Introduction:
The following article, prepared at the request of The MINES Magazine for inclusion in its Golden Anniversary Issue, should not be considered a technical writing in any sense. The writer has drawn freely from various publications, reports, oral statements and personal knowledge of the District during the past 34 years, for the information given. Some statements may vary in detail from statements written by various writers, but in general will conform to the true historical facts concerning the District.
The Cripple Creek-Victor District is located approximately 40 miles west and little south of Colorado Springs on the southwest side of Pikes Peak. The altitude varies from 9,200-10,750 Feet above sea level and enjoys a rather mild climate for that altitude. The highway is paved from Colorado Springs to Victor through Cripple Creek via U.S. Highway Number 24 to divide, thence over paved State Highway Number 67 to Cripple Creek and Victor. The operation of the mines is seldom interrupted by severe winter weather. Fair to good roads, maintained by Teller County Highway Department, serve all of the mines.
Early History:
The area now known as Cripple Creek-Victor District in Colorado first attracted the attention of prospectors in 1874. It was reported that H. T. Wood has found gold ore near Mount Pisgah, which is located approximately two miles west and slightly north of the present Cripple Creek town site. A small amount of prospecting followed in 1878 and a renewal of activity occurred in Mount Pisgah area in 1884, but this last appeared to have been fraudulent. Bob Womack probably has been credited with having played the greatest part in the discovery of gold in the District, as he had lived in the area between 1880 and 1900. Womack had prospected and mined in Gilpin County so it was only natural for him to do a lot of prospecting, concentrating his work in Poverty Gulch. Significant discoveries were made in 1891 and in early 1892 the real "Gold Rush" was started to the District, even though the new discovery in Cripple Creek was viewed with considerable skepticism since several false finds had proven of no value.
However, the development of the District during the period from 1892 to 1905 was almost fantastic. October 1892 saw some 17 mines shipping ore by wagon train to the Pueblo Smelter in Pueblo, Co., and within a year -- autumn of 1893 – the list of producing mines had doubled. It was during this period that such prominent early day miners such as Stratton, Burns, Doyle, Strong, Frisbee and De la Verne and many others started production from mines which to name a few, Portland, Stratton’s Independence, the Strong, Granite (now known as Ajax), Mary McKinney, Elkton, Blue Bird, Moose, Morning Glory, Victor and many others.
The following tabulation shows the rapid increase in gold production during the first few years of the Districts productive years:
The production from the district amounted to $200,000 in 1891, but increased to $2 Million for 1893, reaching a peak of $19 Million for the year 1899. During the next six years, the production dropped to a low of $13 million in 1903, and then rose to $15.7 million in 1905. Production for this period from 1891 to 1905 inclusive totaled $162.8 million dollars in gold at $ 20.67 per ounce. A total of $11,570,077.43 was paid in dividends during the period form 1893 to 1899 inclusive.
Transportation:
The Midland Terminal Railroad connecting the District with Colorado Springs, by way of Divide was completed December 1895, and placed in operation July 2, 1894. The Colorado Springs and Cripple Creek District Railroad was completed into the District in 1901. These transportation facilities resulted in several mill being built and operated in Colorado Springs (Colorado City) and Florence. Mills were also built in the District and at Gillett, which was located just north of Cripple Creek. At about the same time treatment of District ores at Pueblo Smelter rapidly declined.
Geology:
The early geological surveys of the District concluded, "The pre-Cambrian crystalline complex which forms a general plateau of the region was perforated by a volcanic explosion." Others stated that the mineralized area—a rudely elliptical area approximately 5 miles long by 3 miles wide—occupied the crater of an extinct volcano.
This volcanic theory of its formation prevailed until A. H. Kuschmann of the U. S Geological Survey, made a study of the District in 1934 and 1935 and disclosed evidence that this theory was erroneous. His new and now well substantiated and accepted theory is stated in a paper, " New Light on the Geology of the Cripple Creek District," given at Colorado Mining Association annual meeting in Denver, Colo., Jan. 25 1941.
Quoting from this as follows, explains his theory: "(1) The main mass of "breccias" occupies a pit or basin which owes its origin to subsidence along vertical or steeply-dipping faults and is not a product of a violent volcanic eruption; (2) As the basin intermittently subsided, it was gradually filled first with non-volcanic sediment and later with a thick accumulation of volcanic breccia; (3) The basin was a locus of intense igneous activity. However, volcanic vents or necks from which phonolitic agglomerate could have been violently ejected have not been found and it therefore seems likely that fissure eruptions accounted for the volcanic material which was subsequently eroded and redistributed by running water."
Production:
The District’s recovered production of gold from 1891 to 1959, inclusive, has amounted to approximately $ 422,000,000 plus approximately $14,000,000 in silver values or a total value of approximately $436,000,000. The value of the gold produced prior to 1934 was based on gold at $20.67 per ounce, which if based on present price of $ 35.00 per ounce would add approximately $259,000,000 to above figure, thus bringing total value to $695,000,000.
As stated previously this is the approximate recovered value of the production so if one wanted to estimate the actual production, the items of mill tailings loss, unreported production including loss by "high-grading" or theft – should be added which would bring this figure to well over $750,000,000.00
So it is seen that the District described so vividly and interestingly in the books "Midas of the Rockies" and "Money Mountain," has had a relatively long and eventful and prosperous period of production, making quite a number of multi-millionaires, some of whom were able to maintain their "millionaire status" while a number of others lost their millions in a relatively shot time.
Metallurgy:
The history of milling of the Cripple Creek ores really is a history of the advancements made in the metallurgical processes for treating sulpho-telluride ores. The gold in this ore is very finely disseminated in and associated with the iron sulfide, usually pyrite, or as in the tellurides, sylvanite and/or calverite. There is very little free gold in the ore except in the oxidized ores from near the surface, which accounts for the poor recovery by the first mills built in the District. For this reason Cripple Creek ores are considered refractory to the metallurgical processes normally used to recover gold, however, the evolutionary processes developed over the past 60 years have not only benefited the Cripple Creek mills, but gold treatment plants the world over. Recoveries increased from 50 percent or lower in some of the first mills to present recovery of plus 95 percent.
The first methods tried for recovering the gold from District ores was by methods used in the stamp mills in Gilipin County which proved very inadequate since the gold is too intimately associated with the pyrite and at the grind obtained in stamp mills only a small amount of the minerals was liberated and also since very little free gold occurs in this ore. Next, various types of concentrating tables and blankets were added, but still the recovery was extremely low. As the depth of mining increased what little free gold, there had been in the "near surface" oxidized in the sulfides and tellurides. This condition increased the difficulty in obtaining a satisfactory recovery of the gold values. At this period smelters seemed to be the best solution to the metallurgical problem so the ore was shipped to Pueblo and Denver.
The chlorination process was the next method tried in 1893, and in 1859 a well-designed mill using this process was started in the small town of Gillett just north of and east of the District. This was followed by the cyanidation process, employed in the Metallic Extraction Mill, which was built near Florence, Colo., approximately 33 miles south of the District. These two processes competed for supremacy for some time, resulting in the chlorination process becoming the dominant one for a period.
In 1904 there were three reduction plants in the District, (1) The Economic Mill (roasting followed by barrel chlorination); (2) Homestake Mill (direct cyanide) and (3) Sioux Falls Mill (direct cyanide); in Florence, two mills, Dorcas Mill (roasting followed by cyanide) and the U.S. Reduction and Refining Co., (roasting followed by chlorination). This combined process continued to treat most of the ores from the deeper mining for some time, although at the same time several small mills operated in the district on the oxidized ores, employing a straight cyanidation process.
However, as better roasters were developed and better roasting techniques discovered, the trend was towards roasting followed by a coarse grinding, blanketing, sand-slime separation followed by leaching of the sands in cyanide solution and agitation of slimes either mechanically or with air agitation, and recovery of the gold from cyanide solution by use of zinc shavings in boxes which method was later replaced by zinc dust precipitation presses.
There were numerous modifications of this general process, such as the amalgamation of the blanked concentrates. This was possible since the roasting broke down the sulfides and tellurides by eliminating the sulphur and tellurium thereby leaving the gold as metallic gold—even though finely disseminated in the iron oxide particle—thus making the gold amenable to either amalgamation and/or cyanidation processes.
The then relatively new flotation process was also tried in a few of the newer mills with varying degrees of success. All mills except the Golden Cycle Mill in Colorado Springs discontinued operation, either for lack of ore or finances or because later processes make them obsolete to the point could no pay completive process for the ores.
The Golden Cycle Mill operated continuously from 1908 to March, 1949 when it was dismantled and the usable equipment, machinery, and material was moved to a site on the Cripple Creek-Victor highway where the Carlton Mill is the last of a large number of for the processing of District ores. It has been estimated that not less that 50 and possibly nearly 100 mills, large and small, have been built to treat the District ore.
THE MINES MAGAZINE * OCTOBER 1960
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