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Gold!. Ian Neligh
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Incidentally, the gold was later recovered in 1988 by treasure hunter Tommy G. Thompson, who was arrested in 2015 after a two-year manhunt for failing to appear before a judge in a case where investors were excluded from the gold profits removed from the wreck.
In the wake of the tragic incident with the ship, and compounding economic troubles, merchants across the Midwest who were desperate for any source of additional income were all too eager to help perpetuate the talk of gold and what could have easily become a myth.
“I doubt that three thousand dollars’ worth of gold in every shape had been taken out by the five or six hundred seekers who came to this region in hot pursuit of it,” Greeley wrote.
However, the gold was there: they only needed to look a little higher.
A Golden Ring
In the late days of 1858, Jackson was hunting with his friends Tom Golden and Black Hawk. His diary has brief descriptions of the terrible weather and his varied successes aiming down the length of his rifle.
Dec. 27
“Still snowing. Tom hunting Oxen. Black Hawk and I for elk. I killed a fine fat doe. Still snowing.”
Dec. 28
“Snowing fast, accompanied by high wind. In camp all day.”
Dec. 29
“I got into camp late at night; saw about 600 elks; killed five cows and one bull.”
Dec. 31
“Jerked Elk meat until noon with intention of going down mountain … packed meat and blankets and started down over fallen timber and through snow four feet deep. Had a hell of a time before I reached the creek. Went into camp at dark. Dogs and I almost tired out. Made big fire after supper and dried my clothes and blankets. Turned in about 12 o’clock, and slept good until daylight.”
Then on the first day of the new year, Jackson decided to head out on his own to follow the stream into the mountains. He told Tom Golden that he’d be back at their camp above Table Mountain in a week. With two pounds of bread, one pound of coffee, and dried elk for both himself and his dogs, Jackson set off.
Traveling about eight miles farther upstream, he killed a mountain lion he came across, and as some accounts of Jackson’s adventures report, he saw what he initially interpreted as a cloud of smoke from a camp of Native Americans. Being cautious, he worked his way through the deep snow and saw that it was actually steam from a hot spring. The snow around it was melted away, and the sheep he came across were eating the thawed vegetation.
“Killed fat sheep and camped under three cottonwood trees. About 1,000 mountain sheep in sight tonight; no scarcity of meat in future for myself and dogs. Good,” Jackson reported. He was up before daylight, shot at and wounded another mountain lion, and drank the last of his coffee. He then started inspecting the gravel of the streams. “Good gravel here; looks like it would carry gold,” Jackson wrote. “Wind has blown snow off the rim, but gravel is hard frozen. Panned out two cups; nothing but fine colors.”
The next day he built a giant fire on the rocks to thaw the gravel. He kept the fire going all day and didn’t notice at first that a “carcajou,” also known as a wolverine, had come into his camp. What followed was a savage fight between the dogs, Jackson, and the wolverine.
“Dogs killed him after I had broken his back with belt ax. Hell of a fight.”
On January 7 Jackson removed the embers from the fire he had set the day before to thaw the frozen gravel by the stream. Using his cup, he panned out the gold from the rock and was quite pleased with what he found. On his ninth cupful, he found a large nugget of gold. He would later have it turned into a ring for his wife.
“Feel good tonight,” he wrote in his journal, then added as an afterthought, “Carcajou no good for dog.” He worked at the stream all the next day with the inadequate tools that he’d brought along. He made the best of what he had, even wearing out his belt knife.
“Well, Tom old boy, I’ve got the diggins at last,” Jackson wrote. “But can’t be back in a week. Dogs can’t travel. Damn carcajou.”
After recovering about an ounce of gold, he decided to head back to camp and join up with his hunting partners—that is once his dogs were ready to travel again. In preparation for a return trip, he carefully hid evidence of his work and marked a tree with a knife and his belt ax.
“Snowing like hell. High wind and cold. In camp all day. Drum can hardly walk around today.” It did finally stop snowing, but Jackson spent the day in his camp doctoring his dog’s leg, which he said had swollen to the size of his upper arm.
“Damn a carcajou.”
On January 12 the three of them began the slow trip back down the mountains. That evening Jackson put a balsam on Drum’s wound. They started late the next day but made better progress; he noted that “Drum is doing much better.”
On January 14 with his moccasins so worn that he was nearly barefoot, Jackson made his way back to camp and found his friend Tom more than a little uneasy about his delay in returning.
“After supper, I told him what I had found and showed him the gold, and we talked, smoked and ate, the balance of the night. I could hardly realize I had been gone nineteen days.” Once out of the mountains he and Tom came across a man they knew who was using two sluice boxes to get gold from the stream. Compared with what Jackson had pulled from the river in his coffee cup just days prior, he was not remotely impressed.
“No good; too fine to save without quicksilver, and not enough to pay with it.”
Many miners used quicksilver, or mercury, to remove the gold from rock or to help remove it from sand. The mercury turns the gold into an amalgam, which can later be burned off and returned to its pure form. Not environmentally friendly or safe, but it is effective and is still used by some today. Jackson decided he wanted to return to his discovery not only with better supplies but with a small party of men to help him work the confluence of the two creeks. However, he would have to bide his time until spring.
“Tom is the only man who knows I found gold up the creek, and as his mouth is as tight as a No. 4 beaver trap, I am not uneasy.”
The same month a party of prospectors discovered gold in nearby Boulder. Called Gold Hill, the men also knew it was essential to keep the news of their discovery quiet and hidden from prying eyes as long as possible. On April 17 of that same year, Jackson returned to the area he had marked with twenty-two men, wagons, supplies, and tools. The group often had to build their own road, hacking through the dense wilderness, which made for a grueling journey into the mountains. In some places, the wagons were unable to get through and so had to be meticulously disassembled and reassembled on the other side of each obstruction. This was slow and painful work. In May they reached Jackson’s location and made $1,900 in the first seven days. It’s said about $2.5 million in gold was removed from the area near his discovery in three years’ time. Originally called Jackson’s Diggings, the area provided the first real evidence that gold could be found and fortunes dug from the muddy gravel of the Rockies. This was not rumor or legend but undeniable truth.
In time Jackson felt himself called away from the mountains and their promise of wealth by the drums of war. Jackson fought in the Civil War in 1861 for the Confederates. He did return to Colorado when the fighting was done to look for gold in Ouray, but his further attempts to strike it rich were ended suddenly one day when his firearm fell from a wagon and accidentally discharged, killing him.
Jackson’s dreams of finding untold riches lived on. People from across the nation and even the oceans rushed into the area. Rough cabins and tents popped up like mushrooms over every free space in sight in the area that would soon become Idaho Springs. Some have estimated that 100,000 people joined the hunt for gold in 1859. Some 13,158 claims were recorded in Clear Creek County from the start of the gold rush to 1861. Supplies, food, and plenty of coffee