In the July 11th edition of Estes Park News, I described how my fascination with ghost towns at an early age eventually led to an adult obsession and the creation of the Best Documentary Award-winning film, Ghosts of the West: The End of the Bonanza Trail. For true “ghost town junkie” status to take hold, however, I had to see more than one set of collapsing buildings after another when traveling to isolated locations. There had to be stories—of gold strikes, lost mines, and adventures beyond the vanished frontier.
In tales of discovery, it seemed that prospectors stumbled upon rich diggings by sheer accident so often that their skill set should have been called into serious question. Silver Cliff, Colorado, for example, allegedly owed its prosperity to a man fumbling around an old prospect hole. Losing his footing, he fell forward, but quick thinking led him to stop his fall with a pickaxe. After dislodging it, he noticed bits of galena, an important ore of lead and silver. The prospector then dug seven feet into solid galena ore.
The origin story for Buckskin Joe, Colorado, located in South Park, involves a man hunting for game. One version says he hit his target and, while following the blood trail, discovered a rich outcrop of gold. Another puts the hunt in wintertime (and sometimes with a bear as the prey), but he slipped on ice, and his shot went wild. The bullet grazed the side of a hill, revealing a rich gold deposit…