Recent reads

Cripple Creek! A quick history of the world's greatest gold camp, by Leland Feitz.

Of course my eyes turned first to the photographs depicting the fantastically convoluted tangle of railroad and interurban lines that once snaked through the hills between Cripple Creek and the nearby mining towns and linked the whole district to mainline connections at Colorado Springs and Florence. However, the author's anecdotes about Cripple Creek's early days also make interesting reading. There are the usual accounts of unlikely discoveries, such as the miner who located a rich lode by throwing his hat in the air and digging where it landed. There are tales of lucky/unlucky prospectors who discovered fantastic caches of gold only to lose it all to big-city sharpers and die in miserable poverty. And there's the story of Pearl DeVere, the notorious madame of the "Old Homestead Parlor House", whose body was accompanied to the cemetary by a solemnly respectful procession of town officials and police. Yep, things were different in those days. But I find it interesting that anecdotes about old mining towns seem to follow similar patterns, whether they take place in Colorado, Nevada, California or Alaska.