page_title: Gold mining in Colorado
section_title: South Park districts
hierarchical_section_title: Gold mining in Colorado / South Park districts
caption_attribution_description: English: Gold dredge east of Fairplay, Colorado, USA
context_page_description: Gold mining in Colorado, a state of the United States, has been an industry since 1858. It also played a key role in the establishment of the state of Colorado.
  Explorer Zebulon Pike heard a report of gold in South Park, present-day Park County, Colorado, in 1807.
  Gold discoveries in Colorado began around Denver; prospectors traced the placer gold to its source in the mountains west of Denver, then followed the Colorado Mineral Belt in a southwest direction across the state to its terminus in the San Juan Mountains. The Cripple Creek district, far from the mineral belt, was one of the last gold districts to be discovered and is still in production.
context_section_description: Prospectors discovered rich placer deposits on the west side of South Park in 1859.  The deposits were in valleys on the east side of the Mosquito Range.  The principal districts were the Alma-Fairplay district on the headwaters of the South Platte River, and the Tarryall district along Tarryall Creek northwest of Como, Colorado.  Important lode gold deposits were later discovered above Alma.  A floating dredge worked the floor of the South Park valley east of Fairplay from 1941 to 1952, leaving the distinctive gravel ridges that can still be seen.  Production from the Tarryall district was 67,000 troy ounces (2.1 t), almost all from placers.  The Alma-Fairplay district produced 1,550,000 troy ounces (48 t), more than two-thirds of which came from lode deposits.
caption: South Platte Dredging Co., Dredge No. 1 or the Fairplay Dredge.  This bucketline gold dredge operated from 1941 until 1951.  Capable of excavating 15,000 cubic yards of gravel per day, it produced 9,000 ounces of gold in its first year of operation, and a total of 120,000 ounces before dismantlement.[2]:110,112
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