Stumptown lies in South Evans Gulch, east of Leadville. It was the
place where Maggie Tobin Brown lived as the bride of Jim Brown,
manager of the Little Jonny mine. It is also where she is supposed
to have lost a fortune by hiding paper money in a stove and having
it burned. The upper photo looks west toward the Sawatch Range past
the Ollie Reed mine; the lower, toward Mosquito Pass and the burro
race trail.
[Illustration: D.K.P., 1960]
_From Fairplay_
[Illustration]
Buckskin Joe and Leavick are the principal trips here although Como and
Mudsill are circled on the map because of photos (over). Buckskin Joe
was a famous placer camp discovered in August, 1859, by eight
prospectors led by Joseph Higganbottom. Since he was a mountaineer who
habitually wore clothes of tanned deer skin, his nickname was “Buckskin
Joe.” The diggings were named after him.
The town flourished under this name and Lauret for most of the 1860’s,
having in 1861 a population of five or six hundred including twenty or
thirty women. At least half the residents made their living from
saloons, hotels, gambling dens and variety halls which caused Buckskin
Joe to be described in the _Rocky Mountain News_ as South Park’s
“liveliest little burg.” By 1874 its population had dropped to fifty,
and several years later it was dead. Its creation of the Silverheels
legend makes it unique, and people say her cabin still stands in the
trees across the creek....
Leavick is unique because it existed sixteen years as a settlement
without a name. From 1880 to 1896 there was a group of miners, sometimes
as high as two hundred, living in the shadow of Horseshoe Mountain (see
photos) close to the Last Chance and Hilltop mines and their mill. The
settlement had two saloons, stores, a house of ill repute, and no name.
Finally when the narrow gauge railroad arrived in 1896, the town was
named after Felix Leavick, prominent mining man of Leadville and Denver,
who owned properties in the Mosquito Range. Leavick had a sporadic life
until 1910 with occasional fake bursts after that. Today most of its
buildings have been moved to South Park City, a tourist town on the edge
of Fairplay.
[Illustration: George Wakely, 1864; C.H.S.]