| Aspen and spruce groves cap some of the hills and spill down the gulches. Weathered gallows-frames rise above clusters of unpainted mine-shaft buildings. The gold camp as a whole, hemmed in by higher hills, is the size of a small cattle ranch, barely ten thousand acres. Nobody writes odes to it and yet it has an odd bleak beauty, like the profile of William S. Hart. |
| But our story is about the past, about the sad or comic events, the often frantic events, that occurred when a peaceful alpine pasture was found to overlay one of the great treasures of history. The main use of gold is emotional, not material; it is something everybody has yearned for since the time of Adam and Eve. Kings and dictators and money experts have tried to suppress the craving but it has remained with us always, as anyone will tell you who is familiar with today's enormous international black market. No small spot on earth has satisfied this gold craving so completely for so many people over so long a period as Cripple Creek, Colorado. During its first quarter century, 1891 to 1916, Cripple's production reached $340,000,000. Another $90,000,000 has been found in the years of decline, making a grand total to 1952 of $432,000,000. The gold total, weighing 20,000,000 ounces, or 625 tons, is figured mostly at the gold price of $20.67 an ounce which prevailed up to 1934. At today's official gold price of $35 an ounce the grand total would be $700,000,000. |
| This is a terrible amount of wealth with which to stimulate the greed of men. The South African Rand has produced far more, but the Rand is a vast region, not a gold camp measured in acres. Australia's famous camps, Bendigo and Kalgoorlie, have produced gold worth $425,ooo,ooo each. The epic Mother Lode of the Forty-Niners produced a little more |
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