Weekly journal-miner., 1915-12-29


 son would visit the camp on Christ mas Day.
 The camp of Creede was at that time entering upon the era of mining prosperity and general cussedness which little later stamped it as be- ing the toughest mining camp estab- lished in the Rockies since the stam' pede to Leadville.
 Founded late in the Fall of 1890, the camp was little heard of for a nun Der of months. When the Winter 1 broke, however, and the campbirds and bluejays returned to the nearby timbered slopes for their Summers s bickerings, Creedc experienced rush of prospectors and adventurers of divers sorts such as has not since ] been equaled The human hotsam swept across the greening bottom. lands of the San Juan in an ever swelling flood, and converging into a single stream along Major Wasson's toll-road, poured through its gateway I like water through a millrace. Fol lowing the trail by the creek where the pussy willows ficked their fuzzy tails in the sunlight, the tide of hu' manity surged onward to merge with tine maelstrom that seethed along San Luis street.-the main thoroughfare of the camp. The mining news writ CTS were among tine first to go ramp ing in there, and following their ad- vent the country at large awoke to the fact that new mining camp was born and was being christened in a manner deemed fitting to so moment ous birth.
 Isolated and thrown upon its own resources for amusement, Creede yet managed to find within its confines sufficient iniquity to slave off state of innocuous desuetude.
 The Holy Moses, Amethyst, Last Chance and other of the newly-dis' covered mines quickly developed into infant prodigies and cnoked with ore the yawning maws of the stamp mills along West Willow creek. Thou sands of dollars worth of silver and gold were reclaimed, moulded into pigs and ingots of bullion and shipped under guard to the mint at Denver.
 The mining prosperity quickened the wild life of the camp into vcrit able saturnalia of rccklcssness. Gun. nlCn were as promiscuous as shippers in cheese, and to that negligible quan- tity, the respectable element of the camp, quite as distasteful. There was an utter disregard for the value oi human fife and as a result men died with their "boots on" with a frcquen cv suggestive of all epidemic. Short card men and grafters of every de scription reapcd a golden harvest from the unwary. Saloons, bawdy houses, dance halls and gambling houses Aourishcd like fungus i'll this ccsspool of iniquity and spewed thciI spawn of vice on the clean mountain air like a pestilence.
 The camp was "policcd" by city marshal named St. John whose can onized cognomen was his single saint ly asset. "Soapy" Smith and Par son" Bowers, gamblers; and Bob tI'ord, slayer of Jesse James, the outlaw, were Creede's prominent" citizens. Cy Warman, then the editor of the Crccde Chronicle, and HOW a we'll known writer for the magazines, facetlously dubbed the Smith Bowers Ford trio the "Unholy Trinity" Foro took offcnsc and shot at Warman for this, and the incident may have inspired the lattcr's suggestion to me some months afterward, as we stood beside the dead body of Ford, that Bob, was good fellow-now."
 "Soapy's" folks started him out in life captioned Jefferson Davis Smith," but former generation of Dcnverites, after witnessing the dcx- tcrity with which he wrapped a twcn' ty-dollar bill around a cake of soap 1 and sold the package for dollar, never failing to first surrcptitiously ! remove the twenty, tagged him with ! the sapanaceous pseudonym by which 1 he ever afterwards was known.
 Bowers given name was William. His earliest bid for. fame was as a conchologist with onc-ring circus, which is tantamount to saying that he the three shells and the small pea. Discovering that clerical dress and address were business as sets, he adopted both; hence the nick name, "Parson."
 Smith and Bowers were joint pro rrictors of the Denver Club, a gamb' ling house and saloon of conspicuous and adornmcnt. Ford owned and operated The Leadvile," as wild and woolly dance hall as ever Haunted q siIk-Stockinrpd fem.