270 GEOLOGY OF THE DENVER BASIN. 



banks of the Platte from Overland Park to the Rio Grande workshops. 

 None of the placers, were, however, sufficiently rich to yield large returns 

 by the rude methods of working practiced at that day, and they were soon 

 abandoned for the more promising deposits in the mountains about Central 

 City and across the range in South Park. A few hundred dollars in gold 

 are still obtained annually from surreptitious washings by the people near 

 the Rio Grande shops. Placers of some value have been worked in former 

 times near Elizabeth, Golden, and Arvada, and during the recent hard times 

 a considerable number of men have earned wages in panning and sluicing 

 the beds of the Platte and of Cherry and Clear creeks. In the digging of 

 cellars in the business portion of the city, ground is frequently found that 

 yields well to the pan, and were the land not more valuable for other 

 purposes this ground might be made to pay by hydraulic washing. 



Newiin Guich placers. — Within the past vi'ar (1895) public attention has 

 been directed to the so-called placer deposits of Newiin Gulch, a 

 tributary of Cherry Creek that joins the valley of the latter a short 

 distance below Parker Station, which is about 23 miles southeast of 

 Denver, on the Denver and Gulf Railroad. A somewhat hasty examina- 

 tion by the writer lias shown that these deposits are composed of detrital 

 material resulting from the abrasion of the lower part of the Monument 

 Creek beds, and which constitutes the river drift of an ancient stream 

 bed. It is not possible to trace out the entire course of this ancient 

 stream, but, in the limited area examined, it corresponds in general with 

 that of the modern Newiin Gulch, which has, however, been cut down to 

 a lower level, tints leaving the drift of the former valley in terraces and 

 under tains slopes between the bluffs of undisturbed Tertiary strata and 

 the bed of the modern stream. Tunnels have been driven into these 

 ancient drift deposits at various points on either side of the gulch for a 

 distance of 2 or 3 miles above the point where the Castleton ditch crosses 

 it in a siphon. These tunnels are from 5 to 50 feet above the present 

 stream bed, and disclose streaks of more or less iron-stained gravels which 

 show abundant colors of gold to the pan, and are said by the miners to 

 contain from $2 to S20 or more in gold to the ton. There is no running 

 water in the gulch during the greater part of the year, but a water-bearing 



