek: in 1991, the city was one of three in Colorado to legalize limited stakes gambling, and much of the proceeds would go to historic preservation throughout the state. A second boom began.

By working for various casinos as they opened, I was finally able to realize my dream of moving to Cripple Creek in 1994. My first home was actually a small A-frame perched precariously on a hillside seven miles from town, but I loved it there for a dozen glorious years. Four years later, I chanced to get a job at the Cripple Creek District Museum selling tickets. By now I was aiming for a life at a professional author, and the museum provided plenty of pictures, documents and artifacts to learn about. The longer I worked there, the more I fell in love with the place. There was of course the depot, but there was also a turn-of-the-century assay office in another building, and the Colorado Trading & Transfer Building – the only structure to survive two great fires Cripple Creek experienced within days of each other back in April of 1896.

The depot might have perished in the fires also, I later learned, but for the fire department wisely placing a train car on the tracks between the building and the adjacent hillside, and shooting fire hoses over the top of it to douse the flames as they burned part of the roof and began licking at the rafters. The depot had only opened the previous December, and it’s standard-gauge cars were integral to transporting millions of dollars of gold ore to Colorado Springs for processing. The only other train service at the time was the Florence & Cripple Creek, with narrow-gauge cars that ran a precarious route through today’s Phantom Canyon. The canyon was so steep that the trains required what they called “helper engines” to make the grade.

During the years I worked at the museum, I learned a lot about the Midland Terminal Depot. I learned that the railroad superintendents and their families once lived on the top floor. One of them, the Evans family, had a son who had been recruited to play for the Chicago Cubs – until he fell off the back loading dock and broke both of his arms. I loved to imagine what it was like for the families to open the door to the top floor balcony, giving them a birds-eye view of the city and the mountains beyond. How many feet, I wondered, had trudged up and down the gorgeous cantilever staircase snaking its way up through the middle of the building? I knew that between 1953 (when the museum opened) and 1967, a million museum visitors alone had walked those stairs, admiring the thousands of items on display. The true number then, must have been double, maybe even triple.

In honor of the Evans and the others who called the depot their home, the third floor was furnished as it would have been during the 1890s and early 1900s with a parlor, dining room, bedroom and an office that looked out over the railroad tracks. The office, once the working place of the superintendent, was and still is, dedicated to Ralph Carr, who was raised in Cripple Creek and was elected Colorado’s governor in 1939. The second floor was filled with mining memorabilia, a glass cases with Native artifacts, information about the tumultuous labor wars of 1894 and 1903, the switchboard for the telephone company in the original freight room, and mineral displays that the Smithsonian called “one of the finest collections in Colorado.” There also was a wagon belonging to Winfield Scott Stratton, the district’s first millionaire whose mines once brought in $12,000 a day.

The first floor also contained a freight room, as well as another room which was once displayed as a kitchen but became the Melodrama Room dedicated to the Mackin family. Dorothy Mackin (one of the founders of the museum) and her husband, Wayne, were the ones to begin producing melodrama shows at the Imperial Hotel & Theatre, and incidentally raised their family there. Their son, Steve Mackin, once told me that until he went to spend the night at a friend’s house as a child, he believed everyone had a lobby in their  home. The other room on the first floor contained displays about Cripple Creek’s early gambling history, as well as its saloons and bawdy houses—including the original wooden grave marker of Madam Pearl DeVere.

We had a lot of visitors back then, people from out of town who had never been to the Cripple Creek District, but also locals who had been coming there since they were kids. Some of them, in those early years, remembered and knew the history of the old depot and the other buildings in the museum “complex” (I use that word lightly, since it implies we were some modern museum with sterile buildings. That was certainly not the case). One day, while I was sitting at the ticket desk researching bawdy Myers Avenue in one of the city directories, a lone gentleman came in, bought a ticket, and quietly made his way upstairs. It was over an hour before he came back down, and he asked me what I was reading. I explained about the red-light district and that I was looking for women from Myers Avenue. He asked me a few more questions before a family barged in. They did not want to pay the paltry $2.50 each to go through the museum. They did, however, want to know where there was a cheap place to eat in town. I was giving them a list when the gentleman left.

A little while later a woman, who saw that $2.50 was well worth the price to see the museum, came down. “I see that Steven Spielberg was here,” she quipped. My eyebrows went up and I asked her how she knew this. He had signed his name on the guest register on the second floor, she said. We went up together and viewed the signature. But anybody could write that name even if they weren’t Steve Spielberg, I reasoned. Then the woman said she had just seen him herself, at a wine tasting in Aspen the day before. I asked her what he was wearing. She described my inquisitive visitor to a tee. It was all I could do to keep from closing early and going in search of him, but he had apparently purchased a couple of books at our gift shop and gone on his way.

We had more than just city directories in the way of a library, much more. A door from the gambling room led to the office, which became my very favorite room since that is where most of the documents, photographs, maps, newspapers and other important ephemera were kept. As I got to know my boss, Erik Swanson, and the man who founded the museum, Richard Johnson, I was able to talk my way into working in that room. Soon I was Erik’s “right-hand” woman, and graduated to archivist of the museum. People wanted to know about the history of the 25 or so towns of the Cripple Creek District, important  events, and their ancestors. It became my job to help them find out all they could. A few years later, I became Director when Richard died and Erik left after working at the museum for nearly two decades.

Maintaining a museum with five historic buildings (eight floors combined), expansive grounds, hundreds of thousands of artifacts, and everything else that goes with the largest historical depository in Teller County is difficult – yet we managed to do it with ten staff members, seven board members, and slew of volunteers. We cleaned and repaired artifacts, and tried to identify those that had not been accessioned in previous years. When a miner’s cabin and the former home of French Blanche were donated to us, we had great fun furnishing them the way they would have looked a century ago. Our gift shop also reflected a time long ago, with Victorian and Edwardian reproductions of dishware, old-fashioned candy, Native jewelry, and the largest book selection in the entire county.

Our parking lot was the finish line for the annual Donkey Derby Races. We thought up fun events to host, like fundraisers for other non-profits, art shows and holiday celebrations, and even public appearances by Wyatt Earp’s nephew at the Imperial Hotel. We made unique parade floats and were in at least two parades each year, where we often won first place ribbons. The floats were the cheapest way for us to advertise by getting out into the public and reminding people that this stellar museum was right in their midst.

It was, at the very least, positively refreshing, exhausting and time-consuming to work at the museum, but I loved every minute of it. Much like an addict, I ate, drank, breathed, slept and talked history (which I still do). Working at the Cripple Creek District Museum was truly my fix. And by the time I left there some ten years ago, I regarded the museum in its entirety as a grandmother, someone who needs you to help them stand now and then, whose shoes needed to be polished occasionally, or their old wardrobe patched to make it look new, or their hair smoothed back to look perfect under a feather hat.

Even though I have been gone for a long time, I still maintain a loving relationship with my “grandmother,” the museum. Like I did with others before me, people occasionally contact me wanting to know something about the place and its expansive displays. Or what all those keys go to. Or how, when or why we did something or other on the museum’s behalf. When you know an elderly relative for a long time, you learn everything about them from their mannerisms and preferences to what is inside their cupboards and closets. That is how I feel still about the Cripple Creek District Museum, my once-upon-a-time solace as the one place I could find my footing. You should go visit it. The admission fee is a little higher, but you won’t be sorry. Just be sure to take enough time on your tour for the spirits of the past to warm you and make you feel just like I did so many years ago.

All-in-One: Grassy, Cameron & Pinnacle Park, Colorado

c 2022 by Jan MacKell Collins

Portions of this article are excerpted from Lost Ghost Towns of Teller County

Cameron was first known as Grassy, although it was sometimes misspelled on various maps as “Gassy” and “Gassey.” Less-than-astute historians have joked that the community was named after the digestive conditions suffered by a nearby rancher. On a more factual note, Grassy was so-named because it was located in a wide, grass-filled meadow at the edge of a forest. Mines of the Cripple Creek District were nearby and, unlike the hilly and steep streets of the most area towns, Grassy’s flat ground made it very easy to lay out.

   Grassy was almost named Cripple Creek when it was first founded. This was back when Cripple Creek as it is known today was divided by two separate towns, Fremont and Hayden Placer. The towns were ensconced in a heated battle over who would be first to secure a post office. Fremont wanted its name, but Hayden Placer took a competitive edge by choosing the name “Moreland,” a brilliant marketing move that implied that one could acquire “more land” by buying lots there. When the post office accepted Moreland’s name, Fremont founders Horace Bennett and Julius Myers took the competition one step further. In March of 1892, they filed a plat on the northeastern most section of the former Broken Box Ranch and called it Cripple Creek. Promotors Hayden Placer and Fremont had the last laugh, however, when the post office decided to simply combine them into one city and designated the post office name as Cripple Creek.

   In light of the post-designated Cripple Creek, Bennett and Myers changed the name of their platted Cripple Creek to Grassy when it was officially founded in February of 1892. The men had realized that Grassy could become an important mining and railroad hub. The town was officially platted on October 29, 1894 and was intended to be a large city. The main avenues were Prospect, Wolcott, Teller, Blaine, Cleveland, Townsend, Routt, Pitkin and Sherman, intersected by streets numbered one through five. The Midland Terminal Railroad intersected the east half of the town, with a tidy depot located on the southeast corner of Teller and 3rd. Stage services were offered for a time, wherein passengers were brought to the depot to ride the train to Divide and beyond. Meanwhile, the Midland Terminal railroad continued laying tracks headed to the rest of the Cripple Creek District.

   It was soon apparent that Grassy would not be developing very fast, for it was a tad too far from other, more important towns, in the district. A small portion of Grassy was vacated in August of 1895, and by 1899 the town in its entirety was up for sale. Enter the Woods Investment Company, comprised of budding millionaire Warren Woods and his sons Harry and Frank. The Woods boys were already making a big splash in nearby Victor, where they had built much of the town (and rebuilt it after a devastating fire in August of 1899). The Woods purchased the Grassy town site at a cost of $123,000 for 183 acres. The investment was solid enough, for surrounding mines had produced $250,000 in gold ore just that year. Miners, laborers, railroad workers, ranchers, and others were soon moving to Grassy.

   The Woods renamed their newly-acquired town. In July of 1899, the Cripple Creek Morning Times reported that the “Cameron Company that now owns the Grassy townsite, has changed the name of the place to Cameron. Several new houses are now in course of construction there. “Beginning on August 3, Cameron began appearing on the timetables as a stop along the Midland Terminal Railroad. Nice brick structures now lined Cameron Avenue. There were three saloons and even a newspaper, the Golden Crescent. Yet Cameron continued struggling to draw residents and visitors.

   Then, on August 10, readers of the Cripple Creek Morning Times saw a most interesting article. “Sunday an excursion will be run from this city to Cameron, formerly Grassy,” reported the Times. “Pinnacle Park, at Cameron, promises to be a very attractive pleasure resort.” What was Pinnacle Park, readers wondered. It turned out that the Woods had come up with a fabulous idea to draw folks to Cameron. They built a giant amusement park, Pinnacle Park, for the people of the Cripple Creek District to enjoy.

   Spanning thirty acres, Pinnacle Park was built at a cost of $32,500. Matthew Lockwood McBird, son of noted Denver architect Matthew John McBird, and who designed numerous buildings in Victor, was hired to draw plans for the buildings at the new park. McBird was perfect for the job, and was described as “a bit of a visionary, a dreamer and creator.” The fact that he never officially held an architect license in Colorado hardly seemed to slow him down. The man had learned well from his father, and assigned himself to building Pinnacle Park with vigor.

   McBird’s designs gave the buildings at Pinnacle Park hip roofs and angled logs to give the park a rustic look. The place afforded the amenities of any great amusement park: a large wooden dance pavilion with a bandstand, a picnic area, restaurants, carnival games, and an athletic field with seating for up to a thousand spectators. Football and baseball games were the main attraction. Nearby, a zoo exhibited native animals. There was also a playground with assorted popular rides of the day. Entrance to the park was gained via Acacia Avenue, and the Midland Terminal Railroad tracks cut directly through the middle of the park. Visitors came by rail, horseback and carriage, gaining entrance through elaborate wooden arches.

   The first Labor Day celebrated at Pinnacle Park was amazing indeed. Although plans were already in the works for a great festival with a “grand picnic,” the event was turned into a “benefit of the families of Coeur d’Alene miners” who were suffering through violent labor strikes in Idaho. The final plans for Labor Day would feature a baseball game among the Cripple Creek District’s teams. There were a number of other events as well, including greased pole climbing, a “slow burro” race, a sack race, a fifty yard “Fat Man’s” race, a horse race and a dance. Modest entrance fees were charged for everything in the effort to raise money for those in Coeur d’Alene.

   Neither the promoters nor the guests at Pinnacle Park were disappointed. The Labor Day celebration was deemed a great success, from a parade spanning twenty-two blocks which made its way from Cripple Creek, to the games, craft booths, lemonade and cigar stands and entertainment at the park. “The outgoing trains from Cripple Creek to Pinnacle Park were so crowded,” reported the Cripple Creek Morning Times, “that people hung on the sides and scrambled all over the tops of the coaches to get a place to sit.” Furthermore, a “solid stream” of wagons stretched from Tenderfoot Hill above Cripple Creek all the way to Cameron. What a site that must have been!

   In all, over six thousand dollars was raised for the mining families of Coeur d’Alene. Residents of the District came away from Pinnacle Park happy to have had such a day to relax with each other, with no incidents reported amongst the party goers. “It is doubtful if the people of the district ever appreciated before yesterday’s parade what a host of organized working men there are here,” concluded the Times, “or how many different trades and crafts are in the camp.”

   Cameron continued experiencing success. On September 30, an announcement was made that a new “broad gauge” railroad was planned from Colorado Springs to Cameron. The project was led by Irving Howbert and E.W. Gidding of the Cripple Creek District Electric railway, who had hired contractors Clough and Anderson to complete the work. By October, the school at Cameron had fifty two pupils. On December 8 a new post office was established. The name of the office was Touraine, however, “there being a Cameron in another portion of the state,” according to post office officials. The Woods Investment Company closed the year by announcing plans for the Gillett Light & Power Company, which would supply light to both the nearby city of Gillett, and Cameron.

   Interesting is that both the former town of Grassy and the new town of Cameron were listed in the Cripple Creek District directory in 1900. The reason was because the Woods had not yet filed a new plat map for Cameron. The growing population is exhibited by the fact that the Cameron School operated in town proper but a second town, identified as Lower Grassy School appears in the directory as well. Apparently, a portion of old Grassy now functioned as a suburb of Cameron. In Cameron proper, the downtown area offered an exciting array of business houses. The Arcade Saloon and the Cameron Club Saloon and Barber Shop attracted miners, while the more domestic could choose from a number of stores that included Butter’s Store, Home Bakery, Cameron Mercantile Co., G.G. Sweet & Company’s meats and groceries, Williams Dairy, and of course Pinnacle Park.

   As promised, citizens would also benefit from what the Woods called the Golden Crescent Water and Power Company. Within a year, running water would also be furnished to both Cameron and Gillett from Woods Lake. Yet it wasn’t until April 14, 1900 that the new and much improved Cameron was officially platted. C.L. Arzeno and Frank Woods were listed as principle officers on the plat map as Vice President and Secretary, respectively. Unlike nearby Beaver Park, whose naming of “streets” designated it as a blue collar town, Cameron’s roads were called “avenues” and named after local landmarks, including some important mines. The new names included Gillette, Hoosier, Isabella, Touraine, Damon, Pinnacle and Acacia. Just in case rich ore was found beneath the surface of the town, the Woods and Arzeno also wisely retained the mineral rights of all property within the town.

   Labor Day of 1900 appears to have been the record breaker of attendance at Pinnacle Park, when an astounding nine thousand people attended for a day of festivities. Admission was ten cents per head, yielding $900 for the day at the park – nearly $32,000 in today’s money. For a few glorious years, thousands of visitors came to Pinnacle Park every weekend and holiday during the summer. An April, 1900 issue of the Aspen Daily Times also announced that the “continued discovery of gold in the vicinity of Gillett and Cameron confirm the theory so long urged that the Cripple Creek veins extend to an unknown distance to the north.” Mines around Cameron included the Elsmere, Lansing and Wild Horse.

   The Colorado Springs & Cripple Creek District Railroad, a.k.a. “The Short Line”, reached Cameron in March of 1901. A month later, the old post office name of Touraine was finally changed to Cameron. And once again, Pinnacle Park saw record attendance at Labor Day. For a time, it seemed as though Cameron would champion as a leading town in the Cripple Creek District – but that all changed in about 1903, when Cameron’s popularity began fading. The mines around Cameron began playing out and rumors abounded that the Woods boys were in financial trouble. Sales of residential lots at Cameron  came to a stop.

By the time the 1902-03 Cripple Creek District Directory was published, Cameron’s population had shrunk to around 300. The directory now described the town as “small” and located “on the site of the old Grassy settlement”. There was still an Episcopal church, a city hall, Kings Hall and three other clubs, but the business district had dwindled considerably to only a boardinghouse, a grocery, one doctor and the Cameron Crescent.

   The notorious, tumultuous labor wars of 1903-1904 in the Cripple Creek District in took a further toll on Cameron, which was located dangerously close to the center of the mining strikes. The Cameron Crescent went out of business, and in March, several blocks in town were officially vacated. A few months later, just five days into the labor strikes, “Big Bill” Haywood gave a rousing speech to a group of union men at a Pinnacle Park picnic. Haywood urged the miners “to stand with” the Western Federation of Miners until the strike against mine owners was victorious. But owing to the lack of news articles about Cameron during the labor strikes, it would appear that citizens wanted as little to do with the fracas as possible.

Cameron still had about 300 residents in 1905, but notably, neither of the two churches had a pastor and both congregations met at Town Hall. There was still a boardinghouse, general merchandise, grocery, hotel and shoe store, but Cameron was most certainly suffering a slow death. Even though there were a few more businesses in 1907, the population was only 200. The Colorado State Business Directory for 1908 reported the number of residents at one hundred. It would also be the last time Pinnacle Park, now under the management of one Thomas Morris, was listed in any directory. The park closed shortly afterwards. Cameron’s post office closed in August of 1909. A year later, only 50 residents remained in the city proper. By 1912, Cameron appeared as a suburb of Cripple Creek in city directories. Finally, in 1917, Cameron was vacated altogether. Children in the area were able to continued attending the Cameron School until it officially closed in 1921. By that time, only six pupils and their teacher, Miss Mannering, were left.

   The fancy log fence around Pinnacle Park, along with its quaint buildings, was eventually torn down. For years, the logs lay in a heap in the woods just off the former railbed of the Midland Terminal. Brick enclosures built to house bears and wildcats at the Pinnacle Park Zoo were the only remnants left until 2010, when they were dismantled in the wake of mining operations. The materials were stored by the City of Cripple Creek until 2014, when they were reconstructed at the Cripple Creek District Museum. By 2015, what was left of Cameron was quickly being buried under modern mining tailings, and the town is officially no more.

Bandits and Badmen: A History of Crime in the Colorado’s Cripple Creek District

c 2022 by Jan MacKell Collins

The following is excerpted from Lost Ghost Towns of Teller County, Colorado, Cripple Creek District: Last of Colorado’s Gold Booms, the Single Action Shooter’s Society and Brothels, Bordellos & Bad Girls: Prostitution in Colorado 1860-1930.

The last of Colorado’s great gold booms occurred in the Cripple Creek District, high on the backside of Pikes Peak, in 1891. Prior to that, the ranchers populating the area were hardly concerned with crime. The busy bustle of city life had yet to descend on the area. With the discovery of gold, however, the region’s status quickly turned from that of quiet cow camps and homesteads to several rollicking boomtowns within a short distance, each complete with the accompanying evils.

The growth of crime in the newly founded Cripple Creek District grew in proportion to the swelling population as prospectors, merchants, doctors, attorneys and a fair amount of miscreants descended upon the area. Marshal Henry Dana of Colorado Springs once joked that crime was down in his city because the law-breakers had all moved to Cripple Creek. He wasn’t far off. Already, rumors had circulated for some time that the Dalton Gang of Kansas had used the area as an outlaw hideout. As the district grew, the Dalton’s moved on to their fateful end in Coffeyville, Kansas.

But for every outlaw who left the area, there was another one to take his place. Bunco artists, robbers, thieves and scammers soon descended upon the district in great numbers. The Cripple Creek District was still in its infancy and would lack proper law enforcement for some time. Only after Cripple Creek ruffian Charles Hudspeth accidentally killed piano player Reuben Miller while attempting to shoot the bartender at the Ironclad Dance Hall did the city ban guns for a short time. But it was already too late. Cripple Creek’s outlaws were already blazing their own bloody path through history.

By 1894, gangs and undesirables were running rampant throughout the district. “Dynamite Shorty” McLain was one of the first bad guys to make the papers for blowing up the Strong Mine in the district city of Victor during labor strikes. There was a gang hanging around Victor too, headed by the Crumley brothers. Grant, Sherman and Newt Crumley, lately of Pueblo, found the pickings quite ripe and soon fell in with outlaw Bob Taylor and his sister Nell, Mrs. Hailie Miller, Kid Wallace and O.C. Wilder.

Sherman Crumley was especially susceptible to running with would-be robbers. In May of 1895, he and Kid Wallace were arrested after five armed men robbed the newly formed Florence and Cripple Creek Railroad. Apparently a “toady” named Louis Vanneck squealed after receiving less than his share of the loot, which primarily consisted of money taken from passengers. Wallace went to jail, but the popular Crumley was acquitted. Following the incident, the Crumley gang contented themselves with cheating at poker and rolling gamblers in the alleys. Sherman was also a known thief, often stashing his loot in abandoned buildings around smaller communities like Spring Creek just over Mineral Hill from Cripple Creek.

The Crumleys remained in the Cripple Creek District for some time, until Grant shot mining millionaire Sam Strong to death at the Newport Saloon in Cripple Creek in 1902. Grant was not without good reason, for Strong had suddenly pulled a gun on him and accused him of running a crooked roulette wheel. Still, the killing of a man was not a reputation the Crumley’s wished to sustain, and the threesome quickly moved on to Tonopah and Goldfield, Nevada. Grant quickly earned a fine reputation as a man about town, while Newt became quite respectable and even owned the fabulous, four-story Goldfield Hotel for a time. His son, Newt Jr., would become a state senator.

The activities of the Crumleys were actually quite minor compared to those of “General” Jack Smith and his followers at the district town of Altman. Miner, poet and Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph columnist Rufus Porter (aka the “Hard Rock Poet”) once wrote a ballad about the town’s first marshal, Mike McKinnon. The honorable lawman died following a gunfight with six Texans (but not, allegedly, before he killed all six outlaws). Porter may have actually been recalling an incident from May 1895, when outlaw General Jack Smith dueled it out with Marshal Jack Kelley. Smith had been running amuck for some time and had been warned by Kelley to stop trying “to run the town in his usual style.” On May 14, Smith wrapped up a night of drinking by shooting the locks off the Altman jail, thereby freeing two of his buddies, who were already incarcerated for drunkenness.

Smith wisely left town, but the next day, a constable named Lupton and one Frank Vanneck located him in a Victor saloon. “I want you, Jack,” Lupton said, to which Smith replied, “If you want me, then read your warrant.” Lupton began reading the warrant, but Smith appeared to go for his gun. The constable quickly pinned the outlaw’s arms while Vanneck shoved a gun to Smith’s chest. Smith was arrested with a bond of $300. He managed to pay the bond quickly, however, and was next seen riding toward Altman “with the open declaration of doing up the marshal who swore the complaint.” Altman authorities were notified as Lupton and Victor deputy sheriff Benton headed for the town. By then, Smith had already gathered a small force of men, including one named George Popst.

The bunch headed to Gavin and Toohey’s Saloon, where Smith started ordering one drink after another. Outside, Lupton and Benton met up with Marshal Kelley and set out in search of the General. Kelley “had just lifted the latch of Lavine and Touhey’s [sic] saloon, when ‘crack’ went a gun from the inside. The ball struck the latch and glanced off.” Kelley threw the door open and shot Smith just below the heart. From the floor, Smith fired and emptied his own gun as Kelley continued shooting him. Outside, Benton fired a shot through the window that hit Popst. “The latter may recover,” predicted the newspaper, “but Smith is certain to die.” Popst also died, about a week later.

Saloon shootings in the Cripple Creek District occurred with such frequency that sometimes, they were hardly regarded as newsworthy. An 1895 article in the Colorado Springs Gazette reported half-heartedly that Joe Hertz, a.k.a. Tiger Alley Joe, was shot above the Denver Beer Hall in Cripple Creek by Clem Schmidt. Hertz staggered down to the bar exclaiming, “That crazy Dutchman shot me!” A few minutes later, he fell to the floor and died. The Gazette neglected to follow up on the crime or make comment on its effect in Cripple Creek. The year 1896 did not prove much better for the lawmen of the district. General Jack Smith’s widow, a prostitute known as “Hook and Ladder Kate,” masterminded the robbery of a stagecoach outside of Victor. In early April, Coroner Marlowe was contending with the likes of J.S. Schoklin, who dropped his loaded gun in a saloon and subsequently fatally shot himself in the side.

On April 25 and April 29 during 1896, Cripple Creek suffered two devastating Cripple Creek that sent residents into a full blown panic as much of the downtown area and hundreds of homes burned. Folks hurried to rescue what they could in the wake of the flames. Thousands of goods and pieces of furniture were piled high in the streets. It was prime picking for looters and arsonists, the latter whom set even more fires to instill further panic so they could rob and steal. In response, firemen, police and good Samaritans beat, clubbed or shot the law-breakers as a way to restore order.

Petty crimes and robberies continued intermittently for the next few years, and brawls and gunfights were common throughout the district. Crimes increased dramatically when the Cripple Creek District rallied against Colorado Springs to form Teller County in 1899. El Paso County clearly did not want to lose its lucrative tax base from the rich mines of the district. Arguments over the matter turned into all-out screaming matches, fights, and shootings. Thus the newly formed county, with Cripple Creek as the county seat, found itself besieged with lawlessness, free-for-all fights in the saloons along Myers Avenue, and high-grading of gold which was so widespread it was hardly thought illegal.

For several more years, law enforcement continued grappling with the outlaw elements around the district. Incidents making the papers included the death of James Roberts, who was clubbed with a gun and left to die on the floor of the Dawson Club as other patrons urged him to the bar for a drink (a portion of Roberts’ skull, used in testimony against his killer, is on display at the Cripple Creek District Museum). Down in Cripple Creek’s infamous red-light district on Myers Avenue, prostitute Nell Worley was arrested for shooting at a man breaking down her front door. Nell was arrested  because the bullet missed its mark and hit a musician on the way home from the Grand Opera House instead. Luckily he was only injured.

Indeed, Myers Avenue was peppered with illegal gamblers, pick pockets and drunks who felt free to wave and fire their guns at will. The red-light district spanned a full two blocks, offering everything from dance halls to cribs, from brothels above saloons to elite parlor houses. Crimes, suicides, death from disease and frequent scuffles were the norm on Myers Avenue, where anything could happen – and eventually did. Today, Madam Pearl DeVere remains the best-known madam in Cripple Creek, and her fancy parlor house, the Old Homestead, remains one of the most unique museums in the west.

Over in Victor, vice-presidential nominee Theodore Roosevelt visited in 1900. His purpose was to speak to the masses of gold miners about the virtues of switching to silver coinage. Clearly, that wasn’t a great idea, and Roosevelt was attacked by an angry mob of protesters as he disembarked from the train. Cripple Creek postmaster Danny Sullivan is credited with keeping the crowd at bay with a two by four until Roosevelt was back on the train. A year later Roosevelt visited again, this time as Vice President. This time he was treated much kinder, although the apologetic city council of Victor kept him entertained for so long that he barely had time to visit Cripple Creek before departing.

When labor strikes reared their ugly head once again in 1903, citizens of the district found themselves pitted against each other. Union and non-union miners fought against one another. Neighbors stopped speaking to each other. Down in the schoolyards, even children fought on the playground over a debate they actually knew little about. Soon, miners were being jailed and/or deported from the district, and one time the entire staff of the Victor Record newspaper was arrested for publishing an unpopular editorial. Things reached a head when professional assassin Harry Orchard set off a bomb at the Vindicator Mine and blew up the train depot at the district town of Independence.

Now, corruption politics reared its ugly head. During a heated election debate in the district town of Goldfield, deputy sheriff James Warford was hired to oversee the elections. According to Warford, Goldfield constables Isaac Leibo and Chris Miller were shot in self defense when they refused to “move on.” An examination of the bodies, however, revealed both were shot from behind. Eight years later, long after the strikes had been settled, Warford was found beaten and shot to death on nearby Battle Mountain. His murder was never solved.

Within a few years, the Cripple Creek District’s gold would soon become too expensive to mine, and folks slowly began moving away. The sharks and scheisters moved on too, in search of fresh pigeons to pluck. It would be many more decades before legalized gambling would find its way to Cripple Creek, bringing a whole new, modern generation of eager residents, as well as the accompanying crimes.

For history buffs, there are still some mysteries remaining in the district yet. In Mt. Pisgah Cemetery at Cripple Creek, a wooden grave marker was once documented as reading, “He called Bill Smith a Liar.” Urban legend has it that after gambling was legalized, renovations of Johnny Nolon’s original casino in Cripple Creek revealed, a body in a strange shaft under the building. During the excavation of an outhouse pit at the ghost town of Mound City during the 1990s, remains of a perhaps quickly discarded revolver were found. These and other mysterious remnants still surface now and then, to remind us of the many other crimes the lively Cripple Creek District once witnessed.

Image: James Roberts’ skull remains on display at the Cripple Creek District Museum. Courtesty Jan MacKell Collins.

The Legends Behind the Face on the Barroom Floor

c 2019 by Jan MacKell Collins

Portions of this article originally appeared in the Colorado Gambler magazine.

“Say, boys, if you give me just another whiskey, I’ll be glad

And I’ll draw right here a picture of the face that drove me mad.

Give me that piece of chalk with which you mark the baseball score –

You shall see the lovely Madeline upon the barroom floor.”

The above poem by Hugh Antoine D’Arcy has been the subject of barroom stories for decades. It’s an intriguing tale, yet the truth behind it is one of the little-known tales of western folklore. The mysterious and alluring faces of various women began adorning tavern floors across the nation roughly a century ago. Each had their own story to tell, and Colorado is no exception to the ongoing folklore.

At one time, there were as many as eight portraits known to be painted on barroom floors across America. Each seemed to have been inspired largely D’Arcy’s poem, “The Face Upon the Floor.” The verse tells of love lost by a lonely artist. One day, the woman of his affections spots a portrait the artist is painting of another man. Ultimately, the artist loses his girl to his subject, takes to drink, and tells his sad tale in exchange for whiskey. The artist then renders a stunning likeness of his lost love on the tavern floor, only to fall dead upon the finished portrait.

Little is known about Hugh Antoine D’Arcy. He was born in France in 1843, and it is thought he composed his famous poem in about 1898. “The Face Upon the Floor” appears to be his most outstanding accomplishment, and he lived to see it put into both movie and song. The poem was first immortalized in 1914, when Charlie Chaplin adapted it for a film called The Face on the Bar Room Floor.

Most people believe that the famous face on the floor at Central City’s Teller House was the first, and only, portrait of a woman’s face to be painted on a wooden floor. But the first portrait to appear in Colorado history was actually recorded on the kitchen floor of a private residence in Cripple Creek. The picture is thought to have been painted in the teens or 1920’s, in a house once owned by saloon keeper Herman Metz. Charles Walker purchased the residence in 1906, who in turn hired Harry B. Denny to paint the house in 1910. Denny left his signature and identified himself as the house painter on a basement door. Did he paint the portrait? Certain old-timers of Cripple Creek say no, that Denny painted houses and nothing more. The true artist will likely never be known.

As the face on the floor at Cripple Creek was subsequently forgotten, D’Arcy was experiencing a second success from his poem. It came in the form of a movie by renowned director John Ford, who in 1923 made his own version of D’Arcy‘s poem, The Face on the Bar-Room Floor.

 D’Arcy passed away in 1925, but his poem lived on. In 1936, the poem’s fame was sealed by Herndon Davis, formerly an artist for the Denver Post. One of the stories goes that Davis was a carpenter at the Teller House in Central City. His employer was Anne Evans, daughter of former Colorado Governor John Evans. A falling out between the two resulted in Davis‘ termination. Before leaving, however, Davis painted a ladies’ portrait on the floor. The act allegedly infuriated Anne Evans, but not enough to inspire her to remove it. In fact, the identity behind the mysterious face became legend until Davis died in the 1960’s. Just before his death, Davis revealed that the face was none other than his wife, Edna.

The success of the Teller House face was not lost on the rest of Colorado. In about 1953, another face appeared at the Western Hotel in Ouray. Built in 1890, the Western offered hotel rooms until it closed in 1945. The bar and dining room were kept open, however. When the Western was purchased by a Mr. Shady, according to Ouray native Ed Gregory, the new owner decided that another face might boost tourism. Shady commissioned Ed‘s mother, Ruth Gregory, to paint the portrait.

Like the faces in Cripple Creek and Central City, Mrs. Gregory‘s portrait reveals an intriguing face with mischievous eyes and a bobbed hairstyle. The painting also appears “two-faced,” with the left side resembling a profile. The fuss over the faces in Ouray and Central City continued to grow. Antoine D’Arcy’s poem received more coverage from Franklyn MacCormack, beloved radio announcer at Chicago’s WGN. A recording exists today of MacCormack reading the poem to his listeners.

One last rendering of a face on the floor appeared in the early 1960’s, again in Cripple Creek. This last face was at what was once the Cottage Inn at 261 East Bennett. When owner Jack Schwab passed away in 1961, his ex-wife Evelyn took possession of The Cottage and commissioned none other than Dick Johnson, founder of the Cripple Creek District Museum, to paint a female face on the floor. Like Herndon Davis, Johnson preferred not to be identified as the artist until after his death in February 2004, and this is the first time he has officially been named as the man who painted the face. Today, Cripple Creek’s “Madeline” is preserved at the Cripple Creek District Museum.

In 1978, writer Henry Mollicone penned an opera version of D’Arcy’s poem. The Central City Opera Company swooped upon the play, presenting it with great success. The company performs near the Teller House, where Edna Davis’s portrait can still be seen on the floor in the barroom.  Most recently, the story of Madeline gained fame once more in 1997, when the late Teller County musician, T.O. Locker, produced his own music video, The Face on the Barroom Floor. Several Colorado locations were used in filming the video, including Cripple Creek and the Western Hotel. The video won several first place prizes through the Colorado Springs Film Commission and the Professional Film and Video Guild of Colorado.

Perhaps what is most intriguing about the mysterious faces on the floors of Colorado is their failure to become commercialized. In each case, D’Arcy’s story has been treated with utmost respect. In the end, the poignancy behind the story rings truer than any other tale one could tell. Indeed, it is the last stanza of D’Arcy’s poem that carries on the romance behind the obscure faces painted in his memory:

“Another drink, and with chalk in hand the vagabond begTo sketch a face that well might buy the soul of any man.

Then, as he placed another lock upon the shapely head,

With a fearful shriek, he leaped and fell across the picture—dead.”

Image: Today, the face on the floor at Central City’s Teller House remains as the best known painting by Herndon Davis.

Lost Ghost Towns of Teller County (Colorado), Introduction

c 2018 by Jan MacKell Collins

This is an excerpt from Lost Ghost Towns of Teller County (History Press, 2016)

Introduction

   The great gold rushes which helped settle the West are ingrained in American history as some of the most exciting times our country would ever see. Beginning in 1848, the California gold rush set off a most spectacular run of booms and busts as more and more pioneers headed west. Other states—namely Oregon, Arizona, Idaho, Montana and the Dakotas—would follow suit as gold was discovered within their territories. Colorado also was a big contender, beginning with the Pikes Peak Gold Rush of 1859.

   Colorado’s initial rush was so-named because prospectors heading to the region used Pikes Peak, elevation 14,114′, as a landmark. The peak, which towers above Colorado Springs on one side and Teller County on the other, was named for explorer Zebulon Pike. As the so—called Pikes Peak Gold Rush unfolded throughout the 1860’s an ancient trail, used by local Ute Indians, wound up through a pass at the base of the peak.

   Eventually dubbed Ute Pass, this trail became known as one of the quickest ways for easterners wishing to access the western slope of Colorado. A few rest stops popped up over time, mostly ranches but one or two mail stops and supply outlets too. By the time El Paso County was formed as one of Colorado’s original counties in 1861, Ute Pass became known as the gateway from Colorado City (a supply town west of today’s Colorado Springs) to the western goldfields.

   Pioneers and early surveyors making their way up Ute Pass found some homesteads already settled by squatters. Legal homesteaders were allowed to settle on 160-acre tracts of land starting in 1873. Those who claimed land in the open, high-altitude parks at the top of Ute Pass primarily used it for ranching, but increased traffic also created a need for supplies, lodging and postal routes.

   Gold discoveries at the world—famous Cripple Creek District in 1891 altered the sleepy ranches and high plains on the back side of Pikes Peak dramatically. An extinct volcano, so large it actually imploded in on itself rather than erupting, had long ago created a most unique field of rich minerals that had melted, flowed into the cracks and crevices caused by the explosion, and hardened over time. Ranchers within this “caldera” included the Womacks, whose son Bob was sure there was gold in the area.

   When young Womack was finally able to convince everyone of the rich gold deposits, prospectors by the thousands flocked to the new boom as more towns were established both within and outside of the Cripple Creek District. The Cripple Creek District directory of 1894 perhaps described it best:

“Over the quiet hills and vales there came a change. Where once no sound was heard save the halloo of the herdsman, clatter of hoofs and horns and jingle of spur bells, there came the crushing, rending roar of dynamite, tearing the rocks asunder, the curnching and grinding and rattling of wheels, the shouting of mule drivers and feighters, with sounds of saw and axe and hammer. A town grew up like magic, prospectors thronged the hills,—and there was solitude no more.”

  Largely due to the gold boom, a series of other mining districts, camps, towns and cities sprang up throughout the western portion of El Paso County. Some of these places never evolved further than being small camps where miners lived and worked. Others were founded as whistlestops with the coming of the railroads. Still more bloomed into thriving metropolises which in time rivaled bigger cities in Colorado and beyond. A few were settled with high hopes of becoming large cities, only to fold within a few years or even months. Some towns never even made it off the ground.

   City directories for the Cripple Creek District began publishing in 1893, but due to the transient and ever—moving population, it was a limited effort at best. “The first edition of the Cripple Creek Directory is now placed in circulation,” announced the editors of the first directory, but added that “In the compilation of this book the publishers have been careful to exclude the names of non-residents. The general makeup of a new town is such as to make the work very difficult; however, we will say that neither labor nor expenses has been spared to make this directory complete and accurate, and we believe it will prove reliable.”

   The people who flocked to these places were an amazing bunch. Not only did they consist of prospectors and miners, but also builders, laborers, lawyers, merchants, doctors and dentists, teachers, stock brokers, laundresses, bartenders, prostitutes and many others. The population of the area swelled and shrunk accordingly as those who couldn’t gain good work or prosperity moved on. For every person who left the district, however, another one took their place.

   In 1899, after a long hard fight with El Paso County, city officials in Cripple Creek successfully formed Teller County. The new county was carefully carved from parts of El Paso, as well as the other surrounding counties of Park and Fremont. Teller County measures a mere 559 square miles, but within its boundaries dozens of camps, towns and cities were formed during the 1890’s and early 1900’s.

   The Teller County of the turn of the twenty-first century was rife with historic events, including two labor wars and a heated long—time battle against illegal gambling. Get-rich-quick schemes, insurance frauds, historic fires, murders and more have made for a most interesting history. More than a few honorable figures, including Colorado Governor Ralph Carr and a slew of celebrities also called Teller County home. For a time, the Cripple Creek District made Teller County known to folks worldwide.

   Because the giant caldera forming the Cripple Creek District is comprised of long-hardened minerals settled in fissures and cracks, hard-rock mining was primarily employed in Teller County. Placer mining, wherein a fellow with a pan scooped up river sand and shook out the gold, was far less common. Thus in time, digging, blasting and processing ore in the Cripple Creek District became harder and more expensive. Gold miners fell under the impression there was little more gold to be had that was worth digging for, and people began moving away from the Cripple Creek District. Subsequently, the rest of Teller County downsized as well.

   In an attempt to lessen the perils created by the Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Gold Reserve Act in 1934. Doing so raised the price of gold to $35 per ounce. Although there were still some working mines in the county, even these dwindled away in time. Times were changing; railroads were shutting down, wagon roads were falling out of use, historic ranches were changing hands and many of the towns established on behalf of the gold boom were being abandoned.

   By the 1950’s, not much was going on in Teller County, at least to the observant eye. As the towns and camps faded away, surviving places such as Woodland Park, Cripple Creek and Victor turned to tourism as a new industry. Museums were established as residents of Teller County looked for ways to draw visitors to the area. The cap on the price of gold was finally repealed in 1971 by President Richard Nixon. The repeal came about as new techniques to extract hard-rock gold were being employed.

   A renewed interest in mining, combined with increased tourism, kept Teller County alive. Of particular interest to many tourists was exploring the old ghost towns left behind. While the Cripple Creek District remained a key destination to see such places, others slowly faded away. A few were incorporated as part of local ranches or were subsequently purchased by private interests.

   It is only within the last twenty five years or so that many more ghost towns have fallen in the wake of modern mining operations and in the name of progress. Even so, history buffs, local residents and others who hold Teller County near and dear to their hearts have worked tirelessly to support the history of these places. While many of the towns may be gone, each place still has lots of stories to tell. 

Cousin Helen, Kate Horine, Buffalo Bill and the Weird Stuff-O-Meter

c 2015 by Jan MacKell Collins

This is a story whose end should really be the beginning, and the beginning ends with Kate Horine.

Kate L. Horine’s name was neatly painted on an old traveling trunk that my boyfriend happened across at the dump, near our home in Colorado. An elderly man had the trunk. It was full of leaves and dead branches, and from all appearances the man was set on throwing the trunk out along with the foliage. My companion intervened. Since you aren’t allowed to bargain at the dump for other people’s garbage, they secretly agreed—out of hearing range of the garbage police—to meet up down the road. There, my companion paid the old man a few bucks for the antique trunk and the two went their separate ways.

As all old trunks are, this one is really cool. It was manufactured by Meek Trunk & Bag Co. in Denver. Throughout its life, it has suffered various dings and scratches along random journeys. Gone are one of its leather handles, the storage tray and most of its paper lining. Indeed, the trunk was certainly well used, but still quite sturdy and full of character. On the inside of the lid, someone scrawled a cryptic note in pencil long ago: “3/4 sheets buffalo bill June 11 Boone Co.” There were no other clues, so the trunk nobody wanted was subsequently brought to my home, put in storage, and semi-forgotten about.

Over the next few years or so, I wondered from time to time about that trunk and the woman’s name painted on it so long ago. I meant on several occasions to do some research on her, but never managed to do so. Time gradually filled up my storage space with boxes, old furniture, gardening tools and other items, and the trunk got shoved to the back of the room.

After six years or so, I was finally cleaning out the storage area and unearthed Kate’s trunk (as well as five newborn kittens who just celebrated their 11th birthdays—but that’s another story). This time I made good on my mental note to try and find out who Kate L. Horine was. I found out some interesting things: she was born Kate Loomis in Indiana in about 1868. By 1910 she had married to a man named Horine, been widowed, and had moved to Boone, Missouri, where she lived through at least 1920. Also in 1920, she had a 17-year old daughter, Mary K., living with her.

By 1930, Mary K. had moved to Clovis, New Mexico. As for Kate, there was surprising twist: it turns out she had a brother and a sister, with whom she was living in Fairplay, Colorado—just a little over an hour away from where her trunk had surfaced. I yearned to know more about this woman.

Quite by coincidence, my research coincided with news about my boss’ cousin, Helen Johnson. Cousin Helen, as she is affectionately known, had just recently received the coveted “Hospitality Team Member of the Month” award from the casino she where worked in up in Black Hawk. Helen also lived in Fairplay, in a house built in 1872 by her great-great grandfather. In nearby Alma were Helen’s cousin and my boss at the time, Erik Swanson. Erik and Helen’s family came to the Fairplay Mining District in the 1870’s. It was Erik who pointed out that Helen received the award. It was also Erik whom I thought might know of Kate L. Horine, so I asked him if he knew anything about her.

He certainly did. It turns out that Kate Horine was Cousin Helen’s grandmother.

When we figured this out, the Weird Stuff-O-Meter (which measures all things strange and wonderful that have no plausible explanation) went into the red. According to both Helen and Erik, they used to play with Kate’s many trunks in the attic of Helen’s house as children. The trunks contained clothing from the Victorian era that Helen surmises belonged to her great grandmother. It even survived a fire in the 1930’s. Helen and Erik held very fond memories of their playtime in the attic.

Even more amazing was the revelation that the Cripple Creek District Museum, where Erik and I worked at the time, had a copy of a painting rendered by Kate. It is a portrait of a donkey and was a favorite artifact among visitors. “You know, she did some beautiful paintings of columbines,” Helen recalled. “She did some wonderful stuff, not only of flowers but some great scenery. She did some characters, too. She was really a very talented artist.”

So, how did Kate’s trunk get away? “My mother did a major renovation in 1952,” remembered Helen, “and there were things in the attic she had that disappeared. So it might have been taken then. But my sister Emily might have taken it, and she lived in the city where the trunk was found for years, so that may be how it ended up there.”

How the trunk bounced from Emily to an elderly stranger at the dump, however, remains a mystery, as does the odd message about Buffalo Bill scrawled on the lid. The best guess is that Kate scribbled his name and a date she might have seen his Wild West Show while living in Missouri.

Once its history was revealed, there was no question the old trunk needed to be returned to its happy family. My companion was glad to trade it to Erik for another trunk he had, one with no family attachment. I think he said he was going to sneak Kate’s trunk into Cousin Helen’s livingroom with a big bow on it. However he did it, Helen now has her grandma’s trunk safe in her care once again. And at the very least, Kate Horine’s trunk is living proof that inanimate objects can indeed talk.

Parts of this article first appeared in the Colorado Gambler magazine in 2004.