The Coolidge examiner., 1935-12-06
BY ELMO SCOTT WATSON

BY ELMO SCOTT WATSON
rMONG the entries to be written down
~ in Americas Book of Time for the
4 year 1885 undoubtedly will be this
one: "A new gold rush in the West.
" n For the higher price Of gold and sill
M l yer, established by governmental de-
IN n cree during the past year, has revived
MYS9 an almost PROSTATE industry, has
0 caused hustle of excited activity in
many mining camp and has brought
to life more than one "ghost town" whose de-
serted cabins and graSs-grOwn streets were pitt
full reminders of the glories that had once been
theirs in the bonanza days.
Especially has this been true of the state of
Colorado through the tapestry of whose history
runs many a golden and silver thread. Lead
vile, Idaho Springs, Breckenridge, Fairplay,
Alma, Cripple Creek, Victor, Ouray, Silverton.
Creede cts day all day in the daytime and
there is no night in Creede0 and Aspen-once
more those are glamorous names.
Last March the name of Leadville appeared
in virtually every newspaper in the United
States. For out of that town came the news that
a poverty-stricken old woman had frozen to
death in a tumble-down shack on the side of a
hill in Leadville. Her name was Elizabeth Doe
Tabor and the busy world paused for moment
to remember that she had been the famous and
beautiful Baby Doe" Tabor that President
of the United States had been a wedding guest
when she was married to II. A. w. Tabor a
Colorado bonanza king And it remembered, too
that when the great Tabor fortune had slipped
through their fingers, she had gone back to
Leadville, there to spend her last poverty
stricken years guarding the Matchless mine
which had been the source of most of their
wealth and from which she never ceased believ-
ing that wealth would come again.
To the list of those mining camps whose fame
has been revived recently there should be added
another. 1t is Central City
"Little Kingdom capital of the Little King
of GiIDin" dom of Gilpin" and in
many respects the greatest
of all the Colorado gold camps. At one time
Central City was not only 1.-The widest, toughest
and happiest mining camp in Colorado" but it
was also one of the very richest. AS such 1t
helped save the federal Union by pouring its
gold into the United States treasury when the
successful prosecution of the Civil war was at
stake. But despite these facts and the fact that
Central City is sharing with the other gold camps
I'm a renewed prosperity, revival of interest in
its name and fame is not due to any such ma
terial reason. The reason is cultural! For Cen
trail City has an opera house and thereby hangs
one of the most romantic tales in the history of
the American theater.
First of all, consider some of the back
ground" history of Central City, In 1858 pros
pectors in what was then Jefferson territory
washed from the sands of Cherry creek some
shining particles of metal. Others found some
of the same precious stuff in the Pixies Peak
region IS miles south The word was carried
back East to a people still suffering from the
panic of 1857. Immediately the great Pixies
Peak gold rush Within a year more
than $4,000 fortune seekers had stampeded
across the plains to this Ell Dorado.
But most of them were doomed to disappoint-
ment, for the amount of free gold which could be
panned out of the
A Stampede to streams of the noun
"Gregory's Diggins" tain country was rel
atively small. Most
of it was still locked up In a matrix of quartz
On May 6, 1859, settler named John H. Greg
ory discovered evidences of gold quartz in a
guch some 60 miles north and west of Denver
The Rocky Mountain News Of Denver published
It's first extra to herald the news of the strike
and stampede for "Gregory's Diggins" began
Soon the hills and valleys of that region were
covered with the tents and crude Shacks OF the
gold-seekers. The boom towns of Black Hawk
and Nevadaville came into existence and since
"Gregory's Dggins' was midway between them
Nathaniel Albertson, John ArmOus and Harrison
G. Otis, who plated the town site to include the
original gold camp gave it the name of Central
City.
Calling this mushroom camp a city was paying
X a rare compliment indeed, for it was pitched
on a rocky hillside with of its streets run
ming almost perpendicular from the gulch where
Gregory made his discovery. In fact there used
to be a saying in Central City that if "a man fell
off his front steps, he'd roll for days." However
the camp grew both in population and in i'm
portance and when the county of Gilpin was
organized and named for Thomas Gilpin, first
territorial governor of Colorado Central City
became the county seat.
While the rush to "GregOry's Diggins' was on
a certain ]. S. Langrishe, an eastern theatrical
producer remembered the success of LOtta, Adal
Menken and Lola MOntez during the California
gold rush 10 years earlier. He decided that there
was golden opportunity for him in the new
diggings and started west But he didn't reach
Denver until the fall of 1860 when it was toe
late penetrate the snow-lOcked valleys Of the
Little Kingdom of Gilpin." SO he opened ir
Denver DO O'Callaghan in His Last Legs fol
lowed by a farce, Mature and Philosophy" IL
which his wife was starred.
After a successful season of six months II