| Difficulty: | Number: | Miles: | Altitude: | Obstacles: | Time: |
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| Easy | CR 787 | 4.79 | 11,080 to 12,800 ft. | NA | 1-2 hours |
Closure:
July - Best
August - Best
September - Best
October - Best
Accessed:
Park county would be created in South Park, with the county seat moving from Buckskin Joe to Fairplay. The remnants of the early hord of miners continued to search for the hidden wealth of the Mosquito Range mountains. Two of these were experienced prospectors Daniel Plummer, who, in 1865, had came to Montgomery to be superintendant of the Pioneer Mill, and Joseph H. Myers, who had been mining in the county since 1860. They were rewarded for their perseverance in 1868 with the discovery of an outcrop of silver at 13,600 feet on Mount Bross. Unlike other silver veins in Colorado that were found in granite, this vein was in blue limestone, making it the first discovery of silver in limestone in Colorado. Plummer and Myers marked their claim on the steep northeast slope of Mount Bross assuming the outcrop would lead to a fissure vein in granite. The claim was named the Dwight when it was filed March 9, 1869, being 50 feet by 3,000 feet. Plummer, Myers, and a third man, Richard B. Ware, who may have grubstaked the two, were the official owners of the Dwight Mine at 13,600 feet on the northest side of 14,172 foot Mount Bross. The men mined 100 pounds of ore from the Dwight and sent it to Newark, New Jersey to be assayed. The assay showed between 265 to 400 ounces of silver per ton. Anything above 200 ounces per ton would be profitable. The limited information the sample gave, as well as the potential cost of develpment at 13,600 feet, meant the Dwight sat idle.
In the summer of 1871 Plummer and Myers climbed up to the Dwight and found more indications of silver in limestone at 13,700 feet. In this high altitude terrain, with no shade or cover from the elements, they took another ore sample shipping it off to be assayed. The results were even more encouraging than the first ore sample. News of a nameless rich strike was spreading, and even reached the Denver Tribune by the end of July. On August 5, 1871, Plummer, Myers, and Ware filed the Moose claim based on the assay of up to 879 ounces of silver per ton. The three needed capital to develop the mines so they added partners Judson H. Dudley of Denver and Andrew W. Gill of New York City. By the end of September 1871 the Moose mine had been surface-stripped for 250 feet with the vein being up to 20 inches wide. The assay was running at 400 ounces of silver per ton. The closest smelter was in Black Hawk, Colorado, and the routes over high mountain passes on pack mules, or out to Denver and then back up into the mountains to Black Hawk, would be expensive. Plus the probability that the ore would not be processed due to the high demand of the Black Hawk smelter from the local mines. The five men decided to mine thirty tons from the Moose and ten tons from the Dwight, minimum needed to determine the value of the ore, and ship it 105 miles to Denver, then to New York and on to Swansea, Wales as ship ballast to be processed. Swansea was one of the most advanced metallurgical centers in the world. The results from the ore sent to Swansea showed the mines on Mount Bross were bonanza-grade. In the first 40 days, the Moose produced $21,768 in ore.
The Moose mine built a log boarding house at Quartzville, which sat on a bench below Mount Lincoln at 11,300 feet. This was the closest habitation to the mines. Each day the miners would have to hike 2,400 feet higher to reach the mine. The owners of the Moose decided to build a boarding house at the mine and to start an adit into the mountain to give protection from the elements. As winter set in at the end of 1871 the mines that were being worked had to cease operations due to the cold and snow that would soon arrive. The winter of 1871-72 was colder and produced more snow than previous years. This would delay the return to mining on Mount Bross and Mount Lincoln, as well as create conditions for claim disputes. The summer did not improve conditions being cold and stormy. Fortunately the mines were surface mines requiring the removal of the over burden along the vein and digging out the ore which only needed man power. In late summer of 1872 George W. Brunk and Assyria Hall located the Dolly Varden, as well as other mines. The Dolly Varden being the one to make them rich. By October of 1872 the Moose Mine had completed the Plummer's boarding house, as well as a large shed containing storerooms and a blacksmiths shop. Reports varied on the amount of ore the Moose Mine produced in 1872, ranging from $75,000 to $330,000. As the winter of 1872-73 set in, the Moose and adjacent Baker Mine were housed in for the winter. All the other mining stopped for the season.
With no local ore market for the mines, the ore had to be sent to Black Hawk, Colorado or east to Missouri or Illinois, or even overseas to Swansea, Wales. This high cost of transportation meant only the highest grade ore could be processes. In the late summer of 1872 Judson H. Dudley offered Edward D. Peters the position of metallurgist for the Moose Mining Company. Dudley, Andrew W. Gill, and John McNab incorporated the Mount Lincoln Smelting Works Company on October 31, 1872. The goal was to build a local smelter to process the ore from the mines on Mount Lincoln and Mount Bross. The smelter became known as the Dudley Works and contained a main building, a custom ore building, a blast furnace building, a crushing building, engine and blower building, a furnace building, blacksmith shop, and a borading house. The site was north of Alma where Sawmill Creek enters the Middle Fork of the South Platte River. (Today private homes occupy the area.) The Dudley works began processing ore from the Moose Mine as well as mines in the Horshoe Basin above Leavick, south of Fairplay, through the winter of 1872-73. The Park Pool Association, which had mines on Mount Lincoln, had Henry R. Wolcott of the Boston and Colorado Smelting Company in Balck Hawk review the prospects of building a smelter in Park County. After reveiw, it was decided to build a reverberatory furnace smelter, unlike the blast furnace type of the Dudley Works. The site of this new smelter was at the junction of Buckskin Creek and the Middle Fork of the South Platte River. By May of 1873 homes were being built around the new smelter, giving rise to the town of Alma, named after a shop keepers daughter, Alma Janes.
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| Boston and Colorado Smelter at Alma, 1875. Right of center with smoke stacks. |
Through the mild winter of 1872-73 the Moose Mine continued working and struck a 13 foot thick deposit of solid mineral. The Baker mine also worked through the winter hitting good ore. By May of 1873 the Dolly Varden Mine hit a vein 6 feet thick and 4 to 15 feet deep. As the snow melted off, the Park Pool Association built the first wagon road up Mount Bross to their Hiawatha and Baker Mine. In June of 1873 Sullivan D. Breece, known as Captain Breece, and his associates graded a road from the Moose and Baker Mines around Mount Cameron to the Present Help Mine, at 14,157 feet, on the south side of Mount Lincoln. The Present Help Mine was the highest producing mine ever worked in Colorado. Another wagon road was also built up Mount Lincoln from Quartzville. By the fall the Moose had produced $200,000 and sent a 4,700 pound piece of solid silver ore to the annual Territorial Fair in Denver. During the dry summer of 1873 the town of Fairplay grew from a few cabins to a small town of 900 residents and all the buildings and businesses associated with a boom town. On September 26, 1873 the dry summer caught up with Fairplay when a defective stove pipe passing through the roof of the Fairplay House caught fire. With no fire fighting equipment all the towns wood business builds caught fire. Being late in the year there was no chance to recover and people had to move to other smaller towns or leave Park County.
By the fall of 1873, with all the mines producing ore, the two smelters were competing with each other for ore. The Dudley Works blast furnace was the more expensive smelter compared to the Boston and Colorado Alma smelter, which used a reverberatory process. This forced the Dudley Works to retrofit their smelter to a reverberatory system, allowed the Alma to monopolize the local ore. Even after retrofitting the Dudley had to compete with the better capitalized Boston and Colorado Alma smelter. In the end Edward Peters gave up the struggle and closed the Dudley Wroks and left Park County in January of 1874. Ironically, with technological advancements, the blast furnace would later out perform the reverberatroy process. With the Moose Mine, Russia Mine, and Dolly Varden Mine producing high grade ore, the Dudley Works upgraded its machinery and reopened in September 1875. Through the winter of 1875-76 both the Dudley Works and the Boston and Colorado Alma smelter ran at full capacity to handle the 20 percent increase in silver mined, equating to over $500,000 in silver, and almost as much for the 1876 season.
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| Moose Mine in 1880 photo by: T.C. Miller |
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| Moose Mine in 1880 photo by: T.C. Miller |
William H. Stevens had a falling out with the Park Pool Association. He and Sullivan D. Breece, who had done placer mining in California Gulch on the west side of the Mosquito Range near Oro City, joined forces to solve the water issue of the gold placer mining in California Gulch. They purchased all of the old placer mines in California Gulch and built a 12 mile ditch to bring water to the gulch. In the summer of 1874 Stevens invited Alvinus B. Wood, a mining metallurgist, to California Gulch. At one of the mines being worked Wood's found a crystalized carbinate of lead rock and showed it to Stevens, who knew right away what it was. The heavy black material that had plagued the California Gulch sluices contained lead and silver. It turned out that the silver along the blue limestone on the east side of the Mosquito Range, that had been pushed up high on Mount Bross and Mount Lincoln, was lower and horizontal on the west side of the range, laying like a carpet below what would become Breece Hill. This was the start of the boom that created Leadville. Through 1877 and 1878 Leadville drew the miners and capital out of Park County, all but halting mining in the county. By the end of 1878 the Boston and Colorado Alma smelter was shut down. The company built the Argo to process ore from the surrounding areas, using coal from Denver. The Dudley Works was also shut down. By the summer of 1882 the great Moose Mine, having gone through many stock manipulations and not finding more ore pockets, sold off its remaining equipment. The Dolly Varden also went through the same decline, minus the stock issues, making large discoveries of low grade ore. With a limited ore market to sell the ore to, the Dolly Varden paid its miners in September of 1882 and settled into leasing some of its claims. By the time the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was repealed in 1893, by which the U.S. Government was no longer obligated to buy silver at a set price, the great silver mines on Mount Bross and Mount Lincoln were ghosts, like some of the towns surrounding these mountains.
Gardiner, Harvey N Mining Among the Clouds Colorado Historical Society, 2002. Print.
Jessen, Kenneth Ghost Towns Colorado Style, Volumn 2, 1st ed. Loveland, Colorado: J.V. Publications, 1999. Print.
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Lower section of the road photo by: Adam M |
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The road will now turn north and pass a spur on the left, FR448, which goes a short distances before leaving public lands. The MVUM shows the road only going about a tenth of a mile. On Google Earth the road appears to continue above timberline and loop back to itself. Continue on the main road heading north where you will pass a private drive on the right and then head northeast passing a long meadow on the right, which is Sawmill Creek. You will pass another private drive on the left, head more north, and then pass another private drive. The road will continue north through the pines for three quarters of a mile before coming out into the upper part of Mineral Park. You will pass large tailing piles on both sides of the road as you head up the drainage of Dolly Varden Creek. As the road heads into the trees there will be a road on the left, Switchback, FR857, with the county road going right.
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Near Mineral Park photo by: Adam M |
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The road will now become a two track and do a switchback to climb out of the creek drainage and then another switchback around the foundation of a large mill.
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Mineral Park Mill foundation photo by: Adam M |
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Past the foundation you will do another wide switchback and start to head out of the trees. On your right will be the parking area for Windy Ridge and the Bristlecone Pines Trail.
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Heading toward Windy Ridge photo by: Adam M |
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Leaving Windy Ridge parking area photo by: Adam M |
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From the parking area the road will climb up above timberline. You will come to another intersecion. The road on the right will go toward a communication tower, but will end up reconnecting with the road on the left. Past the communication tower and reconnection you will climb up seven switchbacks.
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Above timberline with Mount Bross in view photo by: Adam M |
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Climbing the side of Mount Bross photo by: Adam M |
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Heading toward the south ridge of Mount Bross photo by: Adam M |
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As the road continues to climb it gets a bit rougher. You will have some great views of South Park down below. The road will level out a bit and you will have a view of the Creskill Mine across Dolly Varden Gulch.
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View of the Creskill Mine photo by: Adam M |
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The road will now narrow up a bit as you come to another intersection. This is where Mount Bross, FR288, continues straight ahead looping around Dolly Varden Gulch and over to the Creskill Mine.
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Road narrows near its end photo by: Adam M |
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The county road ends here, though their is a road on the right that continues. I have not driven this road, but on Google Earth it appears to continue to climb up Mount Bross. You can no longer get to the top of Mount Bross due to private property closures.
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View of Windy Ridge and Hwy9 further back photo by: Adam M |
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