THE DRIVE IN
The road was rough, sure, but I never expected for my battery to stop working.
The road was narrow, sure, but I never expected to have only a few inches of it between by tire and a mountain gulch.
The road was high, sure, but I never expected it would end where trees do not have the oxygen to grow.
Life felt strange as we drove north from Silverton, Colorado beside the Animas River, right past all of the signs recommending we turn round. We were not treasure hunters, by most every definition, but more like treasure hunter-hunters. That is, we were looking for the leftovers of gold booms and busts in the San Juan Mountains. Finding abandoned mines up there is the easy part. The hard part was finding ways up the mountains, around the snow-blocked roads, and into areas where, for more than a century, curiosity trumped safety.
As the sun waned over the range I put the cameras away, ate a simple meal, and slept on the edge of a place I would find out was called Treasure Mountain. It was not until I was back at sea level that I began to unravel the stories that I had unwittingly documented…
Part I: THE OPENING OF THE SAN JUANS
The story of Treasure Mountain begins with the Great California Gold Rush of the early 1850s, which brought hundreds of thousands of men from The East to The West in the search for gold wealth.
On the way, many of those prospective prospectors crossed the Rockies. Some adventurers saw gold flecks in the mountain streams they were passing, but the allure of The Golden State kept them moving along. It was not until most of the claims in California were already “pinching out” that the easterners decided to backtrack into what later became Colorado. What they found near present-day Breckenridge sparked the Colorado Gold Rush.
By the time Virginian Charles Baker caught the gold bug and traveled to Lake City to work in S.B. Kellogg & Company’s mine, the known veins of gold in the Rockies were about done surrendering their riches. He had missed two Rushes and there was no indication where the next big find might be. This was a time when scientific observation of mineral ores was in its infancy, but the idea that minerals were deposited underground in certain patterns—the Mineral Belt theory—was beginning to take hold. Baker was familiar with this concept, and while he worked the Lake City mine, he began to connect the dots between the mineral-rich gulches to try to predict where more gold may be found.
Early Exploration for Gold in the San Juans
In 1859, as Lake City was pinching out, Baker convinced S.B. Kellogg that the gold deposits likely extended into the mostly unexplored San Juan range, about 140 miles southwest of their operation. The men approached the range by tracing the Animas River northward and found enough traces of gold to convince them to return in force. Baker’s prediction seemed to have ‘panned out.’
The next spring, as thawing gulches flooded the valleys, Baker and Kellogg led about 150 men up the river to stake and explore the area. Some even had time to break ground before the October storms forced them southward to Animas City, now part of Durango, to shelter the winter. Through the winter, with little else to talk about in Animas City, word of the new claims spread quickly. Unsurprisingly, 1861 brought more than 500 men to the gulches above the Animas River, but their progress was soon halted by something more dangerous than a San Juan avalanche: Civil War.
When war broke out between the Union and Confederacy, Charles Baker immediately returned to Virginia to fight for the South, leaving his gold claims behind. Although he did not find fortune yet, he was convinced those mountains were full of riches for him, should fate allow him to return. Indeed, despite the many stakes, mines, and men that flooded the valleys, few had found productive claims to work. By the end of the war in 1868, most miners had given up on the idea of San Juan gold. Nevertheless, some men resumed mining after the war in the east.
Soldiers returning to their claims in the mountains would feel little relief, however, as attacks by the local tribes on the western mines and settlements increased in frequency and intensity. In response, the Hunter Treaty was signed in 1868, promising the Utes and Navajo that whites would not settle or prospect in the mountains, and in exchange they would be able to pass through unharmed. Contrary to the agreement, settlement continued unabated, and within a few years, clashes between illegal white settlers and local tribes ratcheted up again.
The First Modern Mines in the San Juans
In 1870, a group of miners struck a rich gold deposit about 8 miles southwest of Treasure Mountain. The Little Giant Mine opened the next year, kicking off a mini-rush. White settlers streamed into the area once more and began to settle more permanently in the area. They reasonably assumed that there must be more precious metals beneath their feet, and so stores, banks, and industry began to take root down river, anticipating a flood of wealth.
It was clear that the Hunter Treaty of 1868 had to be reconsidered, now that all parties saw the settlement of the San Juans as inevitable. The resulting document was the Brunot Treaty of 1873, which deeded the San Juans to the United States with the understanding that the higher areas would be reserved for the First Nations people. A short time later, the first cabin was built where two forking tributaries formed the Animas River, a place that would grow into the hardrock mining town of Animas Forks.
For the first time, it was possible to explore, prospect, stake a claim, and open a mine along the Animas River without the threat of attack.
Charles Baker, who survived the Civil War on the losing side, set out for the Animas Forks in 1875. He literally pioneered that area 15 years earlier with S.B. Kellogg, and the success of the Little Giant Mine confirmed his belief that a mass of gold lay under the mountains along the Animas River. Now he could return with his reputation restored to unearth the gold he always thought was waiting for him. Sadly, he would never reach Animas Forks, which was awarded a post office that year; he was killed by a tribe of Utes on his way. The circumstances of his death are not clear, but it is possible he strayed too high into the mountains and onto tribal land guaranteed by the Brunot Treaty.
Colorado became a state the next year, as even more men flooded into Silverton (established 1874) and up the Animas to find gold and silver. Southwest of Animas Forks was one hotspot of activity, a place called Treasure Mountain…
Part II: THE GOLD PRINCE DIES BELOW TREASURE MOUNTAIN
By the 1880s, there were many mines on the peaks and in the gulches near Animas Forks.
One of the biggest finds was on the side of Treasure Mountain, just above the town, called the Pacific Lode. In 1881, the Treasure Mountain Mining & Milling Company was founded by a group of Chicago investors to mine and manage the Lode. That same year, the city of Durango was founded to the south, a city that would serve, and still serves, as the lifeline to the rougher and more remote mountain towns above it.
Miners streamed north from Durango, first by foot, then by train, starting in 1882 when the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad connected to Silverton. A smelter in Durango was quickly constructed to concentrate and purify the gold and silver ore from Animas Forks and nearby claims. At the time, Animas Forks boasted a population of about 160, with twice that number camped in the hills surrounding it.
The mountain towns were next to lawless. For example, in 1887 an arsonist who burned his Indianapolis business for an insurance payout was found hiding near the mines on Treasure Mountain. The policeman in pursuit collected him from the high altitude hideout and escorted him to Silverton. From there, they were supposed to take a train to Denver where the arsonist would be tried. However, that night when the prisoner asked to have a cigarette in the smoking car of the train and the officer assented, the prisoner sprinted through the smoking car, hopped over the side of the speeding train and rolled into the ditch to his escape! A $50 reward is, presumably, still valid for the man’s arrest.
The 1890s were a hard decade for Animas Forks. First, a fire raged through the town in 1891, virtually erasing the business district. Rather than rebuild, many of the residents moved a few miles south to the town of Eureka. Because of the population loss, Animas Forks lost its post office.
Two years later, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which guaranteed a high silver price, was repealed by President Grover Cleveland’s administration, cutting the price of silver by almost 40% and devastating San Juan mining operations. Thousands of miners in the West were left unemployed. Only small mines with little or no debt could afford to operate on Treasure Mountain.
The Gold Prince Mill
Animas Forks would receive a breath of life in 1904 when it was announced that a major gold mill would be installed there. Anticipating the boom, the Silverton Northern Railroad (founded 1895) extended their trackage from Eureka north to the Forks, where construction of the Gold Prince Mill began the next year. It would be a modern structure with a steel frame, concrete floors, forced air heat, and electric power supplied by the Animas Power and Water Company.
Gold Prince Mill opened in 1907 at only one-third of its 500-tons-per-day capacity. Metal prices were simply too low to justify extensive mining in the area. The Animas Forks mill was revolutionary in that it used hundreds of small electric motors to operate its equipment, rather than a central drive with connected belts, as every other gold mill used at that time.
The ore was supplied by an ingenious aerial cable tramway that connected the mines to the mill along the base of Treasure Mountain. Baskets of raw ore would bounce along the cables over trees and rough terrain down to the loading doors of the mill. Buckets could then be detached by crane, dumped, and sent back up the cable to be refilled with more ore. An example of this system can still be seen at the nearby Mayflower Mill.
The Treasure Mountain Mine
One of the most active mines in the area was the Treasure Mountain Mine, which was about 400 feet deep at that time, with ample expansion planned. In fact, the mine outpaced the mill, which closed the following year just as Treasure Mountain Mine was beginning a horizontal tunnel to intersect the abandoned Golden Fleece and Scotia mines, two of the biggest mines of their day near Animas Forks. The next season brought the tunnel right beneath the Golden Fleece mine, about 1,600 feet from the opening in Picayune Gulch.
The Gold Prince mill shut down that year, having never reached capacity.
To offset falling silver and gold prices, mills began to recover zinc, a metal not very sought-after before that time. Northwest of Animas Forks, the Frisco-Bagley mine and mill kept the town alive, as well as the Vermillion mine one mile west of the Frisco. Today, the Frisco-Bagley mill still stands, while Vermillion’s aboveground workings are in ruins.
Animas Forks burned again in 1913, driving most of its residents southward, but mining continued.
An avalanche in 1915 struck on both sides of Treasure Mountain, suggesting it was triggered by underground explosions, sending whoever was on the surface tumbling down the mountain. On the Animas Forks side of the mountain, a laborer at the Silver Coin Mine was carried over some rocks with the weight of the snow on top of him. He was ground into pieces and only some parts of him were ever found. On the Picayune Gulch side, a man of the Treasure Mountain Mine was carried by the snow for several hundred feet. His comrades rushed from the tunnel to rescue him and he lived.
Later that year, the first World War erupted…
PART III: WORLD WARS AND THE SANTIAGO TUNNEL
War in Europe did not slow the search for gold in the San Juan Mountains. In fact, the development of floatation technology made separating gold and silver from waste rock in the mills even easier. For the first time, low-grade ore was profitable to mine. When mines were under-producing, mills like the Sunnyside at Eureka reprocessed their tailings piles to recover ore unearthed years before.
This is one reason so few tailings piles exist today in the area. The other reason is that many of the tailings were simply dumped in the Animas River—an environmental nightmare that the EPA is still monitoring today.
Gold Prince Guts Shipped to Eureka
In 1917, the defunct Gold Prince Mill of Animas Forks was disassembled and reincorporated into the aging workings of the Sunnyside. The following year, congress passed the Pitman Act, which artificially raised the price of silver to $1 per ounce when traded internationally. In the San Juans, silver occurs alongside gold, so the Act ultimately subsidized exploration for gold with inflated silver profits. Companies hired back furloughed miners and hundreds trekked north from Silverton looking for work. They found it.
However, with the population boom also came a massive outbreak of the Spanish Flu, which spread throughout the mining camps, killing hundreds. Perhaps due to the outbreak, many families moved north to Eureka, and in 1918, the year the Great War ended, 350 people fell asleep nightly to the music of the Sunnyside. It would not be silent again until the Pitman Act expired in 1922 and returned the price of silver to $0.65 per ounce. This caused most mines, and Eureka’s mill, to close.
By the time the Great Depression hit, the gulches north of Silverton were already mostly abandoned, but President Roosevelt reinvigorated the search for precious metals in 1934 when he signed the Gold Reserve Act into law, taking the country off of the gold standard and fixing the price of gold far above Depression levels.
One of the first mines to reopen was the Treasure Mountain operation and their Santiago Tunnel.
The Santiago Tunnel of Treasure Mountain Mine
Treasure Mountain Mine constructed many of the buildings that remain today in 1937: a bunk house, a boarding house, a compressor house, and a blacksmith shop.
There was a lot of action underground, too. Santiago Tunnel was just over 700 feet long and had just intersected the retired workings of the once-rich Scotia Mine, and it was not far from the Golden Fleece Mine. The strategy of the Treasure Mountain Mine was to find leftover gold and silver reserves left untapped by two of the biggest former producers on the mountain. Just two years later, the Golden Fleece was a part of the system and the miners began cutting perpendicular tunnels from the main line.
To process the rock coming from the tunnel, a small concentrator mill was built below the bunk house in 1940, the newest building that still clings to the gulch.
When World War II broke out, though, gold mines deemed “nonessential” had to be shut down within a week, by order of the War Production Board. It was a time when the nation needed steel more than gold or silver, and so most of the work in the San Juans halted. The one exception was the Columbus Mine, which was reopened in 1943, probably because its copper and lead reserves were needed for the war effort.
After the war, the Santiago Tunnel was worked briefly, but by 1948 it was totally abandoned, and remains so to this day.
But, if Treasure Mountain was not named for the Treasure Mountain Mine, which was never a major producer despite the fact it has survived the last half-century relatively intact, where does the name come from? It’s a strange story…
PART IV: THE LEGEND OF TREASURE MOUNTAIN
Tales of buried treasure gave the mountain its name long before gold mines dotted its face; this is that story.
Sometime in the early 1800s, a group of French trappers traveled to the San Juan Mountains from St. Louis, Missouri in the search for fur. Shortly after they set camp at the foot of one of the mountain valleys some of the group found small gold nuggets in the stream nearby. The following day, the trappers found more pieces of the precious metal nearby and decided to make the camp a more permanent one.
The Frenchmen kept camp there for a few years while trapping and secretly amassing gold. A few times a year, some of them would journey south to Taos with a pack mule train to trade their furs for supplies. When returning from such a trip, local Utes, whose lands the interlopers were poaching on, attacked the trappers. More than half of the Frenchmen were killed and, leaving all their supplies behind, they ran for the camp. With all of their pack mules dead or stolen, moving the gold from camp would be impossible, thought the Frenchmen. Under the threat of another onslaught, they buried their golden cache above the camp and marked the treasure by pounding the imprint of an iron mule shoe on the trees nearby.
Only two would ever leave the mountains alive; when the remaining trappers fled south they came under attack again. The survivors successfully retreated to St. Louis and, before they left the country again for France, they made a map of their former mountain home. They never returned, but their story and their map lived on to change the lives of those that followed, like that of Asa Poors.
The Frenchmen had been gone for some years by the time Asa was shown the mysterious map. He was familiar with the area around the Animas and was sure that this was what was on the map. With the help of some unemployed Silverton miners, he located the mule-shoe-marked trees near the peak of the mountain and began to excavate a suspicious mound near the trees. It revealed only a few chunks of charcoal.
One of the miners approached Poors after this letdown and shared that he had seen another map of the buried treasure with instructions missing on the Asa’s copy. The missing instructions are as follows:
“Stand on the mound at 6 o’clock on a September morning. Where falls the shadows of the head, there dig for the buried treasure.”
Poors returned in September and faithfully carried out the instructions. Where the beam of sunlight was most intense, he excitedly buried his shovel to find…
Nothing.
Not knowing what to do, Asa and the Silvertonians scoured the mountaintop again, digging at every loose-seeming patch of dirt. They found no sign of their treasure and, when winter came, the men returned to Silverton and Asa moved to Durango. Poors died in Durango that winter of an unknown disease, perhaps Spanish Flu, but one of his fellow adventurers, Leon Montroy, survived him to continue the hunt for the trappers’ loot.
The next season, Leon found what appeared to be a stone circle and was convinced he had found the treasure. However, as he began to dig, it became clear that what he found was an old well, perhaps from the Frenchmen’s original camp. He excavated the well until the stone walls stopped, about 12 feet below the surface, without even finding coal. He, like so many others, gave up on the mountain.
In the early 1910s, a forestry official familiar with the area decided to take a more scientific approach. He located the emblazoned trees, cut into one of them, and counted the rings. The tree with the markings dated to 1827!
There have been some modern and high-tech searches for the namesake of Treasure Mountain, but nobody has ever claimed to have found it.
CONCLUSIONS & GALLERY
I hope that you enjoyed the stories that I dug up about Treasure Mountain. If you have stories about your time in Animas Forks, Eureka, or have tips for what I should see next time I am in the San Juans, feel free to contact me or leave a comment below.
The post Treasure Mountain Mine and Animas Forks
Colorado appeared first on SUBSTREET.