GOLD UNDER PIKE’S PEAK
his brother Marius, in Auvergne, and was vexed that so much of it was taken up with inquiries about the gold rush to Colorado, of which he had never heard, while Marius gave him but little news of the war in Italy, which seemed relatively near and much more important.
That congested heaping up of the Rocky Mountain chain about Pike’s Peak was a blank space on the continent at this time. Even the fur trappers, coming down from Wyoming to Taos with their pelts, avoided that humped granite backbone. Only a few years before, Frémont had tried to penetrate the Colorado Rockies, and his party had come half-starved into Taos at last, having eaten most of their horses. But within twelve months everything had changed. Wandering prospectors had found large deposits of gold near Cripple Creek, and the mountains that were solitary a year ago were now full of people. Wagon trains were streaming westward across the prairies from the Missouri River.
The Bishop of Leavenworth wrote Father Latour that he himself had just returned from a visit to Cripple Creek. He had found the slopes under Pike’s Peak dotted with camps, the gorges black with placer miners; thousands of people were living in tents and shacks, Cherry Creek was full of saloons and gambling-rooms; and among all the wanderers and wastrels were many honest men, hundreds of good
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