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Perched on the side of Battle Mountain at
nearly 10,000 feet elevation is Victor,
Colorado,
a village steeped in history. Filled with vintage buildings and
gold mining structures, this semi-ghost town is one of the most
preserved mining camps in
Colorado.
Before the town was even officially
platted in 1893 it had already become known as the City of Mines
because the largest and richest gold mines of the
Cripple Creek Mining District were located on Battle Mountain just above the camp.
The
Cripple Creek gold rush began when cowboy and part-time prospector, Bob Womack,
found gold on his cattle ranch in 1890. The ranch, bisected by a
small stream called
Cripple Creek,
would be just the first of many locations in the
Cripple Creek Mining District to be filled with rich veins of gold ore. When
Womack first found the rich vein, there were less than two dozen
people living in the four by six mile long area that would be called
home to more than 50,000 people in less than a decade.
When word of Womack’s
find got out, the area was soon crawling with prospectors seeking out
their own fortunes in the remote area on the southwestern side of
Pikes Peak. Literally overnight, the town of
Cripple Creek was born, along with almost a dozen other mining camps including Victor ,
Goldfield, Elkton, Altman, Independence, Anaconda, Gillette, Cameron,
Beaver Park, Arequa and Lawrence.
The first gold was
discovered in Victor
in 1891 by Winfield Scott Stratton who soon began the Independence
Mine. This area, too, immediately filled up with miners. Warren
Woods and his sons, Frank and Harry, soon formed the Woods Investment
Company and purchased a 136-acre site at the foot of Battle Mountain,
where they platted a town site and named it Victor ,
after an early homesteader named Victor C. Adams. Marketing
their lots as "gold mines,” the Woods sold them quickly to the many
prospectors and businessmen, who built homes, stores, hotels, and a
number of saloons, along with hundreds of mines.
In addition to the
Independence Mine, other mines, including the Portland and Ajax Mines,
were doing a brisk business just north of Victor
on Battle Mountain, called the "richest hill on earth.”
And, in the very center of town the Woods
Brothers, who were excavating the foundation for the much needed
Victor Hotel in 1894, discovered a rock that was rich in ore. The
Woods brothers wasted no time in finding another lot for the hotel and
began to build the Gold Coin Mine at Diamond and Fifth Streets, which
would become one of the richest in the area, producing more than
$50,000 per month in gold ore. |
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