tools and equipment in the stores of Larimer Street and getting ready to
meet his father in Blackhawk for the mile’s drive to Central City. When
we started for Colorado’s great gold camps, I was tremendously stirred
and elated. I had been listening avidly to the many tales of untold
fortunes already made from the district’s famous “blossom rock.” I was
sure that ours was the next treasure tale that would come out of Central
City to be told over the massive bars of Larimer Street—the story of how
clever Harvey Doe had presented his beautiful bride with a gold mine
that would make her a millionaire only a few months after they were
married!
The train that bore us westward toward James Peak puffed along in a
steep canon beside the gushing waters of Clear Creek, a creek no longer
clear, but green-grey in color because of the tailings from the
new-fangled mills that had been introduced to treat the ore. I was
disappointed in the looks of that water and I wondered if there were to
be other disappointments for me ahead, in those great mountains. But I
put the thought aside and went back to the vision of myself as an
elegant social leader in Denver—
How soon would these mountains answer my prayers—or would they answer at
all?
_Chapter Two_
The miners in the Central City district were changing shifts at noon. In
the midst of the turmoil Harvey and I got off the train at Blackhawk and
caught the stage for the mile’s ride up Gregory Gulch after being handed
a note from Mr. Doe directing us to a boarding house where rooms were
awaiting. As the miners scuffed along the dusty road in their heavy
boots, swinging lunch pails, they drifted into groups. From nearly every
one of these burst song, each group lending an air to the intermingled
medley. I was able to follow some of the melodies, which were of such a
haunting quality I leaned forward and tapped the driver on the back.
“What are those men singing?” I asked.
“Cornish songs. The miners are all Cousin Jacks hereabouts—that is, that
ain’t Irish. That’s why you see so much good stonework in them retaining
walls and buildings around here. When we git into Central, look up at
our school ’n ’Piscopal Church. Built by Cornishmen, or Cousin Jacks, as
we calls ’em. They brought the knack from the old country.”
“But how do they have such splendid voices?”
“Oh, them’s natural. Real musical people—and then all the high-class
people gets them into singin’ societies and sech. Last March a group put
on ‘The Bohemian Girl’ and now we’re goin’ to build the only Opry House
in Colorado for jest sech goin’s-on. When we don’t have shows goin’
through, we have some sort of doin’s of our own. We’re the
up-and-comin’est camp in the West. Got some hankerin’ for higher
things.”
I looked about me again after I heard this. It sounded odd to me that a
mining camp should be interested in culture but it also seemed
encouraging. I was thrilled to think they were building an opera house
and that the town specialized in amateur theatricals. I felt certain I
had come to the right place. Besides winning love and riches in this
strange setting, I would also get my long-cherished wish to go on the
stage!
The setting was certainly strange enough to my eyes accustomed, as I
was, to flat, rolling country. The towns of Blackhawk, Mountain City,
Central City, Dogtown, and Nevadaville were all huddled on top of each
other in the narrow bottom of stark, treeless gulches in the most
puzzling jigsaw fashion, but totaling nearly 6,000 people. Mines, ore
dumps, mills, shafthouses, blacksmith shops, livery stables, railroad
trestles, cottages and fine residences were perched at crazy angles,
some on stilts, and scrambled together with no semblance of order while
they emitted an assortment of screeching, throbbing and pounding noises.
The only corner that had any form at all was the junction of Lawrence
St., Main St. and Eureka St. in the business section of Central City.
Lawrence and Eureka were really continuations of the same street but
Main came uphill at a funny slant from where Spring and Nevada Gulches
met so that on one corner, a saloon, the building had to be shaped like
a slice of pie and across from it, the First National Bank building had
a corner considerably wider than a right angle.
The air of the business buildings, despite their odd architectural
lines, was very substantial since, as the driver explained, they had all
been rebuilt in brick and stone just three years before, after Central
had had two disastrous fires in 1873 and 1874. I knew the tragedy of
fire in pioneer communities and sighed, remembering how Papa had lost
his money. This part of Central was more prepossessing than what we had
driven through. The rest was too battered from eighteen years’ careless
usage in men’s frenzy to tear the gold from the many lodes that crossed
Gregory Gulch—the Bobtail, Gregory, Bates and other famous producers.
The driver pointed out our boarding house on the other side of town up
Roworth St., behind where the railway station would be when they
completed the switchback track that they were now building to climb the
500 feet rise from Blackhawk to Central. Harvey and I started to gather
up our valises and carry-alls. We told the express office to hold our
trunk until we knew our plans more definitely and trudged off. We met
Colonel Doe coming down the hill to meet us.
“Hello, there, you newlyweds,” he called. “I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you
at Blackhawk but I can’t drive our buggy in these hills until I get a
brake put on it.”
Colonel Doe had a tall, commanding presence and he looked particularly
well against this mammoth country. He was always very bluff and genial
and he seemed to suit these boisterous, breezy surroundings. He laughed
now at the joke on himself.
“I thought I was being so smart to ship our two-seated buggy out here to
save money. But the blasted thing’s no danged good without a brake!
After we have dinner, which is all ready at the boarding house, we’ll
drive to a blacksmith shop and get it fixed up. Then we’ll go see the
mine.”
So that’s what we did. We drove to the blacksmith shop of John R.
Morgan, a Welshman who told my father-in-law he had settled in Wisconsin
when he first came over from Wales. Later he had moved farther West. In
turn, Colonel Doe told Morgan how he had lived in Central the first
years of its existence and how after selling out, had gone back to
Wisconsin where he was in the legislature in 1866 and had lived there
ever since. While the buggy was being outfitted, the older men had a
pleasant time exchanging comparisons of the two places.
Harvey and I, meanwhile, talked to Mr. Morgan’s son, Evan. He was a
handsome nineteen-year-old lad who helped around the shop, shoeing heavy
ore teams while his father completed more complicated iron-work
commissions. He was quite stocky and strong and later did our work for
the mine, shoeing horses and making ore buckets. Their shop was on
Spring Street, just a stone’s throw from the Chinese alley whose joss
sticks had started Central’s worst conflagration. He was very affable,
had a good Welsh voice and sang me a few Celtic airs when I spoke of the
Cornishmen I had heard singing earlier.
After the buggy was equipped for mountain travel, we set off for our
mine. I could hardly wait I was so excited. We bumped and scratched
along up the stiff pull of Nevada Street to Dogtown, turning out
frequently to let four-horse ore wagons pass, and then we tacked back
along Quartz Hill to the shafthouse. And there it was—the Fourth of July
mine!
I’ll never forget how elated and excited I was, inspecting the mine that
day, little knowing what sorrow it was to bring. The mine was half
Colonel Doe’s and half Benoni C. Waterman’s. They had bought it in 1871
but very little work had been done on it. Father Doe’s idea was to lease
the Waterman half on a two-year agreement and sink the shaft 200 feet
deeper, timbering it well. Then if the Fourth of July opened up the ore
he expected, Harvey could buy out the Waterman interest for $10,000 the
first year or $15,000 the second. If the ore didn’t materialize after
the two years were up, then Waterman was free to sell his one-half
interest anytime he wanted. Colonel Doe would give all profits on his
share to Harvey and if he made good, would deed it outright to us in a
year.
Everything sounded glorious to me. I clapped my hands and hugged my
bulky father-in-law in appreciation.
“Oh, you’re just too wonderful!” I cried. “I know your gift is going to
make Harvey and me rich. Then I can help poor Mama and Papa out of all
their troubles in bringing up such a large family. You’re a dear.”
The summer eased smoothly along. Harvey and I rented a little cottage on
Spring Street to live in and while I was busy getting settled, I began
to learn the spell of Colorado’s gaunt, tremendous mountains. By the
middle of August, the lawyers had completed the agreement between Father
Doe and Mr. Waterman and we had waved our benefactor off home to Oshkosh
from the station at Blackhawk. I wanted Harvey to record the agreement
immediately as a crew was already working at the mine. But after Father
Doe left, I began to find out what Harvey was really like—his shyness
was just weakness. He was lazy and procrastinating and he thought
because he was a Doe that everything should be done for him.
He was not as big as his father in height or in character. Father Doe
had lived in Central with his wife during the Civil War years and owned
a large parcel of mining claims in both Nevadaville and Central City, a
mill and a large residence in Prosser Gulch, and a boarding house nearby
for the miners. He invested $5,000 and made so much profit, particularly
from the Gunnell and Wood mines in Prosser Gulch, up at the head of
Eureka Street, that he was able to retire rich in June, 1865, after the
War was over. He made a trip to New York and closed with the Sierra
Madre Investment Co., taking payment partly in cash and partly in
ownership with the company. After that, he returned home to Oshkosh and
occupied himself with lumber lands in Wisconsin. But he made occasional
trips back to Central as superintendent of the Sierra Madre Co. He was a
good business man and very civic in his interests.
But not so with his son. Three weeks later, I, myself, had to fetch out
the buggy, hitch up the team, and drive Harvey to the Court House to
have the agreement recorded. That day was September 6, 1877, and I
remember what a peculiar sensation it gave me watching Harvey write his
legal name, W. H. Doe, Jr. He and his signature seemed suddenly just a
tenuous shadow of his father, a shadow having no existence if the body
that casts it, moves away.
“Oh, this isn’t like me!” I thought, shaking my curls in disapproval of
my doubt. “I’m really very confident—not morbid. I just _know_ Colorado
will be good to me.”
We stepped out again into the September briskness and I urged him to
hurry with sinking and timbering the shaft as per agreement.
“You want to get a lot of work done before the snow flies,” I urged.
He seemed wavering but I handed him the reins and urged him on toward
the mine.
“I’m sure everything will be all right, dear,” I added.
At the bottom of the street we kissed and I stood there watching my
young husband as he drove off up the road toward Nevadaville. All around
were crowds of men intent on their business, driving heavy ore-wagons
whose teams lurched with the weight and whose brakes screeched on the
steep grades. Others were loading ore cars with waste and dumping them
off the end of little tracks laid out on high hillocks jutting
precariously into the blue sky. The steady rhythm of pumps and the whir
of steam hoists resounded from each hill. You could even hear the narrow
gauge railroad whistle at Blackhawk shrieking its demoniac energy while
bringing in machinery, huge and unwieldy, for the hoists of mine shafts,
for the stamp mills crunching ore, and a hundred other purposes. Near
its track at many points were sluice boxes carrying water back to the
creek after being denuded of its placer wealth. Everywhere were serious
men busy making money. Gold was king!
The main street was crowded with women going to market on foot, carpet
bags or carry-alls slung on their arm for supplies, some of them leading
burros to pack their purchases. Most of the bars were open and men, off
work at the mines, idled in and out or lounged briefly in the strangely
bright Colorado sunshine of this mild day. Others were to be seen on
doorsteps, chewing tobacco, chatting or whittling on an old wheel spoke.
The banks were open for business and cashiers from the mines were taking
in gold dust, nuggets and retorts to be weighed. It did not seem
possible that among all this hustle and industry there would be no place
for us.
“Hello, there, Baby! Want a ride?”
I raised my eyes. Two dashing young men, quite well dressed, expensive
Stetsons on their heads, were in a gig that trotted past. They looked
like mining engineers or mill managers. I couldn’t help smiling at their
handsome, good-humored appearance, and one of them swept off his Stetson
and bowed low. The other, with the reins, pulled up the horse.
“You’re much too pretty and young to be standing alone on a street
corner,” he said.
“And you’re too fresh! I’ve just been seeing my husband off to his mine,
thank you,” I replied as I flounced around and started up the hill with
a great show of indignation and temper. Actually, I was quite flattered.
“When did you come to camp?” he called, paying no attention to my
attitude and slapping his horse with the reins to follow along beside me
on the board walk.
I did not reply but kept on climbing steadily as fast as I could go up
Spring Street, puffing for wind in the high altitude.
“Oh, leave her alone, Slim—she’s a nice girl. Come on, I want to get
down to the post office.”
“Hell, all right. Well, good-bye, Baby—you better tell your husband to
watch out or big bad men will be after you.”
I was really furious now. I could see he didn’t believe I was a married
woman. He took me for just a common girl of the streets. Turning around,
I stamped my foot and started to yell at him when the other one said:
“No offense, ma’am. Slim, here, hasn’t seen a girl like you in so long
he’s forgotten his manners.”
They wheeled their horse and started off down toward Main Street,
leaving me still gasping on the walk. I had been insulted. I wanted to
cry, to cry for the shame of it! But as their trim backs receded in the
swift-wheeling gig, I told myself this was what I had come
for—adventure. And here it was. I ended by trudging on up hill with a
smile flickering at the corners of my mouth.
But the smile was not to remain long. When Harvey returned that night he
was dirty and tired and discouraged. He had taken a lot of samples from
the sump of the shaft to the assay office. But a man he had gone to for
advice in Nevadaville hadn’t thought the samples worth bothering to pay
for assaying.
“You might keep on sinking your shaft and strike a better vein. But
these quartz lodes you got down there now are too low grade to work,”
had been his verdict.
What to do now? My heart flew into my throat. We had had only the money
that Harvey’s father had left us to get started on. In a few more weeks
with running a crew at the mine, our capital would be used up and if the
ore were no good, we would have nothing to live on. But if we did try to
keep on we might strike high-grade ten feet beyond—just like so many
bonanza kings. That’s what I wanted to do and suggested we borrow money
at the bank.
“I’ll help you, Harvey, I’m strong.”
Our little house on Spring Street was not very well tended because for
six months, besides being wife and housekeeper, I donned miner’s clothes
to run the horse-pulled hoist in our mine. We each worked a crew on
separate shafts. For several months we had rich ore, then the vein went
“in cap.” We kept on sinking, but all to no avail. We still didn’t
strike high-grade ore and the shaft caved from faulty timbering.
“I guess I better get a job in one of the big mines,” Harvey suggested.
Me, the wife of a common miner—working for a few dollars a day! The idea
struck horror to my soul.
“Certainly not!” I replied. “I won’t have it.”
“Well, what else is there to do? We can’t go home. Father would be mad
and Mother won’t have you in the house.”
“Your mother—with her airs. I’m just as good as she is any day!”
“I’ll thank you not to insult my mother.”
Words tumbled on words like blows. Harvey and I were in the midst of our
first serious quarrel. The higher our tempers rose, the more bitter our
choice of barbs to hurt each other. I hated the idea of having married a
man who would give up. I thought I had married a clever man. Instead, I
had married a weakling. I said all this and more.
“I’ve been brought up by self-respecting people who only spend what
they’ve got,” Harvey replied heatedly. “We haven’t got the money to
fulfill the agreement of timbering in a ‘good, substantial, workmanlike
manner’—and besides, it’s too long a gamble. I don’t know enough about
carpentry and mining. It’s better for me to learn what I’m about first
by taking a steady job. Then, when I know more, and maybe have saved up
some money of our own, we can try developing the mine.”
I thought this plan was cowardly and stupid. Maybe development would be
a long gamble, but all mining was a gamble—even life was a gamble—and
only those who had the courage to play could win.
But not Harvey Doe. He got a job mucking in the Bobtail Tunnel. We gave
up our little house on Spring St. and moved down to Blackhawk, the
milling and smelting center, partly to be close to the Bobtail and
partly because Blackhawk being less good socially, was cheaper. We lived
in two rooms of a red brick building on Gregory Street (which today has
Philip Rohling painted on the door). The building was close to one
erected by Sandelowsky, Pelton & Co., prosperous dry goods and clothing
merchants of Central, who decided to open a branch store in Blackhawk in
1878. They occupied the corner space on the station end of Gregory
Street. In our building, a store was on each side of the center stairs
and living rooms occupied the second floor. I was hardly more than a
bride—yet look to what I had descended!
One bright ray of hope remained—and I tried to keep thinking of it.
Since I was sure after Harvey’s inefficiency, Father Doe would never
deed us over his share of the Fourth of July, I had persuaded Harvey to
buy some claims. I still clung to my dream of riches from out of the
earth and when the Does had sent us $250 at Christmas, in January, 1878,
we spent $50 for a claim on the Stonewall Lode in Prosser Gulch and $165
for three lodes on Quartz Hill not far from the Fourth of July and
adjoining the English-Kansas mine. These were the Troy, Troy No. 2 and
Muscatine Lodes. I had great belief in that property—fortunes were being
made everyday from Quartz Hill—and if we could just develop our mine, we
would, too!
Loneliness and poverty was my lot in the meantime. I had no friends and
I used to take walks around Blackhawk to amuse myself. There was a
Cousin Jennie, a Mrs. Richards, who liked to garden and occasionally I
would go to see her. She would always pick me a bouquet of flowers for
our room because she said I was so beautiful that posies suited me.
“You are like a seraph—an angel!” I can remember her saying.
To help while away the time I began a scrap-book. Things that interested
me I would cut out and paste in its leaves. Left alone so much, I turned
to my day-dreaming more and more, and watched for poetry, cartoons and
other informative subjects to put in my book. I also read the fashion
magazines and clipped pictures from them, especially members of royalty
and society figures dressed up—I don’t know why, since it looked as if I
was never again to have enough money for pretty, chic clothes.
“Everything is so different from what I expected,” was the thought that
kept running through my unhappy mind.
Although Harvey and I were living in such close quarters, we seemed to
grow further away from each other. When he was on a shift that went to
work at seven in the morning he would come home in the afternoon so
tired, being unused to hard work, that all he would do in the evening
was read a book or write home. He spent hours composing long letters to
his mother. I resented these letters very much, but I tried not to say
anything while awaiting the day when he had saved enough money to start
development again.
Later, he was on a shift that went to work at night and I hardly saw
him. He would come home long after I had gone to bed. Meanwhile, I had
nothing to occupy my time, as I did not especially like any of the women
in the rooming house. For amusement, I would make long visits, looking
at the bolts of cloth and other wares in Sandelowsky-Pelton, the store
on our street. That’s how I came to know Jacob Sandelowsky who had been
with the firm since 1866. When I met him, he was a bachelor, medium tall
and twenty-six years old. Whenever he was in the Blackhawk store, he
paid me extravagant compliments and we would talk about the clothing
business as I had learned it from Papa’s experience with McCourt and
Cameron, later Cameron and McCourt, as Papa became poorer. Occasionally,
he made me gifts, particularly dainty shoes which he brought down from
the Central City store.
Then Harvey lost his job at the Bobtail. I don’t know why. But I had
already learned how unreliable he was and I suppose his bosses did, too.
Because he had been the only boy in the family to grow up, his mother
and four sisters spoiled him to such a degree that he was never able to
succeed at anything. Soon he was becoming a drifter, drifting from one
job to another and later from one camp to another, the women of the
family helping him out if he was too close to starving. But they weren’t
helping him now because of their dislike of me—and we were very hungry!
I not only had the natural appetite of a healthy young woman but, as I
had found I was going to have a baby, I craved additional food for the
new life. At first, the news of my condition seemed to make things
better. I wrote to Father Doe and he replied that his lumber mill had
just burned down in Oshkosh. He would wind up his affairs in Oshkosh and
move the family to Central. He wanted to be near his grandchild and he
would straighten out Harvey’s affairs.
Harvey’s affairs certainly were tangled although he kept the whole truth
from his father and from me for a long time. It turned out that besides
the money he owed the First National Bank, a sum that later, with
accumulating interest, amounted to over a thousand dollars, he had also
secretly been employing a Peter Richardson to repair the badly timbered
shaft of the Fourth of July that Harvey had botched. Peter Richardson
had never been paid for his work nor for a new hoist he had installed
and in May, 1878, obtained a judgment against Harvey for $485 plus court
costs. The Newell Brothers also had a $48 bill against him for grain and
hay for our team, run up before we had had to sell the horses. He was
afraid to say anything about these bills to his father.
I was becoming desperate. My own family were too poor to appeal to and I
was far too proud to want anyone in Oshkosh except Father Doe to guess
at the truth of how my marriage had turned out. I turned more and more
to Jake for comfort and every kind of sustenance.
Harvey began to spend his time in bars, not that he drank much, just a
few beers. But hanging around and talking to the customers gave him
ample opportunity to feel sorry for himself and to tell people his
troubles. I hated him for his weakness—I always detested any kind of
blubbering. Soon we were quarreling regularly.
Although he got a few odd jobs and sometimes earned enough money for
food, it was never enough to pay our rent and we were forced to move
about a lot in Blackhawk and Central. That year and the next were two of
the most discouraging I ever spent. I was constantly blue and dejected
in spirit and frightened for the future of my baby. To try to help out,
I put on miner’s clothes and attempted to do some work starting to sink
a shaft on the Troy Lode next to the English-Kansas that Harvey had
bought from the Hinds brothers. I really was in no condition to do this
work but I knew that many of the mines on Quartz Hill, very close by,
were steady lucrative producers and our claim seemed the one hope.
“Hello, there!” I heard one day, called out from a teamster driving an
ore wagon down from the Patch mines up above. “What do you think you’re
doing? You’re Baby Doe, aren’t you?”