The superintendent’s house was in the best condition of buildings
left standing in the former company town. Note fine smelter stack at
right.
[Illustration: D.K.P., 1960]
_From Boulder_
[Illustration]
Caribou’s fame lives on despite most of its buildings being gone because
it had the richest silver mine of the Front Range and because bullion
from Caribou formed a $12,000 walkway in April, 1873, for a President.
This was at Central City when President U. S. Grant stepped from his
stagecoach into the Teller House.
Two mines, the Caribou and the Poor Man, were discovered in August,
1869, by two prospectors working out of Black Hawk. According to
historian Don Kemp, they were searching for the location of a float
where Samuel P. Conger had picked up a sample of rock. Conger had been
on a hunting trip near Arapaho Peak and been attracted by the baffling
quality of some unusual boulders.
The two prospectors were lucky. They found the float, staked claims, and
set to work during that fall and winter. Their first shipments brought
$400 a ton and caused a rush to the area. Many other mines were found,
and a city was started—Caribou City. Subsequently, the Caribou mine was
sold in two lots for $125,000 to A. D. Breed of Cincinnati. Breed resold
the mine and his mill in 1873 to the Nederland Mining Company of Holland
for $3,000,000.
Caribou continued until the Silver Panic, and a few residents lingered
on into the twentieth century. But after the Caribou mine shut down in
1884, the population fell off. None of the other mines hired such large
crews, and gradually they, too, closed. Efforts were made from time to
time at re-opening; but because of excessive amounts of underground
water, the ventures all failed.
Still, Caribou’s silver riches were once glorious and even trod upon by
a President!
[Illustration: J. B. Sturtevant, 1887; D.P.L.]