After gold was discovered in a high mountain valley southwest of Pikes Peak in 1890, thousands of fortune-seekers flocked to the overnight boomtown of Cripple Creek, along with satellite settlements like Victor and Goldfield.
This story is part ofColorado at 150. Each Fifty for 150 story focuses on an event that helped define Colorado over 150 years of statehood. Newsline is publishing one Fifty for 150 story every weekday in reverse chronological order until the sesquicentennial, Aug. 1, when the final of 50 stories, about the declaration of statehood, will appear.
It was the last major gold rush in Colorado history, and within a few short years it was minting newly made millionaires like Winfield Scott Stratton, a lowly “grubstaker” whose 1891 claim on the Independence mine proved to be one of the Centennial State’s richest gold strikes ever…