%1 http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/ en Alferd Packer http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/alferd-packer <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Alferd Packer</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-article-image.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-article-image.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div id="carouselEncyclopediaArticle" class="carousel slide" data-bs-ride="true"> <div class="carousel-inner"> <div class="carousel-item active"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * node--3228--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--3228.html.twig x node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--image.html.twig * node--article-detail-image.html.twig * node.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image--image.html.twig * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--image.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-encyclopedia-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="/image/alferd-packer"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_style' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/Alferd-Packer-Media-1_0.jpg?itok=nZR769Zv" width="216" height="226" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-wide" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="carousel-caption d-none d-md-block"> <h5><a href="/image/alferd-packer" rel="bookmark"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--image.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Alferd Packer</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> </a></h5> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--image.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>In one of Colorado's most grisly episodes, prospector Alferd Packer confessed to eating the bodies of his dead companions after the group got lost in the snowy San Juan Mountains in 1874.</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> </div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2019-09-03T15:23:16-06:00" title="Tuesday, September 3, 2019 - 15:23" class="datetime">Tue, 09/03/2019 - 15:23</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/alferd-packer" data-a2a-title="Alferd Packer"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Falferd-packer&amp;title=Alferd%20Packer"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>Alferd E. Packer (1842–1909), also “Alfred,” was a prospector who became famous after confessing to eating his dead comrades while trapped in the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/san-juan-mountains"><strong>San Juan Mountains</strong></a> in February 1874. With the group starving and disoriented, it appears likely that Packer killed another prospector in self-defense and then began gnawing on the corpses of those who had already died. Packer’s story of cannibalism highlights the dangers faced by nearly every nineteenth-century prospector who ventured into the Rocky Mountains, and has become one of the West’s most grisly and enduring legends and murder mysteries.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Lost in the Wilderness</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Packer had been part of a larger band of twenty gold seekers who had left Utah and split up into two groups. On February 9, 1874, Al Packer and five other prospectors departed the Ute leader <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/ouray"><strong>Ouray</strong></a>’s winter camp. Ignoring the chief’s warning and declining his gracious offer to let them stay, the would-be miners foolishly headed into deep <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/snow"><strong>snow</strong></a>.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Al Packer later stated, “Three or four days after our provisions were all consumed, we took our moccasins, which were made of raw hide, and cooked them. . . . Our trail was entirely drifted over. In places, the snow had blown away from patches of wild rose bushes, and we were gathering the buds from these bushes, stewing them and eating them.”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Packer left Utah with few provisions and no weapons. Nine weeks later he arrived at the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/los-pi%C3%B1os-indian-agency"><strong>Los Piños Indian Agency</strong></a> south of present-day <strong>Gunnison</strong> with a Winchester rifle, a skinning knife, and a coffee pot containing live coals. Though haggard and worn, he was otherwise fit.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Escape and Capture</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Packer played high-stakes poker at Dolan’s saloon and bought a $70 horse. Another member of the original gold seekers arrived and questioned where Packer had gotten his spending money. Packer reluctantly admitted that the small band had starved in the San Juans, that the group’s oldest member, Israel Swan, had died from hunger and exposure, and that Packer had eaten him.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Jailed in <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/saguache-0"><strong>Saguache</strong></a>, Packer escaped, changed his identity, and was arrested in Wyoming before being returned to <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/hinsdale-county"><strong>Hinsdale County</strong></a> for trial. The area northeast of <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/lake-city-0"><strong>Lake City</strong></a> where Packer’s party got lost is listed on maps as “Cannibal Plateau.” The site where the bodies were found five miles beyond town is known as Deadman’s Gulch.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>After being re-captured, Packer stated that while the group attempted to find the Indian Agency, Shannon Bell killed James Humphrey, George Noon, and Frank Miller as they slept around the campfire. Packer had been out searching for food and when he returned to camp a raging Shannon Bell accosted him with a hatchet. Packer fired twice with a pistol, shooting Bell in self-defense.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>He explained that after killing Bell, “I tried to get away every day, but could not, so I lived on the flesh of these men the greater part of the sixty days I was out. Then the snow began to have a crust and I started out up the creek … .” His lawyer mounted a spirited defense, but Packer went to prison for seventeen years before <strong><em>The Denver Post</em></strong> petitioned to have him released.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In the penitentiary he made horsehair bridles, one of which is displayed at the <strong>Museum of Western Colorado </strong>in <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/grand-junction">Grand Junction</a>. He also built elaborate Victorian dollhouses. Alferd Packer died in 1907, but his misspelled name and his unique reputation lives on. He has evolved from Old West infamy to New West celebrity.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Later Investigation</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>In the 1950s, a rusted 1862 Colt Police Model .32 five-shot revolver was found on the Cannibal Plateau with two shots missing. Analysis at Mesa State College’s Electron Microscopy Facility proved that bullet fragments exhumed from the burial site matched lead from the old pistol, suggesting that Packer did shoot Shannon Bell in self-defense. Museum curator David Bailey believes that “Alferd didn’t deny he ate the bodies, but he killed only in self defense. It’s never too late for the truth. He was wrongly convicted.” Packer’s pistol is now on display at the Museum of Western Colorado.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Legacy</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Packer’s memory is alive and well in <strong>Lake City</strong>, where “Al Packer Days,” the Packer Burger at the Cannibal Grill, and a large wooden historical marker proclaiming the Alferd Packer Massacre Site are popular attractions. Travel magazines state that the Hinsdale County Museum houses “the largest collection of Packer memorabilia known,” “including “skull fragments and clothing buttons from victims, as well as the shackles used when he was imprisoned.” Tourists are advised, “Don’t miss the actual burial site, just five minutes from town.”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1968 students at the <strong>University of Colorado</strong> in <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/boulder"><strong>Boulder</strong></a> renamed the student union restaurant the Alferd E. Packer Memorial Grill, and in 1998 author James E. Bank penned <em>Alferd Packer’s Wilderness Cookbook</em>. In addition, CU film students Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who would later create the hit TV show <strong><em>South Park</em></strong>, produced <em>Cannibal! The Musical </em>in 1993. Like Packer’s companions, the film was short-lived.</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/gulliford-andrew-0" hreflang="und">Gulliford, Andrew</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/al-packer" hreflang="en">al packer</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/alfred-packer" hreflang="en">alfred packer</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/alferd-packer" hreflang="en">alferd packer</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/hinsdale-county" hreflang="en">hinsdale county</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/cannibal" hreflang="en">cannibal</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/cannibalism" hreflang="en">cannibalism</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/lake-city" hreflang="en">Lake City</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/san-juan-mountains" hreflang="en">San Juan Mountains</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/history-lake-city" hreflang="en">history of lake city</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ouray" hreflang="en">ouray</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p>Andrew Gulliford, “<a href="https://www.durangoherald.com/articles/805">Hunger for the Truth: Alferd Packer took to cannibalism in 1874 – was he also a killer</a>?” <em>Durango Herald</em>, February 8, 2009.</p></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p>James Banks, <em>Alferd Packer’s Wilderness Cookbook </em>(Palmer Lake, CO: Filter Press, 1969).</p><p>Robert Fenwick, <em>Alfred Packer: The True Story of the Man-Eater </em>(N.L.: The Timberline Craftsmen, 1989).</p><p>Harold Schechter, <em>Man-Eater: The Life and Legend of an American Cannibal </em>(New York: Little A, 2015).</p></div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-4th-grade--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-4th-grade.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-4th-grade.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-4th-grade field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-field-4th-grade"><p>Alferd E. Packer (1842–1909) was a prospector. He became famous after eating his dead comrades while trapped in the San Juan Mountains in February 1874. The group was starving and disoriented. It appears Packer killed another prospector in self-defense. He began gnawing on the corpses of those who had already died. Packer’s story of cannibalism highlights the dangers faced by nearly every nineteenth-century prospector who ventured into the Rocky Mountains. It has become one of the West’s most grisly legends and murder mysteries.</p><h2>Lost in the Wilderness</h2><p>Packer had been part of a band of twenty gold seekers. The group left Utah and split up into two. On February 9, 1874, Al Packer and five other prospectors departed the Ute leader Ouray’s winter camp. They Ignored the chief’s warning and declined his offer to let them stay. Instead, the would-be miners headed into deep snow.</p><p>Al Packer later stated, “Three or four days after our provisions were all consumed, we took our moccasins, which were made of raw hide, and cooked them. . . . Our trail was entirely drifted over. In places, the snow had blown away from patches of wild rose bushes, and we were gathering the buds from these bushes, stewing them and eating them.”</p><p>Packer left Utah with few provisions and no weapons. Nine weeks later he arrived at the Los Piños Indian Agency south of present-day Gunnison with a Winchester rifle, a skinning knife, and a coffee pot containing live coals. Though haggard and worn, he was fit.</p><h2>Escape and Capture</h2><p>Packer played high-stakes poker at Dolan’s saloon. He bought a $70 horse. Another member of the original gold seekers arrived. He questioned where Packer had gotten his spending money. Packer admitted that the small band had starved in the San Juans. The group’s oldest member, Israel Swan, had died from hunger and exposure. Packer had eaten him.</p><p>Packer was jailed in Saguache. He escaped and changed his identity. Packer was then arrested in Wyoming. He was returned to Hinsdale County for trial. The area northeast of Lake City where Packer’s party got lost is listed on maps as “Cannibal Plateau.” The site where the bodies were found five miles beyond town is known as Deadman’s Gulch.</p><p>Packer stated Shannon Bell killed James Humphrey, George Noon, and Frank Miller as they slept around the campfire. Packer had been out searching for food.&nbsp; When he returned to camp a raging Shannon Bell attacked him with a hatchet. Packer shot Bell in self-defense.</p><p>He explained that after killing Bell, “I tried to get away every day, but could not, so I lived on the flesh of these men the greater part of the sixty days I was out. Then the snow began to have a crust and I started out up the creek … .” His lawyer mounted a spirited defense. However, Packer went to prison for seventeen years. The Denver Post eventually petitioned to have him released.</p><p>In prison, Packer made horsehair bridles. One of them is displayed at the Museum of Western Colorado in Grand Junction. He also built elaborate Victorian dollhouses. Alferd Packer died in 1907. He has evolved from Old West infamy to New West celebrity.</p><h2>Later Investigation</h2><p>In the 1950s, a rusted 1862 Colt Police Model .32 five-shot revolver was found on the Cannibal Plateau with two shots missing. Analysis at Mesa State College’s Electron Microscopy Facility proved that bullet fragments taken from the burial site matched lead from the old pistol. They suggested that Packer did shoot Shannon Bell in self-defense. Packer’s pistol is now on display at the Museum of Western Colorado.</p><h2>Legacy</h2><p>Packer’s memory is alive and well in Lake City. “Al Packer Days” and a large wooden marker proclaiming the Alferd Packer Massacre Site are popular attractions. Travel magazines state that the Hinsdale County Museum houses “the largest collection of Packer memorabilia known. Tourists are advised, “Don’t miss the actual burial site, just five minutes from town.”</p><p>In 1968 students at the University of Colorado in Boulder renamed the student union restaurant the Alferd E. Packer Memorial Grill. In 1998 author James E. Bank penned Alferd Packer’s Wilderness Cookbook. In addition, CU film students Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who would later create the hit TV show South Park, produced Cannibal! The Musical in 1993. Like Packer’s companions, the film was short-lived.</p></div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-8th-grade--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-8th-grade.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-8th-grade.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-8th-grade field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-field-8th-grade"><p>Alferd E. Packer (1842–1909) was a prospector. He became famous after eating his dead comrades while trapped in the San Juan Mountains in February 1874. The group was starving and disoriented. It appears Packer killed another prospector in self-defense. He began gnawing on the corpses of those who had already died. Packer’s story of cannibalism highlights the dangers faced by nearly every nineteenth-century prospector who ventured into the Rocky Mountains. It has become one of the West’s most grisly legends and murder mysteries.</p><h2>Lost in the Wilderness</h2><p>Packer had been part of a band of twenty gold seekers. The group left Utah and split up into two. On February 9, 1874, Al Packer and five other prospectors departed the Ute leader Ouray’s winter camp. They Ignored the chief’s warning and declined his offer to let them stay. Instead, the would-be miners headed into deep snow.</p><p>Al Packer later stated, “Three or four days after our provisions were all consumed, we took our moccasins, which were made of raw hide, and cooked them. . . . Our trail was entirely drifted over. In places, the snow had blown away from patches of wild rose bushes, and we were gathering the buds from these bushes, stewing them and eating them.”</p><p>Packer left Utah with few provisions and no weapons. Nine weeks later he arrived at the Los Piños Indian Agency south of present-day Gunnison with a Winchester rifle, a skinning knife, and a coffee pot containing live coals. Though haggard and worn, he was fit.</p><h2>Escape and Capture</h2><p>Packer played high-stakes poker at Dolan’s saloon. He bought a $70 horse. Another member of the original gold seekers arrived. He questioned where Packer had gotten his spending money. Packer admitted that the small band had starved in the San Juans. The group’s oldest member, Israel Swan, had died from hunger and exposure. Packer had eaten him.</p><p>Jailed in Saguache, Packer escaped, changed his identity, and was arrested in Wyoming before being returned to Hinsdale County for trial. The area northeast of Lake City where Packer’s party got lost is listed on maps as “Cannibal Plateau.” The site where the bodies were found five miles beyond town is known as Deadman’s Gulch.</p><p>After being re-captured, Packer stated that while the group attempted to find the Indian Agency, Shannon Bell killed James Humphrey, George Noon, and Frank Miller as they slept around the campfire. Packer had been out searching for food and when he returned to camp a raging Shannon Bell accosted him with a hatchet. Packer fired twice with a pistol, shooting Bell in self-defense.</p><p>He explained that after killing Bell, “I tried to get away every day, but could not, so I lived on the flesh of these men the greater part of the sixty days I was out. Then the snow began to have a crust and I started out up the creek … .” His lawyer mounted a spirited defense, but Packer went to prison for seventeen years before The Denver Post petitioned to have him released.</p><p>In the penitentiary he made horsehair bridles, one of which is displayed at the Museum of Western Colorado in Grand Junction. He also built elaborate Victorian dollhouses. Alferd Packer died in 1907, but his misspelled name and his unique reputation lives on. He has evolved from Old West infamy to New West celebrity.</p><h2>Later Investigation</h2><p>In the 1950s, a rusted 1862 Colt Police Model .32 five-shot revolver was found on the Cannibal Plateau with two shots missing. Analysis at Mesa State College’s Electron Microscopy Facility proved that bullet fragments exhumed from the burial site matched lead from the old pistol, suggesting that Packer did shoot Shannon Bell in self-defense. Museum curator David Bailey believes that “Alferd didn’t deny he ate the bodies, but he killed only in self-defense. It’s never too late for the truth. He was wrongly convicted.” Packer’s pistol is now on display at the Museum of Western Colorado.</p><h2>Legacy</h2><p>Packer’s memory is alive and well in Lake City, where “Al Packer Days,” the Packer Burger at the Cannibal Grill, and a large wooden historical marker proclaiming the Alferd Packer Massacre Site are popular attractions. Travel magazines state that the Hinsdale County Museum houses “the largest collection of Packer memorabilia known,” “including “skull fragments and clothing buttons from victims, as well as the shackles used when he was imprisoned.” Tourists are advised, “Don’t miss the actual burial site, just five minutes from town.”</p><p>In 1968 students at the University of Colorado in Boulder renamed the student union restaurant the Alferd E. Packer Memorial Grill, and in 1998 author James E. Bank penned Alferd Packer’s Wilderness Cookbook. In addition, CU film students Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who would later create the hit TV show South Park, produced Cannibal! The Musical in 1993. Like Packer’s companions, the film was short-lived.</p></div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-10th-grade--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-10th-grade.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-10th-grade.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-10th-grade field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-field-10th-grade"><p>Alferd E. Packer (1842–1909) was a prospector who became famous after confessing to eating his dead comrades while trapped in the San Juan Mountains in February 1874. With the group starving and disoriented, it appears likely that Packer killed another prospector in self-defense and then began gnawing on the corpses of those who had already died. Packer’s story of cannibalism highlights the dangers faced by nearly every nineteenth-century prospector who ventured into the Rocky Mountains, and has become one of the West’s most grisly and enduring legends and murder mysteries.</p><h2>Lost in the Wilderness</h2><p>Packer had been part of a larger band of twenty gold seekers who had left Utah and split up into two groups. On February 9, 1874, Al Packer and five other prospectors departed the Ute leader Ouray’s winter camp. Ignoring the chief’s warning and declining his gracious offer to let them stay, the would-be miners foolishly headed into deep snow.</p><p>Al Packer later stated, “Three or four days after our provisions were all consumed, we took our moccasins, which were made of raw hide, and cooked them. . . . Our trail was entirely drifted over. In places, the snow had blown away from patches of wild rose bushes, and we were gathering the buds from these bushes, stewing them and eating them.”</p><p>Packer left Utah with few provisions and no weapons. Nine weeks later he arrived at the Los Piños Indian Agency south of present-day Gunnison with a Winchester rifle, a skinning knife, and a coffee pot containing live coals. Though haggard and worn, he was otherwise fit.</p><h2>Escape and Capture</h2><p>Packer played high-stakes poker at Dolan’s saloon and bought a $70 horse. Another member of the original gold seekers arrived and questioned where Packer had gotten his spending money. Packer reluctantly admitted that the small band had starved in the San Juans, that the group’s oldest member, Israel Swan, had died from hunger and exposure, and that Packer had eaten him.</p><p>Jailed in Saguache, Packer escaped, changed his identity, and was arrested in Wyoming before being returned to Hinsdale County for trial. The area northeast of Lake City where Packer’s party got lost is listed on maps as “Cannibal Plateau.” The site where the bodies were found five miles beyond town is known as Deadman’s Gulch.</p><p>After being re-captured, Packer stated that while the group attempted to find the Indian Agency, Shannon Bell killed James Humphrey, George Noon, and Frank Miller as they slept around the campfire. Packer had been out searching for food and when he returned to camp a raging Shannon Bell accosted him with a hatchet. Packer fired twice with a pistol, shooting Bell in self-defense.</p><p>He explained that after killing Bell, “I tried to get away every day, but could not, so I lived on the flesh of these men the greater part of the sixty days I was out. Then the snow began to have a crust and I started out up the creek … .” His lawyer mounted a spirited defense, but Packer went to prison for seventeen years before The Denver Post petitioned to have him released.</p><p>In the penitentiary he made horsehair bridles, one of which is displayed at the Museum of Western Colorado in Grand Junction. He also built elaborate Victorian dollhouses. Alferd Packer died in 1907, but his misspelled name and his unique reputation lives on. He has evolved from Old West infamy to New West celebrity.</p><h2>Later Investigation</h2><p>In the 1950s, a rusted 1862 Colt Police Model .32 five-shot revolver was found on the Cannibal Plateau with two shots missing. Analysis at Mesa State College’s Electron Microscopy Facility proved that bullet fragments exhumed from the burial site matched lead from the old pistol, suggesting that Packer did shoot Shannon Bell in self-defense. Museum curator David Bailey believes that “Alferd didn’t deny he ate the bodies, but he killed only in self-defense. It’s never too late for the truth. He was wrongly convicted.” Packer’s pistol is now on display at the Museum of Western Colorado.</p><h2>Legacy</h2><p>Packer’s memory is alive and well in Lake City, where “Al Packer Days,” the Packer Burger at the Cannibal Grill, and a large wooden historical marker proclaiming the Alferd Packer Massacre Site are popular attractions. Travel magazines state that the Hinsdale County Museum houses “the largest collection of Packer memorabilia known,” “including “skull fragments and clothing buttons from victims, as well as the shackles used when he was imprisoned.” Tourists are advised, “Don’t miss the actual burial site, just five minutes from town.”</p><p>In 1968 students at the University of Colorado in Boulder renamed the student union restaurant the Alferd E. Packer Memorial Grill, and in 1998 author James E. Bank penned Alferd Packer’s Wilderness Cookbook. In addition, CU film students Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who would later create the hit TV show South Park, produced Cannibal! The Musical in 1993. Like Packer’s companions, the film was short-lived.</p></div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Tue, 03 Sep 2019 21:23:16 +0000 yongli 3077 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Lake City http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/lake-city-0 <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Lake City</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-article-image.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-article-image.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div id="carouselEncyclopediaArticle" class="carousel slide" data-bs-ride="true"> <div class="carousel-inner"> <div class="carousel-item active"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * node--2622--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--2622.html.twig x node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--image.html.twig * node--article-detail-image.html.twig * node.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image--image.html.twig * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--image.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-encyclopedia-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="/image/lake-san-cristobal"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_style' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/Lake%20City%20Media%203_0.jpg?itok=kHMkcA9j" width="1024" height="683" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-wide" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="carousel-caption d-none d-md-block"> <h5><a href="/image/lake-san-cristobal" rel="bookmark"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--image.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Lake San Cristobal</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> </a></h5> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--image.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Lake San Cristobal is located just south of Lake City in the picturesque San Juan Mountains. After Lake City's mining era came to an end in the early twentieth century, the lake developed into a popular tourist area with a variety of accommodations.&nbsp;</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> </div> <div class="carousel-item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * node--2624--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--2624.html.twig x node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig * node--image.html.twig * node--article-detail-image.html.twig * node.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image--image.html.twig * field--node--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--field-encyclopedia-image.html.twig * field--image.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-encyclopedia-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_formatter' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> <a href="/image/main-street-lake-city"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_style' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/Lake%20City%20Media%201_0.jpg?itok=gQd6dzS1" width="1024" height="683" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-wide" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="carousel-caption d-none d-md-block"> <h5><a href="/image/main-street-lake-city" rel="bookmark"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--image.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Main Street, Lake City</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> </a></h5> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--image.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Incorporated in 1875, Lake City was founded as a silver mining town in the San Juan Mountains of Hinsdale County.&nbsp;</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> </div> </div> <button class="carousel-control-prev" type="button" data-bs-target="#carouselEncyclopediaArticle" data-bs-slide="prev"> <span class="carousel-control-prev-icon" aria-hidden="true"></span> <span class="visually-hidden">Previous</span> </button> <button class="carousel-control-next" type="button" data-bs-target="#carouselEncyclopediaArticle" data-bs-slide="next"> <span class="carousel-control-next-icon" aria-hidden="true"></span> <span class="visually-hidden">Next</span> </button> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2017-05-19T11:29:36-06:00" title="Friday, May 19, 2017 - 11:29" class="datetime">Fri, 05/19/2017 - 11:29</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/lake-city-0" data-a2a-title="Lake City"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Flake-city-0&amp;title=Lake%20City"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>At an elevation of 8,661 feet in the heart of the <strong><a href="/article/san-juan-mountains">San Juan Mountains</a></strong>, the historic <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/precious-metal-mining-colorado"><strong>mining</strong></a> town of Lake City is the only incorporated town in <strong><a href="/article/hinsdale-county">Hinsdale County</a></strong>. Named for nearby <strong>Lake San Cristobal</strong>, the town was founded in 1874 in a broad valley along the <strong>Lake Fork</strong> of the <strong><a href="/article/gunnison-river">Gunnison River</a></strong>. Between 1875 and 1892, Lake City served as a supply point and shipping hub for surrounding gold and silver mines. Lead and zinc mining became prominent after the <a href="/article/panic-1893"><strong>crash in silver prices</strong></a> in 1893 and continued until about 1920.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>After a brief revival in the 1950s, mining in Hinsdale County all but ceased, and Lake City fully transitioned to an economy based on tourism and outdoor recreation. In 1978 the Lake City Historic District, which included twenty-four buildings, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2005 the district was expanded to include an additional 404 buildings. As of 2010, Lake City has a year-round population of 408 that increases to around 2,500 in the summer.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Early History</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Before the arrival of white prospectors in the 1870s,<strong> </strong>the Nuche, or <strong><a href="/search/google/ute">Ute</a></strong> people, used the Lake City area as summer hunting grounds. The town itself traces its origins to the late nineteenth-century mining boom in the San Juan Mountains. Prospectors had set up mining camps in the region as early as 1860, but the Utes and harsh winters drove them off. They returned in the early 1870s and made more significant discoveries, but large-scale mining could not occur until after 1873, when the local Ute population was removed under the <strong><a href="/article/brunot-agreement">Brunot Agreement</a></strong>.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>On August 27, 1871, prospectors Harry Henson, Joel Mullen, Albert Meade, and Charles Goodwin discovered the <strong>Ute Ulay</strong> vein five miles above the mouth of Henson Creek, a tributary of the Lake Fork. On account of the Ute presence, they could not safely develop the vein at the time, but they returned in 1874 and established the first mining claim in what soon became Hinsdale County.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Around the same time, <strong>Enos Hotchkiss</strong> and J. D. Bartholf were in the area building the <a href="/article/saguache-0"><strong>Saguache</strong></a> and San Juan Toll Road, a wagon route that would link the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/san-luis-valley"><strong>San Luis Valley</strong></a> with mining camps near present-day <strong><a href="/article/silverton-0">Silverton</a></strong>. The two men located a promising gold vein north of Lake San Cristobal and built two log cabins near the juncture of Henson Creek and Lake Fork, the first two structures at the present site of Lake City. Hotchkiss soon set up the Hotchkiss Mine (later renamed the Golden Fleece), and began laying out the town of Lake City.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Boomtown</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>On August 16, 1875, Hotchkiss, his boss, <a href="/article/otto-mears"><strong>Otto Mears</strong></a>, and twenty others formed the Lake City Town Company and began selling lots. The location was ideal for a mining town; not only was it near a toll road and substantial mineral deposits, but the wide valley also had enough room for agriculture to feed the town and a source of water power for smelters, sawmills, and other facilities. Henry Finley, a local businessman who had worked on the toll road and helped Hotchkiss set up Hinsdale County’s first sawmill, served as the first president of the town company. To promote the new town, Mears funded <em>the Silver World</em>, the first newspaper on Colorado’s <strong><a href="/article/western-slope">Western Slope</a></strong>, which began publishing in 1875. The town also received a US post office that year.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>With the help of three additional sawmills, a shingles mill, a planing mill, and a door company, the ramshackle collection of huts and log cabins near Lake Fork was transformed into a town, seemingly overnight. Just several months after it incorporated, Lake City already had 400 residents and 67 buildings. Businesses on Silver Street—such as the Miners Boot and Shoe Store (1876), a saloon that later became known as the Weinburg Building (1876), Finley’s H &amp; A Schiffer store (1877), the two-story Miners &amp; Merchants Bank (1877), and the Taylor Law Office (1877)—formed the core of the early commercial district.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Many of Lake City’s first large houses were built in 1876 and 1877 on Gunnison Avenue and on Bluff and Silver Streets. They were home to miners, lawyers, and businessmen and their families, as well as local ranchers who raised cattle and crops in the Lake Fork Valley. The Presbyterian Church, the first church on Colorado’s Western Slope, was completed in 1876 at 431 Gunnison Avenue. It was followed in 1877 by the St. James Episcopal Church at 501 Gunnison and the St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church on the south edge of town.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The <strong>Hinsdale County Courthouse</strong>, Colorado’s oldest continually operating courthouse, was built at 317 Henson Street in 1877. The courthouse received considerable public attention when <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/susan-b-anthony"><strong>Susan B. Anthony</strong></a> spoke there in favor of <strong><a href="/article/womens-suffrage-movement">women’s suffrage</a></strong> that September. By 1878 Lake City’s two smelters made it the central supply and processing point for dozens of mines in northern Hinsdale County, and wealth from the mines continued to spur development in town. In 1880 famous Colorado architect <strong><a href="/article/robert-s-roeschlaub">Robert Roeschlaub</a></strong> designed a school, and local businessmen built an armory in 1883. In a strange tale of alternate use that could only come from a frontier mining town, the Lake City armory also doubled as the town’s opera house.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Transportation Troubles</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>While the surrounding mines continued to churn out hundreds of thousands of dollars in silver, copper, and lead, by the mid-1880s Lake City’s isolation—perhaps its only drawback as a mining center—began to affect its development. The town desperately needed a rail connection to lower the cost of shipping ore.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1882 the major rail line in the area, <strong><a href="/article/william-jackson-palmer">William Jackson Palmer</a></strong>’s <strong>Denver &amp; Rio Grande Railway</strong> (D&amp;RG), abandoned construction on a spur that was supposed to reach Lake City. The railroad’s new town of <strong>Durango</strong> had already eclipsed Lake City and Silverton as the smelting hub of the San Juans. Partly as a result of these disadvantages, Lake City’s population dropped from an all-time high of 865 in 1880 to 607 in 1890.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The <strong>D&amp;RG finally</strong> reached Lake City in 1889, extending the town’s boom period by at least another decade. Local gold and silver production spiked after the railroad arrived; in 1890 Hinsdale County mines produced just over $3,600 in gold and $60,000 in silver, but the very next year those figures jumped to nearly $20,000 in gold and $185,000 in silver. With the arrival of the railroad, Lake City had overcome its primary weakness of isolation and began processing and shipping gold and silver ore in record quantities.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Mining Declines</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>The surrounding mountains held so much mineral wealth that Hinsdale County and Lake City were relatively insulated from the devastating crash in silver prices that rocked Colorado’s economy in 1893. While hundreds of silver mines and dozens of mining towns folded across the state, Hinsdale County mines turned out a record $243,195 in gold in 1895 and a robust $347,400 in silver in 1896.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Though immensely profitable, this boom period only lasted about a decade. By the turn of the century, the area’s gold and silver deposits were all but tapped out. Hinsdale County mines produced more than $100,000 in silver for the last time in 1902. Lead and zinc production peaked around the same time, and although mining continued for another two decades or so, Lake City’s richest days were behind it.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>After the turn of the century, as corporations consolidated ownership of mines, as well as mills, smelters, and other ancillary industries, the age of the individual prospector had come to an end. This meant that, unless one wanted to work for these companies, large boomtowns such as Lake City no longer attracted droves of people. The town’s population dropped from 700 in 1900 to 317, when mining all but ceased in 1923.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>From Mining to Tourism</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Lake City’s transition from mining town to tourist town began in the 1910s, when summer visitors began replacing businessmen in the hotels and people began buying mining-era houses as summer vacation homes. Texans Richard and Hildegarde Wupperman were the first couple to purchase a vacation home in 1915, and a number of other summer visitors built cabins around Lake San Cristobal and refurbished mining-era cottages.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Road and highway improvements over the next several decades made Lake City more accessible to a growing number of tourists, especially after the D&amp;RG stopped service to Lake City in 1933. People came to fish, hike, camp, climb, or take in the Old West atmosphere emanating from the town’s many historic buildings. In the 1940s, resorts opened on Lake San Cristobal to cater to fishermen and other summer tourists. Author <strong>Muriel Sibell Wolle</strong> came to Lake City in the 1930s and 1940s to sketch and photograph old mining-era buildings. The town gained a reputation as a kind of quaint yet lawless place, as slot machines greeted visitors in many buildings and bootleg liquor flowed in local watering holes.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Although it still contained plenty of mining-era buildings, the structural character of Lake City transitioned along with its economy. The Spruce Lodge opened in 1950 to provide visitors with fishing licenses, sporting goods, fountain drinks, and liquor. More motels, lodges, and cabins were built in the 1950s, including Crystal Lodge near Lake San Cristobal in 1952, Lee’s Log Cabins in 1952–53, and the Elkhorn Lodge in 1957. Some of these new businesses opened in historic buildings; the Elkhorn Lodge, for instance, opened in the old Miners &amp; Merchants Bank Building on Silver Street. The Lake City Chamber of Commerce began operating in 1953, spearheading efforts to attract a segment of the nation’s large crowd of postwar vacationers. Hotel construction continued into the 1970s, and construction of vacation homes continues through the present.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1968 the state began paving Highway 149. By 1990 the entire highway was paved and dedicated as the <strong>Silver Thread Scenic Byway</strong>.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>As heritage tourism became an increasingly vital part of the local economy during the twentieth century, Lake City residents worked to document the town’s history and preserve many of its historic buildings. In 1973 the Hinsdale County Historical Society formed to preserve and present the history of the town and county, and in that same decade, residents completed preservation work on the 1891 First Baptist Church building and the 1883 armory building. The Lake City Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, and with support from the <strong>State Historical Fund</strong> and other backers, preservation work continued over the next several decades.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 2005 the Lake City Historic District was expanded to include 428 buildings, although only about half are considered to be “contributing” structures—those built or moved into the district from 1875 to 1950. Many of the district’s houses and other structures are valued because they showcase the architectural diversity in the city’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century buildings; builders employed a variety of styles, including Greek Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, Rustic, and others.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Today</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Today Lake City remains a premier destination for outdoor recreation enthusiasts, serving as a base for visitors to hike, bike, camp, climb, cross-country ski, and explore the surrounding wilderness areas and <a href="/article/us-forest-service-colorado"><strong>national forests</strong></a>. The Silver Thread Scenic Byway is considered one of the most scenic drives in Colorado, giving motorists picturesque views of <strong>Uncompahgre Peak</strong> and other breathtaking landscapes of the San Juans and taking them through several historic mining towns, including Lake City, <a href="/article/creede"><strong>Creede</strong></a>, and <strong>South Fork</strong>. Adventure-seekers can also take 4x4 Jeep tours over the <strong>Alpine Loop Scenic and Historic Byway</strong>, which connects Lake City to Silverton and <a href="/article/ouray-town"><strong>Ouray</strong></a> via historic mining roads.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>While Lake City’s mining history drives heritage tourism and is part of the town’s general allure and charm, its environmental legacy has been problematic. <strong>Acid mine drainage</strong>, a process by which leftover metals exposed in open mines leach into nearby water sources, affects nearly all former mountain mining districts in Colorado, and Lake City is no exception. However, local citizens and experts from across the state have led joint efforts to clean up mining sites in Hinsdale County. In 1998 the <strong>Lake Fork Valley Conservancy</strong> was established to help protect and preserve the area’s land and watersheds and has been active in mine cleanup efforts ever since.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 2011 the Conservancy and a coalition of engineers, artists, landscape architects, and environmental scientists assessed watersheds near the Ute Ulay Mine and other abandoned mines around Lake City for acid mine drainage. Cleanup at the Ute Ulay Mine, whose tailings ponds threaten to leach metals into nearby Henson Creek, began in the summer of 2014. In 2010 the conservancy and its supporting cast of experts also began cleanup at the <strong>Golden Fleece Mine</strong>, which was leaching metal-laden water into Lake San Cristobal, a popular attraction for anglers and a source of drinking water for Lake City. In 2015 the Conservancy received a $33,000 grant to help it acquire a public access easement along Lake Fork, part of the organization’s plan to help restore the health of the river.</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/encyclopedia-staff" hreflang="und">Encyclopedia Staff</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/lake-city" hreflang="en">Lake City</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/hinsdale-county" hreflang="en">hinsdale county</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/lake-city-colorado" hreflang="en">lake city colorado</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/lake-city-history" hreflang="en">lake city history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/history-lake-city-colorado" hreflang="en">history of lake city colorado</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/lake-san-cristobal" hreflang="en">lake san cristobal</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/san-juan-mountains" hreflang="en">San Juan Mountains</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/lake-fork" hreflang="en">lake fork</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/gold-mining" hreflang="en">gold mining</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/silver-mining" hreflang="en">silver mining</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/lake-city-historic-district" hreflang="en">lake city historic district</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p>Carl E. Conner, “<a href="https://www.historycolorado.org/sites/default/files/files/OAHP/crforms_edumat/pdfs/631.pdf" title=" (external link)">Hinsdale County Metal Mining</a>,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form (2010).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Charles W. Henderson, <em>Mining in Colorado: A History of Discovery, Development and Production</em>, US Geological Survey Professional Paper No. 138 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1926).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Lake City, “<a href="https://www.lakecity.com/mountain-town-activities/scenic-drives-byways/24-silver-thread-scenic-byway">Silver Thread Scenic Byway</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Lake City National Historic District, “<a href="http://www.lakecityhistoricdistrict.org/historic-preservation-lake-city.html">Historic Preservation in Lake City</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Lake Fork Valley Conservancy, “<a href="https://www.lfvc.org/history.html">Our History</a>,” 2012.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Lake Fork Valley Conservancy, “<a href="https://www.lfvc.org/reclamation.html">Reclamation</a>,” 2012.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Cathleen Norman, “Lake City Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form (2005).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Laura Palmisano, “<a href="https://www.kvnf.org/news/2015-09-28/state-awards-lake-city-nonprofit-33k-for-river-restoration-project">State Awards Lake City Nonprofit $33k for River Restoration Project</a>,” KVNF Public Radio, September 28, 2015.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Joseph Ryan, “<a href="https://www.colorado.edu/outreach/ooe/">Investigation of Water Flow Paths in the Golden Fleece Mine near Lake City, Hinsdale County, Colorado: A Collaboration with the Lake Fork Valley Conservancy and the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining, and Safety</a>,” research funding request, University of Colorado Boulder, 2012.</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p><a href="http://hardrockrevision.blogspot.com/">Hardrock Revision Blog</a> (abandoned mine cleanup blog)</p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="https://lakecity.com/">Lake City</a></p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="http://www.lakecityhistoricdistrict.org/">Lake City National Historic District</a></p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="https://www.lfvc.org/">Lake Fork Valley Conservancy</a></p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="https://www.colorado.com/articles/colorado-scenic-byway-silver-thread">Silver Thread Scenic Byway</a></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Duane A. Smith, <em>Song of the Hammer and the Drill: The Colorado San Juans, 1860–1914 </em>(Golden: Colorado School of Mines Press, 1982).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Duane A. Smith and John L. Ninnemann, <em>San Juan Legacy: Life in the Mining Camps </em>(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009).</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Fri, 19 May 2017 17:29:36 +0000 yongli 2587 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Empire Chief Mine and Mill http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/empire-chief-mine-and-mill <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Empire Chief Mine and Mill</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2017-05-17T15:18:38-06:00" title="Wednesday, May 17, 2017 - 15:18" class="datetime">Wed, 05/17/2017 - 15:18</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/empire-chief-mine-and-mill" data-a2a-title="Empire Chief Mine and Mill"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fempire-chief-mine-and-mill&amp;title=Empire%20Chief%20Mine%20and%20Mill"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>The Empire Chief Mine and Mill site is an abandoned nineteenth-century metal mining complex in <a href="/article/hinsdale-county">Hinsdale County</a>, located several miles west of <a href="/article/lake-city-0"><strong>Lake City</strong> </a>on the southern slope of Sheep Mountain (83 Sunny Ave, Empire, CO 80438). The mine was established in 1885 after the discovery of the Bonanza Lode, a deposit of gold, silver, copper, and lead. Plagued by bad owners, bad timing, and just plain bad luck, the mining complex had only a few good years of production between 1901 and 1930, when it closed. It is representative of many mining operations in Colorado that held great promise and repeatedly attracted interest and investment, only to sputter and close time after time.</p> <p>Because of its contributions to mining history in the <a href="/article/san-juan-mountains">San Juan Mountains</a>, the Empire Chief site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. Today remnants of the complex’s 150-ton flotation mill, mine tunnel, and many associated structures still stand on the steep slopes of Sheep Mountain.</p> <h2>Establishment</h2> <p>The Empire Mine and Mill complex was built during the late nineteenth-century mining boom in the San Juan Mountains. Prospectors had visited and set up mining camps in the region as early as 1860, but <a href="/search/google/ute">Utes</a> and harsh winters drove them away. They returned in the early 1870s and made more significant discoveries, but large-scale mining would not occur until after 1873, when the region’s Ute population was removed under the <a href="/article/brunot-agreement">Brunot Agreement</a>.</p> <p>On August 27, 1871, prospectors Harry Henson, Joel Mullen, Albert Meade, and Charles Godwin discovered the <strong>Ute Ulay</strong> vein five miles above the mouth of Henson Creek. Because of the Ute presence, they could not safely develop the vein at the time, but they returned in 1874 and established the first mining claim in what soon became Hinsdale County. <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/otto-mears"><strong>Otto Mears</strong></a> had a toll road built through the area, and the town of Lake City was incorporated the following year. For the next decade, metal mining—especially silver—drove a booming Hinsdale County economy.</p> <p>The Bonanza Lode was discovered in 1885, but the mine disappears from the historical record until 1901, when the Henson Creek Lead Mines Company owned it. By that time, the mine employed four miners (paid $3.50 per eight-hour shift), a tram operator (paid $3.00 per shift), and a supervisor (paid $5.00 per shift). The miners extracted gold, silver, and copper ore valued at $18–20 per ton.</p> <h2>Ownership Issues</h2> <p>Sometime between 1901 and 1903, a forty-by-eighty-foot mill was built near the mine to crush raw ore and extract metal. Despite the addition of several new mining claims, development was slow. In 1904 the Hinsdale Tunnel and Reduction Company bought the complex but had solvency issues, as it had to pay a large sum of back wages to a night watchman and lost a lawsuit filed by another company in 1905. Later that year a group of Boston investors contributed $40,000 each toward the development of the company’s mine properties and payment of its debts. In 1906 the mine’s payroll expanded to six miners and the drifts—underground tunnels that follow a vein of ore—were extended to 3,725 feet. In addition to gold and silver, the mine began producing zinc ore.</p> <p>Structures added to the complex during this time included a two-story log boarding house, an office building, a blacksmith shop, and a powerhouse on Henson Creek that used a waterwheel to generate electricity for the mine and its buildings. However, even with new capital and new buildings, the complex was still subject to the ebb and flow of Colorado’s fickle mining industry—production dropped precipitously in 1907, and the mine went dormant.</p> <p>After failing to keep the mine afloat from 1907–9, the Hinsdale Tunnel and Reduction Company finally had to sell the Empire Chief properties to H. A. Avery in 1910. Avery owned the property until his death in 1925 but did little with it. Upon his death, Avery’s widow, Mary, sold the mine to R.E.L. Townsend, who incorporated the Empire Chief Mining Company, giving the complex its current name.</p> <h2>Empire Chief Era</h2> <p>The Empire Chief Mining Company was in considerably better financial shape than any of the mine’s previous owners, and it immediately set to work repairing the complex and preparing the mine shafts for reopening. Mining processes and technology had changed significantly since the mine last produced anything of note, and the company’s improvements reflected those changes.</p> <p>Nowhere was this more evident than in the company’s new mill, built in 1928–29. The mill used the new flotation method of mineral extraction, in which loads of poor- or medium-quality ore were crushed and dumped into a solution of water and chemical agents that encouraged the minerals to separate from the waste rock, attach to air bubbles, and rise to the surface in a froth that was then skimmed off. This method, developed in Australia around 1905, allowed for the profitable extraction of lower-quality ores at a time when most of the world’s higher-quality ores had been mined out.</p> <p>By early 1929, with a new flotation mill, electric lighting and telephone connections in all its tunnels and buildings, new ventilation infrastructure, and a stable supply of capital for support, the Empire Chief Mine and Mill were finally ready to begin producing again.</p> <p>Alas, the complex’s long-awaited reopening was again delayed, this time by tragedy. In March, a devastating <a href="/article/avalanche"><strong>avalanche</strong></a> buried two bunkhouses and the complex’s office building. Six miners were killed in the slide, which remains the deadliest avalanche in Hinsdale County history. Luckily for the Empire Chief, the avalanche spared the new mill, and the mine only had to endure one more setback—a nearby hydroelectric plant was temporarily dormant—until production finally began later in 1929.</p> <h2>Closure and Sale</h2> <p>However—and perhaps predictably—even the revamped Empire Chief Mine did not produce at a sustainable rate. The complex brought in just $3,078 in ore sales in 1929 against the $10,000 the company had spent on improvements over the previous few years. Then came the stock market crash of that year, which plunged the nation into the <strong>Great Depression</strong>. Amid coal shortages, payroll turmoil, and tumbling investments nationwide, the Empire Chief Mine and Mill were shut down permanently in 1930.</p> <p>After its closure, the Empire Chief complex passed through a series of owners from the 1930s through the 1970s until Vickers Enterprises eventually acquired it in 1977. The company obtained the property by paying only $484.45 in back taxes.</p> <h2>Today</h2> <p>Today the Empire Chief complex is accessible via a rough gravel road leading west from Lake City along Henson Creek. Remaining structures include the flotation mill building, powerhouse, tram, pipeline, water tank, and other ancillary structures. The mill building, the tallest and most prominent structure at the site, is visibly dilapidated, with holes punched in the walls and roof and timber debris littered around its base.</p> <p>In 2000 the <strong>State Historical Fund</strong> awarded the Hinsdale County Historical Society a $105,473 grant to improve various historical structures throughout the county; in 2001 some of that money went toward the stabilization of the Empire Chief’s mill building, as it was near collapse. Since then, no other preservation work has been performed at the site.</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/encyclopedia-staff" hreflang="und">Encyclopedia Staff</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/empire-chief-mine-and-mill" hreflang="en">empire chief mine and mill</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/empire-chief-mine" hreflang="en">empire chief mine</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/lake-city-history" hreflang="en">lake city history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/lake-city" hreflang="en">Lake City</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/hinsdale-county" hreflang="en">hinsdale county</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/hinsdale-county-history" hreflang="en">hinsdale county history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/san-juan-mountains" hreflang="en">San Juan Mountains</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/flotation-mill" hreflang="en">flotation mill</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p>Dawn Bunyak, “<a href="http://www.mininghistoryassociation.org/Journal/MHJ-v7-2000-Bunyak.pdf">To Float or Sink: A Brief History of Flotation Milling</a>,” <em>Mining History </em>7 (2000).</p> <p>Julie Coleman-Fike, “Empire Chief Mine and Mill,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form (1999).</p> <p>Carl E. Conner, “<a href="https://www.historycolorado.org/sites/default/files/files/OAHP/crforms_edumat/pdfs/631.pdf" title=" (external link)">Hinsdale County Metal Mining</a>,” National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form (1999).</p> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p>Duane Smith, <em>Song of the Hammer and Drill: The Colorado San Juans, 1860–1914 </em>(Golden: Colorado School of Mines Press, 1982).</p> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Wed, 17 May 2017 21:18:38 +0000 yongli 2577 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Hinsdale County http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/hinsdale-county <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Hinsdale County</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: x field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-article-image.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-article-image.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div id="carouselEncyclopediaArticle" class="carousel slide" data-bs-ride="true"> <div class="carousel-inner"> <div class="carousel-item active"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * 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href="/image/hinsdale-county"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image_style' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'image' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/Hinsdale%20County%20Media%201_0.jpg?itok=Spoi3Qk3" width="640" height="463" alt="" typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-wide" /> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-style.html.twig' --> </a> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/image-formatter.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="carousel-caption d-none d-md-block"> <h5><a href="/image/hinsdale-county" rel="bookmark"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--image.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Hinsdale County</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> </a></h5> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--image.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--image.html.twig * field--body.html.twig x field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Established in 1874 in the heart of the San Juan Mountains, Hinsdale County is one of Colorado's most prolific historic mining counties.</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--text-with-summary.html.twig' --> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/content/node--image--article-detail-image.html.twig' --> </div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--field-article-image--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2016-11-14T13:05:33-07:00" title="Monday, November 14, 2016 - 13:05" class="datetime">Mon, 11/14/2016 - 13:05</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/hinsdale-county" data-a2a-title="Hinsdale County"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fhinsdale-county&amp;title=Hinsdale%20County"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>Established in 1874, Hinsdale County is a mountainous, sparsely populated county of 1,123 square miles in southwest Colorado. The county was named for <strong>George A. Hinsdale</strong>, a prominent politician and newspaperman in nineteenth-century Colorado. The county currently has a population of 786. <a href="/article/lake-city-0"><strong>Lake City</strong></a>, home to 408 residents, is the county seat and only incorporated area. Hinsdale County borders <a href="/article/gunnison-county"><strong>Gunnison County</strong></a> to the north, <strong><a href="/article/saguache-county">Saguache</a> </strong>and <a href="/article/mineral-county"><strong>Mineral</strong></a> Counties to the east, <a href="/article/archuleta-county"><strong>Archuleta County</strong></a> to the south, and <a href="/article/la-plata-county"><strong>La Plata</strong></a>, <a href="/article/san-juan-county"><strong>San Juan</strong></a>, and <a href="/article/ouray-county"><strong>Ouray</strong></a> Counties to the west.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Located in the heart of the <a href="/article/san-juan-mountains"><strong>San Juan Mountains</strong></a>, Hinsdale County was once the domain of the Nuche, or Ute people, until American prospectors found significant <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/precious-metal-mining-colorado"><strong>gold and silver</strong></a> deposits during the 1870s. Lake City, in the northern section of the county, was established in 1874 as a supply town for nearby mining camps. The city was platted along Lake Fork, a tributary of the <a href="/article/gunnison-river"><strong>Gunnison River</strong></a>, and today State Highway 149—part of the <strong>Silver Thread Scenic Byway</strong>—connects Lake City with <a href="/article/creede"><strong>Creede</strong></a> in Mineral County and Gunnison in Gunnison County. The Rio Grande River flows eastward through the southern part of the county, dammed at the Rio Grande Reservoir.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Hinsdale County boasts several <a href="/article/fourteeners"><strong>Fourteeners</strong></a> (mountains above 14,000 feet): <strong>Uncompahgre Peak</strong> (14,321 ft.), Handies Peak (14,058 ft.), Wetterhorn Peak (14,021 ft.), and Sunshine Peak (14,007 ft.). Other natural attractions include Lake San Cristobal south of Lake City and Cannibal Plateau, site of the infamous <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/alferd-packer"><strong>Alferd Packer</strong></a> incident. Most of Hinsdale County’s land is managed by the <a href="/article/us-forest-service-colorado"><strong>US Forest Service</strong></a> or the Bureau of Land Management as parts of the San Juan, Rio Grande, and Uncompahgre<strong> </strong>National Forests.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Native Americans</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Archaeological evidence from the Capitol City Moraine Site indicates that <a href="/article/paleo-indian-period"><strong>Paleo-Indian</strong></a> people frequented the Hinsdale County area as early as 12,000 years ago. The area was too cold and rugged to support permanent settlement. Around 1300 the area became home to the <a href="/search/google/ute"><strong>Ute</strong></a> people, nomadic Native Americans who hunted in the high country during the summer and camped in lower valleys and along river bottoms in the winter. The three Ute bands most common in the Hinsdale County area were the Weenuche, Capote, and Tabeguache Utes. Today, the Weenuche are federally recognized as part of the <a href="/article/ute-history-and-ute-mountain-ute-tribe"><strong>Ute Mountain Ute Tribe</strong></a>, and the Capote as part of the <strong>Southern Ute Tribe</strong>. Both tribes still reside in Colorado, but the Tabeguache now reside with other Utes on a Utah reservation as part of the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/northern-ute-people-uintah-and-ouray-reservation"><strong>Northern Ute Tribe</strong></a>.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>For more than five centuries, the Weenuche, Capote, and Tabeguache Utes used the various high valleys and parks in the Hinsdale County area as summer hunting grounds before descending to their winter camps. Even as the North American frontiers of the Spanish, French, and eventually American empires encroached on what is now southwest Colorado, the sheer ruggedness of the San Juans kept the Hinsdale County area off of most published maps until the late nineteenth century.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>After American miners made significant gold and silver discoveries near the site of present-day <a href="/article/silverton"><strong>Silverton</strong></a> in the early 1870s, the United States obtained the Hinsdale County area from the Utes via the <a href="/article/brunot-agreement"><strong>Brunot Agreement of 1873</strong></a>. Not all Utes supported the agreement, which ceded more than 3.5 million acres of their land. The Utes still held a large reservation on Colorado’s <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/western-slope"><strong>Western Slope</strong></a> until 1879, when the <a href="/article/meeker-incident"><strong>Meeker Incident</strong></a> at the <a href="/article/white-river-ute-indian-agency"><strong>White River Indian Agency</strong></a> in what is now <a href="/article/rio-blanco-county"><strong>Rio Blanco County</strong></a> prompted many white Coloradans to call for the Utes’ removal.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>A new agreement dissolved the Utes’ Western Slope reservation and confined Colorado’s Ute population to new reservations in Utah and southwest Colorado. Although many Utes continued to range off the reservations to hunt, by 1882 the Hinsdale County area and the rest of the San Juan Mountains lay open for permanent Anglo-American settlement.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Prospectors and County Formation</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>On August 27, 1871, the prospectors Harry Henson, Joel Mullen, Albert Meade, and Charles Godwin discovered the Ute Ulay vein five miles above the mouth of Henson Creek, a tributary of Lake Fork. Because they were trespassing in Ute territory, the prospectors could not safely develop the vein at that time, but they returned in 1874 and established the first mining claim in what would become Hinsdale County. The Ute Ulay Mine eventually became a rich source of gold, silver, lead, and copper, and was among the largest producers of silver and lead in the state.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Around the same time, <strong>Enos Hotchkiss</strong> was in the area working on one of <a href="/article/otto-mears"><strong>Otto </strong></a><a href="/article/otto-mears"><strong>Mears</strong></a>’s toll roads, and he located a promising gold vein north of Lake San Cristobal. Hotchkiss built the first structure at the present site of Lake City and soon set up the Hotchkiss Mine (later renamed the Golden Fleece).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>News of Henson’s and Hotchkiss’s discoveries brought hundreds more miners to the area, and the mining boom in the greater San Juan region prompted the organization of Hinsdale, La Plata, and <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/rio-grande-county"><strong>Rio Grande</strong></a> Counties in 1874. Hinsdale County was named in honor of George A. Hinsdale, a former lieutenant governor of Colorado and one of the founding editors of the <strong><em>Pueblo Chieftain</em></strong><em>,</em> who died that year.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Though it is often romanticized, nineteenth-century prospecting in the San Juans was extremely dangerous, as illustrated by the story of Alferd Packer. In February 1874, Packer and five other prospectors became lost in what is now northern Hinsdale County and ran out of provisions. Several days later one of the men, Shannon Bell, became crazed with starvation and killed three of the party as they slept. Packer allegedly killed Bell in self-defense after Bell attacked him with a hatchet. Unable to leave on account of the deep <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/snow"><strong>snow</strong></a>, Packer survived for six weeks by eating the flesh of his dead companions. A sketch artist for <em>Harper’s </em>magazine stumbled across the bodies of Packer’s companions on August 20, 1874, five miles from present-day Lake City at a place now called Deadman’s Gulch. Packer was eventually found guilty of murdering his comrades and sentenced to seventeen years in prison.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Mining</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Lake City was incorporated on August 16, 1875. Henry Finley, a local businessman who had worked on the toll road the year before and worked with Hotchkiss to set up Hinsdale County’s first sawmill, served as the first president of the Lake City Town Company. <em>The Silver World</em>, the first newspaper on Colorado’s Western Slope, also began publishing in Lake City in 1875, and the town received a US post office. By 1878 Lake City had two smelters, making it the central supply and processing point for dozens of mines and mining camps in northern Hinsdale County. The county courthouse went up in 1877 and remains Colorado’s oldest continually operating courthouse. The <strong>Denver &amp; Rio Grande Railroad</strong> arrived in Lake City in 1889, allowing mines to more efficiently ship ore to market.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Gold and silver production spiked in Hinsdale County after the arrival of the railroad. For instance, the Ute Ulay Mine produced some $12 million in gold, silver, lead, and copper between 1891 and 1903. Silver production across the county reached 400,000 ounces by 1892 before falling off during the crash in silver prices the next year. By the turn of the century, when lead and zinc production peaked, there were nearly seventy mines operating in the Lake City District.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Hinsdale County’s most productive mining operations tapered off by 1920, and the county did not experience a mining revival until the early 1950s, when modest amounts of zinc, lead, and copper were produced.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>While mining companies profited handsomely from their work, miners toiled for a pittance in horrible and dangerous conditions, working between twelve and fourteen hours per day. By the 1890s strikes were common across all of Colorado’s mining districts, and Lake City was no exception. In 1899 some 200 miners, mostly Italians, struck at the Ute Ulay and Hidden Treasure Mines. Armed with dynamite and rifles stolen from the Lake City armory, the strikers occupied the mine properties and forced the sheriff to call for help from the state capital. It took the arrival of more than 350 state militiamen to break the strike, and all of the participating miners were fired in March 1899. Thereafter, some local mines refused to hire Italians.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Today</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Though its mining glory days have long since passed, Hinsdale County residents have preserved the town’s mining history, and that history is now one of the area’s main tourist attractions. The Hinsdale County Historical Society was established in 1973, and in 1975 it opened the Hinsdale County Museum in Lake City’s historic Finley Block building. In 1978 the town’s historic district was added to the National Register of Historic Places. With more than 200 nineteenth-century buildings—including homes, barns, and churches—the historic district is one of the most robust in Colorado.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Efforts are also under way to preserve a set of buildings associated with the Ute Ulay Mine, which was named one of Colorado’s Most Endangered Places in 2015. The Silver Thread Scenic Byway—which links the towns of Gunnison, Lake City, Creede, and South Fork—offers motorists access to some of the San Juans’ most remote historic mining areas as well as spectacular mountain scenery.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Although Hinsdale County has an active historic preservation community, visitors come for much more than heritage tourism. Thousands of travelers head to the county each year to climb Fourteeners, camp under starlit skies, and fish at Lake San Cristobal or one of the county’s many trout-filled streams. Aware of the remote town’s appeal to city dwellers, Lake City’s official website even boasts that the area has no stoplights, very few stop signs, and no light pollution. Local conservation organizations, such as the Lake Fork Valley Conservancy and the Lake San Cristobal Project (part of the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District), are focused on protecting and enhancing the county’s natural areas so visitors may continue to enjoy them into the future.</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/encyclopedia-staff" hreflang="und">Encyclopedia Staff</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/hinsdale-county" hreflang="en">hinsdale county</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/alferd-packer" hreflang="en">alferd packer</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/alfred-packer" hreflang="en">alfred packer</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ute-ulay-mine" hreflang="en">ute ulay mine</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/san-juan-mountains" hreflang="en">San Juan Mountains</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/southwest-colorado" hreflang="en">southwest colorado</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/hinsdale-county-history" hreflang="en">hinsdale county history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/lake-city" hreflang="en">Lake City</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/uncompahgre-peak" hreflang="en">uncompahgre peak</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p>Kye Abraham, Stan Whinnery, and Mark Rudolph, “<a href="https://lkagold.com/uploads/The_Ute-Ulay_presentation_San_Juan_Mining_Summit_FINALpdf.pdf">The Ute Ulay: The Mine That Made Lake City</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Carl E. Conner, “<a href="https://www.historycolorado.org/sites/default/files/files/OAHP/crforms_edumat/pdfs/631.pdf">Hinsdale County Metal Mining</a>,” US Department of the Interior, National Park Service Form 10-900b (Denver: History Colorado, 2010).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Hinsdale County Museum, “<a href="https://www.lakecitymuseum.com/component/content/article/9-uncategorised/72-history-of-the-finley-block-and-henry-finley">History of the Finley Block and Henry Finley</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>John Duer Irving and Howland Bancroft, “<a href="http://www.mininghistoryassociation.org/Meetings/Creede/LC%20Mines%20c1911%20Bul478%20BL13%20CROP.jpg">Geology and Ore Deposits near Lake City, Colorado</a>,” US Geological Survey Bulletin 478, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1911).</p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="https://lakecity.com/">Lake City</a></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Lake City, “<a href="https://www.lakecity.com/mountain-town-activities/historic-attractions">Area History &amp; Timeline</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Lake City, “<a href="https://www.lakecity.com/mountain-town-activities/historic-attractions/18-things-to-do/history/national-historic-district/15-national-historic-district">National Historic District</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Lake City DIRT, “<a href="https://lakecitydirt.org/ute-ulay-project">Ute Ulay Project</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Bonnie L. Pitblado, C.W. Merriman, and Caroline Gabe, “Assessing Integrity at the PaleoIndian-Historic Capitol City Moraine Site (5HN510), Hinsdale County, Colorado,” <em>Southwestern Lore </em>73, no. 3 (Fall 2007).</p>&#13; &#13; <p> Pueblo County Historical Society, “George A. Hinsdale (1826–1874),” Hinsdale County Historical Society, updated 2013.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Ed Raines, “<a href="http://www.mininghistoryassociation.org/LakeCity.htm">Mining History of Lake City</a>,” Mining History Association, 2011.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Virginia McConnell Simmons, <em>The Ute Indians of Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico </em>(Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/cgi-bin/colorado?a=d&amp;d=SME18990318-01.2.8">Strike at Lake City Mines</a>,” <em>San Miguel Examiner</em>, March 18, 1899.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Whizbang Works, LLC, <em>Prospecting: A Guide to the Arts &amp; History of Lake City, Colorado</em> (Lake City, CO: Lake City/Hinsdale County Chamber of Commerce, 2006).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Wilderness.net, “<a href="https://wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&amp;amp;amp;sec=wildView&amp;amp;amp;wname=Uncompahgre%20Wilderness">Uncompahgre Wilderness</a>.”</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p><a href="https://www.colorado.gov:443/hinsdalecounty">Hinsdale County</a></p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="https://www.lakecitymuseum.com/">Hinsdale County Museum</a></p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="https://www.lfvc.org/">Lake Fork Valley Conservancy</a></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Rocky Mountain PBS, <a href="https://video.rmpbs.org/video/2365922974/">"Courthouses,"</a> <em>Colorado Experience</em>, December 29, 2016.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Duane A. Smith, <em>San Juan Legacy: Life in the Mining Camps </em>(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009).</p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="https://ugrwcd.org/">Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District</a></p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Mon, 14 Nov 2016 20:05:33 +0000 yongli 2041 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org