Article Contributed on: 4/27/2009 9:12:35 PM
This year Coloradans celebrate the great discoveries of gold in the mountains which led to the gold rush of people who permanently settled what is now the Centennial State. Earlier on January 7th folks at Idaho Springs celebrated the 150th anniversary of the first major discovery there, and on May 6th folks in Gilpin County will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the second pivotal discovery there. Both of their discoverers lived in today's Jefferson County at the time and it's well for Jeffco people to take part in these anniversaries, including the upcoming celebration of 150 years of Colorado's Gold Rush at the Governor's Residence (8th and Pennsylvania) on May 2nd (11am-2pm). However, Jeffco has a golden anniversary of its own happening right now, obscured by time but worth sharing nevertheless: the 175th anniversary of the discovery of gold in Jefferson County.
When early gold seekers arrived around here in 1858, they found gold at the placer sandbar on the northern shores of Clear Creek just east of North Table Mountain. Being a promising find, they claimed it and established Jefferson County's first town, Arapahoe City, there, and elected
Marshall Cook town company president. However, according to Cook, gold was not the only thing they found there:
...we immediately proceeded take claims boath on Arapahoe bar and also along the creek, we found upon measurment and stakeing that the bar had been staked on some previous occasions but by who or when no record was left only that of the three to five boulders that marked the corners, being nearly half buryed in the earth denoting that many years had elapsed since being placed in their respective position marking the meets and bound of former prospectine as well as our future wealth. the above mentoned boulders were about the size of a mans fist and larger was placed on the bank of the bar at regular intervals of one hundred feet apart lenial mesurment, by the side of the ancient landmarks we placed our stakes with the no of the claim marked there upon it.
Arapahoe was thus laid out according to the plan of the mysterious markers. It was not long before the mystery behind them was solved, however, and Cook knew who placed them there. In the 1880s he would credit the markers' source among "Events that led indirectly to the discovery of gold in Colorado":
Before the Pike's Peak Gold Rush of 1859, and before even the California Gold Rush of 1849, a group of 25 men known as the Estes Party made their way into this region. Seeking gold, this party was made up of miners, trappers, and hunters, including Georgia miners
Joel Estes, Peter Estes, William Poe, John Sollars and
Joseph Gladden. They arrived in the area early in 1834, when our river was known as Vasquez Fork or Vasquez River after the fur trader
Louis Vasquez who had recently established a trading fort at the river's mouth. Cook wrote of the Estes Party:
...as soon as the snow went off in the next spring of 1834. The party resumed their researches, the prospected along the eastern base of the mountains to head of the platte not finding any paying prospects until they reached Vasques fork of the platte where just below the two table mountains that the stream flowed between on the bank of the creek that is now known as Arapahoe bar. here they staked the bar into one hundred feet front measurment running across the width of the Bar. the old corner I found in the winter of 1858 marked with from three to five boulders at regular intervals of one hundred feet apart and corresponded with the measurement made by Arapahoe town company that relocated the same bar in the winter of 58 & 59. The Estes party mined in and along the creek banks until the water raized from the melting of snow they tried the bar which did not pay with the georgia rocker. From here the party work their way north along the base of the mountains...
Poe had crossed the plains with Cook, along with a son of Sollars, who likely told Cook of the origin of the mysterious markers and of the Estes Party those years before. After that party left, the place remained, forgotten and untouched, until the next arrival of gold seekers there. In 1858 Cook, in charge of the Doniphan party of gold seekers, arrived in this area with his group, found "float gold" (a fine scaly flat kind) along Ralston Creek, and then found the golden placer bar with its mystery monuments. Miners formally organized a mining district there, and on November 29, 1858 a town company was organized, with the town being christened Arapahoe City. The town's founding treasurer was
Thomas L. Golden, another miner from Georgia, who soon took on prospecting partner
George A. Jackson, who arrived at Arapahoe in late December. In January 1859
John H. Gregory arrived at Arapahoe City. Jackson and Gregory sensed there was gold in the mountains from which the deposits at Arapahoe and elsewhere must have washed down from. Their efforts paid off when Jackson made his discovery on January 7th, and Gregory his on May 6th, confirming the faith of the miners and putting the gold rush into full boom, leading to the creation of what is now Colorado. Joel Estes himself returned to the area with the gold rush 150 years ago this year, bringing his family and becoming the first settler in the park that bears his name.
Gold has certainly been found and mined in Jefferson County in the 175 years since the Estes Party first encountered it. It was found at the future Golden townsite by traveler
Rufus B. Sage in the spring of 1844; by prospector
Lewis Ralston on the creek which soon bore his name on June 22, 1850; by cattle herder
Parks on Ralston Creek in 1852; and by prospector
Cantrell on Ralston Creek in summer 1858 before the Doniphan Party arrived. The Russell Party, after unsuccessfully following up on the Ralston discovery in 1858, made the region's first major gold discovery in the future Denver area which set off the gold rush. After the gold rush gold continued to be mined in Jeffco including at Arapahoe Bar (ultimately with two of the earliest gold dredges in 1904-07), Clear Creek Canyon, Lookout Mountain, Critchell, Creswell, Deer Creek, Cottonwood, and West Creek. Gold panning is still going strong on Clear Creek after 175 years.