Susan Anderson, The First Female Doctor of Cripple Creek

Dr. Susan Anderson with two visitors at her cabin in Fraser. The man on the left may be her father, William.

Portions of this article have appeared in the Colorado Gambler Magazine and Cripple Creek District: Last of Colorado’s Gold Booms by Jan MacKell

c 2015 by Jan MacKell Collins

Professional careers did not come easy to women of the 19th century. If she did not become a housewife, a woman’s choice of vocation ranged from cleaning woman to cook, from laundress to waitress. The few women who were provided a college education could aspire to the position of a clerk or nurse. For most, however, professional positions were out of reach. Dr. H. Susan Anderson, M.D., was a true exception to this rule.

Susan Anderson was born in 1870 in Indiana. When her parents divorced in 1875, Susan’s father William took custody of Susan and her younger brother John. By the early 1880’s, the family had moved to a farm near Wichita Kansas. Living on a farm proved beneficial for Susan’s later career as a physician. She learned to “doctor” the animals around the homestead. Susan’s early knowledge of animal medicine, combined with her father’s encouragement to pursue a career in the medical field, seemed to set her future in stone. But little did Susan realize her determination to become a physician would be challenged in several ways.

In 1890, William Anderson remarried a woman named Minnie who appears to have been jealous of her new stepchildren. Far from being prepared for a ready-made family, Minnie already had two children, and conceived at least two more by William. In her eyes, only her natural children counted as family. Minnie ignored and mistreated Susan and her brother John at every turn, letting them know they were not wanted. This abuse continued through the sibling’s graduation from Wichita High School in 1890.

Two years later the family moved to Barry, later known as Anaconda, in the Cripple Creek District of Colorado. The family first resided in a modest home south of the schoolhouse and William pursued mining interests. It was decided that Susan and John should attend college, serving two purposes: further education would broaden the teens’ minds while getting them out of Minnie’s way.

When Susan left to study medicine at the University of Michigan in 1893, Cripple Creek had eight physicians. By the following year, the figure had doubled. Susan planned to open shop in Cripple Creek upon graduation. But despite her good grades and aspirations, Susan received shattering news midway through her studies. Her father, influenced by the undermining Minnie, was cutting off financial support.

Undaunted, Susan borrowed money from a classmate to continue her studies. John also began working his way through school. With the relationship with her father at a standstill, Susan decided to find her mother. Marya Pile Anderson had remarried, but her heart had been forever broken by William’s sudden departure with the children some years before. During the reunion with her mother, Susan learned her powerful father had divorced Marya quite abruptly, with little explanation. Susan vowed to remain in touch with Marya the rest of her life.

Susan’s father was furious when he heard the news, insisting that Susan cut ties with Marya. The young woman refused. When she graduated from medical school in 1897, none of her family attended. To complicate matters further, Susan also had contracted tuberculosis during her internship. Still, she remained optimistic. A letter to her brother John reveals, “One of my instructors will be twelve miles from Cripple Creek this summer and I expect to see him sometimes perhaps.”

Following graduation Susan returned to Cripple Creek, where she lived with her grandparents. Her relationship with her father was still strained. John was in California, and Susan’s friends were few. She set up shop in Suite #3 of the Bi-metallic Block at the corner of 2nd Street and Bennett Avenue. By then, fifty-five other physicians and ten dentists were also calling Cripple Creek home.

Being the only female physician in town must have been difficult. Her biography notes Dr. Anderson was concerned about the prostitutes working one block south on Myers Avenue. Many were infested with drug and alcohol related illnesses, venereal disease and infections from back-alley abortions. Because of her unusual status as a female doctor, it can be assumed that Susan’s premier clientele consisted of many Myers Avenue residents. Naturally the pay was poor, and she received no financial support from her father. In a letter to John, she wrote “. . . it makes me feel hard and bitter and sour when I have to go in old shabby clothes and scrimp and save and board off Grandma and Grandpa . . . ” Meanwhile, Minnie and “her” children used William’s money freely.

Over the next three years, Susan worked at building her business. Finally, one case established Susan’s reputation as a trustworthy physician in Cripple Creek. A local boy had accidentally blown up some dynamite, breaking several bones. An attending surgeon wanted to amputate his arm, but Dr. Anderson insisted on thoroughly cleaning and dressing the wound first. The boys’ arm was saved, and more people began coming to Dr. Anderson. Within two years she had repaid her college loans.

The year 1900 looked very promising. John had returned to Anaconda, where he worked as a miner at the famed Mary McKinney Mine close to town. Susan was residing next to her office at the Bi-metallic Block. Plans were under way for her to marry an unknown companion identified only as “W.R.” in her diary. Indeed, the future looked quite rosy.

Then, in a mysterious turn of events, William and W.R. had a falling out and Susan was left at the altar. On March 12, she sadly notes in her diary, “Pictures returned by W.R.…” In her misery, Susan hardly noticed the condition of her brother. John had been living at Bolton House, a boarding house located across the valley from his father on Anaconda’s Main Street. Just before Susan’s prospective wedding, John had returned from a trip to California and caught the deadly influenza virus.

By the time William and Minnie notified Susan of the severity of John’s illness, he was delirious with pneumonia. On March 16, just a few days after the devastating end of her pending marriage, Susan’s brother died at the tender age of 27. Susan’s diary reads, “John buried today. He is gone from sight but is not far away…Life seems so useless and vain. No one now cares much whether I live or die. John was my best friend on earth and now my best friend is in heaven.” Susan is the only surviving family member noted in John’s newspaper obituary.

William Anderson, no doubt feeling guilty over his eldest son’s death, moved with Minnie and their children to California. Before departing, he issued a final callous command to Susan, forbidding her to stay in Cripple Creek. But Susan had already resolved to leave, traveling around Denver and working as a nurse in Greeley for seven years. She eventually moved to Fraser, located in Grand County, where she earned the nickname Doc Susie.

Doc Susie stayed in Grand County from 1909 to 1956. There, she gained her rightful reputation as a qualified medical doctor. Friends, associates and clients all came to love her. Although her father visited her over the years, Minnie’s absence is refreshingly noticeable in photographs marking the occasion. Perhaps William finally came to his senses and returned to the child he had come to mistreat in years past.

Dr. Susan Anderson died in Denver in 1960. She wanted to be buried next to her beloved brother John in Mt. Pisgah Cemetery, but the original family plot could not be located and Susan was buried elsewhere. Years later, the family plot was found. It is a grey marble pillar with the inscriptions of John, their grandfather, and a cousin on three of its four sides. Upon its discovery, Susan’s inscription was finally added. Dr. H. Susan Anderson, M.D., has two distinctions in Cripple Creek: She was the city’s first female physician, and she is the only resident of Mt. Pisgah Cemetery with two headstones.

Cripple Creek District: Last of Colorado’s Gold Booms: Introduction

The following excerpt is from the book Cripple Creek District: Last of Colorado’s Gold Booms (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2003), available on Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com and arcadiapublishing.com.

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Who would have thought that a cow pasture could yield millions of dollars in gold and spawn a city so large it rivaled Denver for the state capitol? Bob Womack did, and it is his determination we have to thank for the historic Cripple Creek District we see today.

Upon arriving during the 1870’s, Robert M. Womack’s family established a cattle ranch near what is today Cripple Creek. Wandering the hills daily, Bob’s prior prospecting experience led to his discovery of gold. Womack’s dream of a booming gold camp was finally realized in 1891.

By 1893, the city of Cripple Creek was in a constant state of progress with new construction, new stage roads and a growing population. Telephones, telegraph lines and even electricity had been installed, making Cripple Creek one of the first cities in the nation to have such modern amenities.
Within three years, Cripple Creek’s population had grown to 10,000 residents. Several more camps, towns and cities were springing up in the District. Passengers on the newly constructed Midland Terminal Railroad rolled into a typical frontier town at both Cripple Creek and Victor. Both towns were filled with wooden false-front buildings containing banks, mercantiles, saloons, churches, opera houses, schools, boarding houses, restaurants, mining and real estate offices, hardware and furniture stores, laundries, news stands, drugstores, bakeries, brothels and assay offices. Every imaginable business prospered in the District, and the wise investor stood little chance of losing money.

Fire, an ever imposing threat on boom towns across the country, was inevitable in the Cripple Creek District. Of Cripple Creek’s three early fires, two stand out as crucial turning points in the city’s development. During a four day period in April of 1896, two separate conflagrations nearly destroyed the town. In the aftermath of the first fire, over 3,600 people lost their homes and businesses as 15 acres went up in smoke. During the second blaze, all but two buildings on Bennett Avenue burned, as well as a good portion of the residential District. Thousands more were homeless and seeking shelter in makeshift tents and neighboring towns.

What could have been the demise of any other town was a mixed blessing for Cripple Creek. Within four years a bigger, better city rose from the ashes. The town rebuilt in solid brick and the city lost its rough and shabby frontier town look. A random stroll down any avenue revealed a city bustling with business. Here, one could purchase fine china at the May Co. or the best meal in the state at the National Hotel. A number of saloons, gambling halls, dance halls and parlor houses fairly seethed with life.

The District’s second largest city, Victor, also suffered a fire in August of 1899. In its wake, residents of Cripple Creek and other nearby towns came to the rescue. This time, Frank and Harry Woods hired a variety of builders, including Denver architect Matthew Lockwood McBird. Within just a few months, Victor also rebuilt into a fine working class city. By 1900, investors from around the world were flocking to the Cripple Creek District as mines produced more millions than anyone had imagined.

By the turn of the last century, the Cripple Creek District had become a household word not only across America, but all over the world. Everyone knew where Cripple Creek was, and many yearned to seek their fortunes there. Among those celebrities hailing from the District were boxer Jack Dempsey, travel writer and radio personality Lowell Thomas, Colorado Governor Ralph Carr, and nightclub queen Texas Guinan. Famous visitors to the District included Theodore Roosevelt, Groucho Marx, Lily Langtree, and a number of musicians and movie stars.

Two labor wars occurred in the Cripple Creek District. The first, in 1893, settled in favor of the miners. The second labor war was much more violent. Riots and gunfights broke out as striking miners were deported by train to the state borders. There were deaths, injuries and inhumane acts. At one point, a Gatling gun was temporarily installed in the middle of Bennett Avenue in Cripple Creek as a deterrent to violence. By the time the strikes were settled statewide in about 1907, the mines were thought to be playing out and people began leaving the District in search of greener pastures.

Thankfully, some of the pioneer families who called the District home for decades chose to stay, living in what was left of the District even as it decayed under their feet. Through both World War I and II, the cities and towns continued to shrink as buildings were dismantled for use in reconstruction or firewood. Others simply sank into the ground under the weight of winter snows and age. As a result, only three towns exist today: Cripple Creek, Victor and the District’s third largest city, Goldfield. Each are roughly about 1/5 of their original size. Roughly four ghost towns remain visible to the naked eye, with several others either completely gone or buried forever under mine tailings.

Beginning in the late 1940’s and continuing into the 1980’s, the District evolved into a quaint tourist destination. Then in about 1989, Cripple Creek and other towns like it began considering legalized gambling to save their historic integrity. A century after its birth, Cripple Creek’s rebirth came in the form of limited stakes gaming. Alongside the gaming came the Cripple Creek & Victor Mine, which is currently the largest open pit mine in the state.

Today, fifteen casinos line Bennett Avenue in Cripple Creek, and the city is ten years into its second boom in 100 years. The city of Victor is surviving as a non-gaming tourist attraction with a healthy residential population, while Goldfield has melded into a quiet bedroom community with no commercial businesses. Live music, street festivals and a series of other events take place regularly within the District. Many of them, such as Donkey Derby Days and Gold Rush Days, are traditions dating back as long as 70 years; others are new events spawned out of the need for tourism. True to its heritage, the Cripple Creek District continues to be a wonderful year-round destination for residents and visitors of all ages.