The Colorado Gold Rush
From Wikipedia.org
The Colorado Gold Rush was the boom in the prospecting and mining of gold in present-day Colorado in the United States that began in 1859 (when the land was still in the Kansas Territory) and lasted throughout the early 1860s. It is still considered to be the largest gold rush in American history, and an intricate part of the history of the country in general. The gold rush, which followed approximately a decade after the California Gold Rush, was accompanied by a dramatic influx of emigrants into the region of the Rocky Mountains and exemplied by the phrase "Pikes Peak or Bust", a reference to the mountain in the Front Range that guided many early prospectors to the region westward over the Great Plains. The prospectors provided the first major white population in the region, leading to the creation of many early towns in the region, including Denver and Boulder, as well as many other smaller mining towns, some of which have survived (such as Idaho Springs and Central City) but many of which have become ghost towns. The first decade of the boom was largely concentrated along the South Platte River at the base of the mountains, the canyon of Clear Creek in the mountains west of Golden, and South Park. As prospectors flooded the region in search of quick riches, the rapid population growth led to the creation of the Colorado Territory in 1861 and to the U.S. state of Colorado in 1876. The easy-to-reach gold deposits were largely played out by 1863 until another major strike was made in 1891 in the Cripple Creek area.
Hard rock and placer mining followed exhaustion of the easy-to-reach surface deposits in all those areas and the region continues to produce gold ore and many other minerals up to the present day, although gold has been a minor part of the picture for decades. The railroad lines built to haul gold from the mountains were a major part in creating the economic base of the region in the following decades, especially as Colorado experienced a companion mining boom in 1879 with the Colorado Silver Boom.
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