This section of the town lies on the Pacific slope side of the
divide and is in much better condition than the camp on the Atlantic
side.
_From Creede_
[Illustration]
Bachelor’s beginnings followed the silver rush to the Creede area in the
autumn of 1890. The town was heralded by an amusing paragraph in the
_Creede Candle_ for January 21, 1892, which ran:
“The latest townsite excitement is in a park on Bachelor Hill, around
the Last Chance boarding house. Two saloons and a female seminary are
already in operation and other business houses are expected soon. It is
to be called Bachelor.”
By April the 10,500-foot-high town had a post office (Teller, because of
a conflict with Bachelor, California), a theatre, eight stores, a dozen
saloons and several boardinghouses, restaurants and hotels. A number of
two-story buildings were being erected. By June the town had been
incorporated and was holding an election of officers. By December it had
a new opera house which was packed when the Bachelor City Dramatic Club
presented the drama _Wild Irishman_, interspersed with several
divertissements and followed by a dance, in an effort to raise money for
a Catholic church.
But the efforts of the better people failed. The character of Bachelor
remained tough. At the height of its population of around twelve
hundred, two hundred residents were prostitutes. It was a nightly custom
for patronage of the soiled doves to include not only the local boys,
but miners from Creede, North Creede and Weaver, who tipped the hoistmen
of the Last Chance and Commodore to lift them up to the wild, brawling
and drunken delights of Bachelor.
The crash of silver in 1893 affected the whole Creede area. The
population of Bachelor (according to the Colorado Business Directory)
was down to eight hundred in 1896 and one hundred and fifty by 1910.
[Illustration: Unknown, 1910; D.P.L.]