High Moral Standards
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High Moral Standards
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GOLD HILL IS WHERE YOU FIND IT ________________________________________________ STEP INTO THE PAST ________________________________________________ Book 4 © Walter Family Stories Goudge Family Stories ________________________________________________________ CD $25 each + $5 S&H Check or Money Order This is one of 12 books about the first gold mine town in Colorado and the people who have lived there. Gold was discovered in 1859 by a group of prospectors. It was first found in a creek in Denver. A group of men followed the creek up to the town of Boulder where they camped. Then it was on up the creeks to the Gold Hill area. History----------------------------------- ONE BOOK I'VE RUN ACROSS SAYS THERE WERE ONLY TWO. I COULDN'T QUITE BELIEVE THIS IN ALL THE YEARS OF MINING. "That's not right." (PEARL) "My father was working with a man, what mine was that, Tim? The Seven Thirty? No, it was out in the vicinity of the Yeagers property."(TIM) "Down over the hill almost to Long Gulch, right straight down from Yeagers." (PEARL) "They had come up to eat their lunch. They were the only two that were working there, and they had to crawl up and down the ladder. My father went down first, and he waited and waited for Archie to come down and he didn't come and finally Dad looked up and he saw the light-- the candle up there and discovered it wasn't moving and he went up... am I telling this right, Tim?" (TIM) "Well, he hollered up and got no answer, so then he went up. Archie had his arms hooked through the rungs of the ladder and was just hanging there unconscious. A rock had come down and hit him on the head. He'd stuck both his arms through the rungs of the ladder." (PEARL) "Dad got a rope and tied him to the ladder and then he came to town for help. I'm not sure, I don't know whether Archie was dead when..." (TIM) "No, he lived a few days. But he roped him to the ladder then he run for help. That's one. They had one down here in the Hoosier. They killed one miner and blinded another. That was old Sam Balooka, was blinded from drilling into a missed hole. So there was two. Fred Meyer fell in the Cash shaft house where the boys are working now. He's the one that owned this house. It was over on main street then, then they moved it here. It was on the lot across from the school house. When Fred fell in the shaft, he fell from the 400 ft. level into the 700 ft. level. He was killed. Then down at the Ingram, there were three boys killed at the one time. They were drilling, and drilled into a missed hole. No, they were loading and something happened; they never could tell exactly what. Whether a fuse ran out on them when they were blasting, or they had a bad cap, or just what happened, but there were three of them killed at that one time in the Ingram. That's in Salina. There was another one killed at Ward. Mrs. Kimways son. Lets see..." ANY OF THESE MINES UP HERE, THE COLD SPRING OR RED CLOUD, DID THEY HAVE ANY? (PEARL) "Weren't there some drowned in the Red Cloud? They holed through, and the water came through the wall of the tunnel or something, I thought it was the Red Cloud." (TIM) "More recently, they lost some scaffolding at the Slide. Mr. Bernerd, who lived in Paxton's house, across the way here. He was just a fine young fellow that was working over at the Slide, and his house was not... he hadn't quite completed it yet. He was killed when a slab fell in on him. There was three or four of them killed at the Slide. Champion was killed. A slab fell on his back. Killed him. And then that boy that was crippled when Bill was crippled-- his brother, Bracy. There's been a lot of accidents. That I know of, there's been not less than fifteen and perhaps more."
DOWN AT THE CALIFORNIA IN SUNSHINE, DIDN'T SOME BOYS GET KILLED BY BLACK DAMP? " Two boys got black damp. One of them went down the hole. The other was coming with him, but the one started down ahead. He just dropped off the ladder and disappeared. The other went to see what had happened to him and he did the same thing."WHAT IS BLACK DAMP? "It's a poisonous gas. They had an awful lot of it in coal mines. Very, very little of it in quartz mines. It's a lack of oxygen. It's a terrible thing. It's just that quick." WAS THERE ANY INDIAN ACTIVITY AROUND GOLD HILL? "Oh yes, sure." HOW NEAR WERE THEIR CAMPS? "There were camps all around here. I could take you to them, or Bud could take you to them." WERE THOSE INDIANS CAMPED THERE IN YOUR DAY? "No." IN YOUR FATHERS DAY? "No. But I knew a miner that helped run them out of the country. He taught us in Sunday School. Old Dad Hitchings." WHAT YEAR WAS THAT? "Well, it was before I was born in 1892. There's an old trail they called the Black Hawk Trail. It was a trail from Wallstreet that went up towards Sugarloaf, on the east side of Sugarloaf. They ran the Indians in this whole country up that Black Hawk Trail and back over the Continental Divide. And they never came back. That's what this old man told me. That was before my time, I couldn't say when." WERE THERE MINERS HERE THEN? "Oh yes." DID THEY HAVE MUCH TROUBLE WITH THEM? "Not a whole lot. But they did get to where they were troublesome, that's the reason they took some action." WHAT KIND WERE THEY? "Utes. That's what they were. There were Utes and Arapaho here. Chief Left Hand was Arapaho." (PEARL) "I think Bud and Russ McLellen must have found most of the arrows that the Indians shot. They'd spend days and days hunting them." (TIM) "I hunted arrowheads, and generations before me hunted arrowheads. That was a big pastime for us. And another pastime for us in the summertime was getting wood. Everybody had his little old wood wagons, and trails around the mountains. Another pastime, which was funny, was rag horses. They would take a rope and tie a knot in it. A chunk of that about so long, or longer, anything they could get. The brighter the color, of course, the nicer the horse was. They'd just take one of them in each hand and run around these hills playing teamster. (PEARL) "That was a lot of fun." (TIM) "It sure was. And then we all had our steam boilers. Of course, our power in this country was steam in those days. And these old Log Cabin syrup cans, you know, the Log Cabin type? They were prize cans. You'd fill those with water, then take empty cartridges, in them days it was .45's .60's. 70's .90's was great big shells. We'd have those for whistles. Put them on a piece of wire and put them over the little steam catch that was put on those cans. Every once in a while those things would blow up. Fred Thompson, he got his whole face scalded. He was scarred all his life from one of them cans. But any old can that had a screw cap on it. It could be flat or it could be a Log Cabin type, but mostly syrup. They were prized cans. |
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