\ 
CHAPTER V.—HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY OF THE GOLD 
DEPOSITS. 
HISTORY OF MINING DEVELOPMENT. 
The story of the discovery of gold at Cripple Creek has been well summarized 
by Penrose/' and has been related in picturesque detail by Rickard/ The latter 
interesting account leaves, indeed, little to be added, and were it more accessible 
to most readers of this report the following sketch of the development of the dis¬ 
trict might begin where Rickard ends. 
The historic rush of prospectors to Pikes Peak in 1859 resulted in no important 
discoveries and is significant rather as the first determined attack upon the wilder¬ 
ness than from any direct connection with the history of Cripple Creek. It was 
not until 1874 that the region adjacent to Cripple Creek began to attract the atten¬ 
tion of prospectors. The report that H. T. Wood, while connected with the Hay^- 
den Survey, had found gold ore near Mount Pisgah drew a number of men to that 
locality. A few loose fragments of ore were found on the surface and the Mount 
Pisgah mining district was organized. But no valuable deposits were uncovered, 
though in 1878 Henry Cocking is said to have driven a tunnel in Poverty Gulch 
near the point where the Gold King and C. O. D. mines were afterwards developed, 
and openings were made by B. F. Requa and others in what is now the productive 
part of the district. , 
The district was then gradually deserted. There was a brief renewal of activ¬ 
ity in 1884, caused by the reported discovery of rich placer deposits near Mount 
Pisgah. The alleged discovery, however, appears to have been fraudulent, and 
the grassy hills of the Cripple Creek region, now thoroughly discredited in the eyes 
of mining men, were given over to the grazing of cattle. Traces of the pastoral 
period remain in the names of many of the hills, while in the southern part of the 
town of Cripple Creek there yet stands the log house of Bennett & Myers’s Broken 
Box ranch, long the only habitation in the region. 
The events that were destined to transform a lonely cattle ranch into one of 
the greatest gold districts in the world have been so vividly related by Rickard as 
to be best given in his own words: 
Among the earliest of the gold seekers was Robert Womack, who once owned a small ranch in the dis¬ 
trict. He sold it to Bennett & Myers, the proprietors at that time of the cattle range, which covered a 
large part of the area now forming the environs of the town of Cripple Creek. For many years, between 
1880 and 1S90, Bob Womack lived in the district, doing occasional work for Bennett & Myers and spending 
his spare time in prospecting. He had previously had some experience in Gilpin County and knew gold ore 
when he saw it. In the course of desultory diggings he found several veins, and when he would turn up at 
across, W., and Penrose, It. A. F., jr., The geology and mining industries of the Cripple Creek district, Colorado: 
Sixteenth Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Survey, pt. 2, 1895,'pp. 113-115. 
b Rickard, T. A., The Cripple Creek gold field: Trans. Inst. Min. and Metallurgy (London), vol. 8, 1899, pp. 49-55. 
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