During the winter of 1869 - 1870 William Martin and George Lytle survived the wind and snowdrifts to become the first residents of Caribou Camp west of Nederland, Colorado, at an elevation of 10,505 feet above sea level, to protect their discovery of two unbelievably rich silver veins that would become the Great Caribou Silver Lode.
The first prospectors who entered western Boulder County in 1859 called the region the Grand Island mining district and the first gold mining claims were filed in 1861. These early prospectors were on the lookout for gold, not silver ore. Sometime in 1864, Samuel Conger (who many years later discovered the Nederland Tungsten District) was hunting for deer near Arapahoe Peak and wandered across some interesting looking rocks (legend has it the rocks were shown to him by the ghost of a beautiful Arapaho Native American Princess). At this time, he did not recognize the rocks were rich silver ore, but he picked up some of the strange-looking rocks and packed them down the mountain to have a look at later.
In 1869, after seeing rich silver ore from the famous Comstock Lode in Virginia City, Nevada, that had “accidentally” fallen off a train in Fort Sanders, Wyoming, Conger noticed that the rocks he had collected on his lonely hunting trip were very similar. He decided to show his rock samples to two experienced Gilpin County miners, William Martin and George Lytle. William Martin had worked in the silver mines of the Comstock Lode and he instantly recognized the rocks contained valuable silver ore. Conger, Martin and Lytle then made a grubstake agreement with local ranchers, Hugh McCammon, John Pickle, Samuel and Harvey Mishler to find the source of Conger’s silver rich rock samples.
As soon as the snow melted in the spring of 1869, William Martin and George Lytle followed pieces of silver bearing rock in the creek and later on the ground all the way to the outcropping (blossom rock) crevices that contained the silver ore rocks at the top of a hill. On August 31, 1869, on the north side of this hill they discovered the weathered outcroppings of two silver veins. William Martin named one of the veins, the Carriboo vein, and considering his current financial condition, George Lytle named the other vein, the Poor Man vein. George Lytle decided to name the new camp Caribou, after the famous Caribou mining district in British Columbia. He may have chosen the name because above timberline, Caribou resembles the tundra of the Arctic Circle.
They spent the next few weeks digging pits on both of the crevices, and stockpiling the silver bearing ore rocks. During the fall of 1869 there was no trail up the mountain, and supplies had to be carried mostly by hand over huge snow drifts and downed trees. On the last day of summer, they managed to pack out some rock specimens to Professor Nathanial Hill’s smelter in Black Hawk for assay to verify the value of the ore. The results were encouraging enough for Martin and Lytle to build a cabin in the heavily wooded meadow just below their discovery, next to a small creek and a couple of springs, before the winter of 1869 - 1870 moved in. They commenced clearing enough timber for a wagon road to be built along the south side of Caribou (now Coon Trail) creek to Middle Boulder (Nederland), and managed to send a larger test shipment by wagon to the mill in Black Hawk before the snow flew. They spent the rest of the winter stockpiling what ore rocks they could find on the surface into high- and low-grade piles for later milling.
Martin, Lytle and the other partners must have felt that the Caribou vein was the biggest vein in the district, because sometime during that winter they convinced Samuel Conger to trade his interest in the Caribou vein to them for full interest in the Poor Man vein and $500. This assumption turned out to be correct, as the Caribou vein turned out to be, by far, the most productive vein in the district.
They wanted to keep the discovery secret, so they did not file the “Carriboo” lode claim in the Boulder County Courthouse until December 23, 1869, and they waited until March 26, 1870 to file the Poor Man claim. Despite their efforts, word of the discovery had gotten out, and by June of 1870 a stampede began for the new mining district. Soon, three to four hundred prospectors had arrived in the same meadow as the cabin. They camped under trees, pitched tents and built brush houses. This camp became the site of the town of Caribou, and by November 1870 it had about 30 houses and 125 voters. The wooded meadow would never be the same, and Caribou would reach a maximum population of 540 later in the decade.
In the fall of 1870, Abel D. Breed, a wealthy capitalist from Cincinnati, purchased the western half of the Caribou lode for $50,000. Breed, and D. B. Cutter decided to locate their state-of-the-art reduction mill (with 15 stamps, and five floors) close to the abundant timber and water in Middle Boulder (Nederland), away from the weather at Caribou. This decision was contrary to the typical practices of the time where the mill was typically built adjacent to the mine. Their choice allowed the Caribou Mill in Nederland to become the largest and most successful silver mill in the Colorado Territory by 1872. In 1872, the Caribou Consolidated Mill in Nederland could mill 20 tons of Caribou ore every 24 hours.
The richest veins in the Caribou district, including the Caribou and Poor Man veins, trend roughly eastwest. Sub-vertical chimneys of rich ore occur where the east-west trending veins intersect northeast-southwest trending cross-veins. The largest ore-shoot in the district occurs where the northeast-southwest trending No Name vein crosses the Caribou vein. The No Name vein is mostly barren on the surface, but at depth where it joins the Caribou vein, it thickens dramatically to form a chimney shaped ore shoot along the intersection of the two veins. At 300 feet deep, the main Caribou ore-shoot leaves the Caribou vein and follows the No-Name vein to a depth of 1010 feet. Significantly smaller ore-shoots occur where adjacent east-west trending veins such as the Poor-Man, Native Silver and Seven Thirty veins are cut by the No Name vein, but all of these ore-shoots appear to peter out at depths of less than 300 feet.
In the early days, hand sorted high-grade shipments were very rich and assayed from 235 to 666 ounces of silver to the ton, primarily because surface weathering processes had concentrated the richest silver ore above the water table in the upper few hundred feet of the mines. As soon as 1872, the miners had figured out that these extremely high silver grades rarely extended below depths of 100-300 feet below the surface.
The Caribou Mill in Nederland produced the 30 bricks of silver (each bar weighed 70 lbs.) that paved the front of the Teller House in Central City for the visit of Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. The silver bars poured in Nederland varied in value from $15,000 to $27,000 (725 to 1306 ounces) each.
Helped by the international publicity generated by the U. S. Grant visit, Abel Breed was able to sell the Caribou mines and mill in the spring of 1873, to “The Mining Company Nederland” from Holland for $3,000,000 (although the actual cash payment was less than one half of that sum, Breed walked away with $1,000,000). It was said that there was a “large quantity of good ore” left in the mine when the agents from Holland examined it before the sale. But by the time the mine was turned over, it was later found that Breed had stripped the mine of most of the richest ore after the examination, but before the property was turned over. Between seventy to ninety men were employed at the mine and even though it had some of its most productive years in 1874 ($130,000) and 1875 ($204,703), conflict, contentions, mismanagement, and debts had reduced production to $25,000 by 1876. The mine closed in November of 1876.
The Caribou mine was sold at tax sale in October of 1876, to Jerome B. Chaffee for $70,100. At this point the mine was 470 feet deep. The mill in Nederland was started up again in February, 1878 with ten stamps and three roasting cylinders. The mines of Caribou had a very productive year in 1879 even though in September 1879 a forest fire destroyed the great building over the main Caribou shaft, together with costly hoisting and pumping machinery, and a portion of the town. The mine produced until 1883 and then again from 1891-1893, but it never reopened again after the silver panic of 1893 squashed all hope of reviving Caribou.
Three fires nearly destroyed Caribou, in 1879, 1899, and 1905. After the third fire, a local newspaper commented “Fire mercifully ended the prolonged agony of abandonment,” but the town hung on until the Caribou Post Office finally closed for good in 1917. Gold mining from 1932 to 1959 produced about 10,000 ounces of gold.
The Great Caribou Silver Lode, west of Nederland, was not the first silver camp discovered in the Colorado Territory, but for more than a decade, it was the queen of Colorado’s silver camps. From 1869- 1880, the mine produced $1,168,000 worth of silver, lead and gold.
References
Bastin, E.S., and Hill, J.M., 1917, Economic geology of Gilpin County and adjacent parts of Clear Creek and Boulder Counties, Colorado: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 94.
Fossett, F., 1876, Colorado, Its Gold and Silver Mines, Farms and Stock Ranges and Health and
Pleasure Resorts: 1st ed., Crawford, N.Y.
Hollister, O.J., 1867, The Mines of Colorado, Samuel Bowles and Co., Springfield Mass., 45 p.
Lovering, T.S., and Goddard, E.N., 1950, Geology and ore deposits of Front Range, Colorado: aU.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 223, 319p.
