VAIL'S #1
Yet again, Vail secured the #1 ranking in SKI Magazine’s Top Ten North American... [more]
The Story Behind the Gold Mines
There was a time when Breckenridge was larger underground than above. More than 20 miles of tunnels and shafts wormed beneath the mountains of the Blue River valley, and hundreds of men walked into the earth to work there every day. The Colorado gold rush was on, and prospectors scoured the Rockies for mineral riches. In 1859 the first major gold strike was made in Idaho Springs, just over Loveland pass from Breckenridge.
By the late 1860s, a few dozen men had settled on the rolling shores of the Blue River to pan for gold, known scientifically as Aurum, which is Latin for “shining dawn.” Since gold — relatively common and existing in 40 of the 50 states — is about six times heavier than the minerals surrounding it, it’s easy to separate by a sifting process like panning. But to really strike it rich, you have to find a solid deposit, or vein of gold inside the earth. Prospectors found just that on top of a hill two miles from today’s downtown Breckenridge, and so a claim was made on the Lazy Boy Mine in 1887.
I visited the Lazy Boy mine early on a stormy summer morning 114 years later. The road wound between iron-rich tailing mounds as I approached the still-standing rustic wooden buildings, towers and conveyor belts that housed the mine operations. Real mining hasn’t taken place here since workers spontaneously walked off the site on strike in 1948, but the mine was re-opened 50 years later as an educational tour.
Our group met at the mine entrance, a doorway-sized hole in the hillside supported by larger beams, or tinders. A narrow rail track wound through that same doorway, and we followed it to the dry room, where, like the mineworkers of old, we dressed for the constant 45-degree underground temperatures and dirty conditions, donned hard-hats for safety and registered our entrance. To do this, we each took a small brass tag with a number, worn soft by the many hands that held them over the last century. Back then, this was how mine operators kept track of how many miners were underground. Today, it not only helps give you a feel for the miners’ experience, but also tracks how many tourists are underground.
There was no body search for us, but miners were asked to empty their pockets on every passing. For obvious reasons theft was rampant, and creative workers found ways to sneak small particles of gold out regardless of security. Some laced their hair with gold dust; others swallowed small nuggets scraped from the dirt. One legendary thief reportedly snuck out several ounces of gold inside his artificial eye, stealing 30 times his daily wage. The desperation of laborers was no wonder to me after I got a first-hand sense of the conditions they worked in
The main mine shaft is five feet wide and four to seven feet tall, with sharp fragments of rock protruding menacingly into the walkway, and cold water seeping persistently from the ceiling. Slippery wooden planks line the floor for tours, but miners waded through six inches of muck and dirt, and in some places, 15 inches of water that had collected on the floor. Today fresh air is pumped in and electric lights periodically illuminate the dark passageways, but miners never enjoyed these conveniences. Instead, they carried a candle in hand, purchased from their wages, as their only source of light. The air was thick with dust and debris, and the risk of poison from natural gases released from the earth was substantial. A canary, more sensitive to deadly gases, would fly into the mine with the workers. If the canary died, miners knew the air quality was poor and would have to evacuate. This was their only warning.
The work itself was extremely arduous. Just consider how the miners burrowed into the solid bedrock. Men manually used a five-pound hammer and a forged metal spike to bore holes in the rock for the insertion of explosives. It typically took one “singlejacker” two and a half hours to bore a single 18-inch hole, striking the rock with a full swing once every five seconds. About 25 holes needed to be hammered before a blast could be orchestrated. They then packed the holes with dynamite and detonated the explosives, a process that gained just 10 forward inches. In this way men tunneled for miles into the igneous subsurface of the Rocky Mountains, and not without risk.
Drillers, who were paid $1-3 a day, faced dangers from falling rocks, mining dust, water and flooding, blast injuries and machine injuries from the hammering. No accurate records about injury and death were kept at the Lazy Boy mine, but tour operators say incidences of silicosis, the black rock mine version of black lung disease, was common. Diagnosis meant you’d be dead in three to five years. Still, miners ran this risk for the possibility of great wealth.
Records of the bounty reaped at Lazy Boy were not kept either, but the neighboring Wellington mine recorded extraction of more than 737,000 tons of ore consisting of 8,000 ounces of gold, 750,000 ounces of silver, 41 million pounds of lead and 164 million pounds of zinc. The estimated value of that ore is $77 million, and along with other mines in the area, more than $150 million in minerals were mined locally
The mine tours offer not only an adventurous glimpse of a historical industry and an exciting journey beneath the ground, but also an education about the massive scale of mining in the Rockies and its effects on our environment today. In the French Gulch drainage, once a beautifully forested valley stretching from the high peaks of the Continental Divide to the town of Breckenridge, water seepage through old mine shafts has polluted the rivers and fish stock. In nearby Eagle, complete clean up of the mine and water supply cost an estimated $70 million. That’s as much as the Wellington mine earned in its 87 years of operation and enough to make you wonder whether the profits reaped in the past outweigh the costs of reclamation now.
Nonetheless, mining remains a monumental aspect of Colorado’s history, and the history of westward expansion. Boning up on this lore and seeing the inner workings of a mine operation firsthand is a fantastic way to gain perspective on the livelihood past of towns like Breckenridge, Aspen, and Leadville — all communities founded on the quest for mineral wealth.
Abrahm Lustgarten is an award-winning freelance photojournalist and author based in San Francisco, CA. His work documenting sports, travel and culture has appeared in various publications, including Newsweek, Men's Journal, and Outside.
Aspen and Snowmass
By the late 1860s, a few dozen men had settled on the rolling shores of the Blue River to pan for gold, known scientifically as Aurum, which is Latin for “shining dawn.” Since gold — relatively common and existing in 40 of the 50 states — is about six times heavier than the minerals surrounding it, it’s easy to separate by a sifting process like panning. But to really strike it rich, you have to find a solid deposit, or vein of gold inside the earth. Prospectors found just that on top of a hill two miles from today’s downtown Breckenridge, and so a claim was made on the Lazy Boy Mine in 1887.
Our group met at the mine entrance, a doorway-sized hole in the hillside supported by larger beams, or tinders. A narrow rail track wound through that same doorway, and we followed it to the dry room, where, like the mineworkers of old, we dressed for the constant 45-degree underground temperatures and dirty conditions, donned hard-hats for safety and registered our entrance. To do this, we each took a small brass tag with a number, worn soft by the many hands that held them over the last century. Back then, this was how mine operators kept track of how many miners were underground. Today, it not only helps give you a feel for the miners’ experience, but also tracks how many tourists are underground. 
The work itself was extremely arduous. Just consider how the miners burrowed into the solid bedrock. Men manually used a five-pound hammer and a forged metal spike to bore holes in the rock for the insertion of explosives. It typically took one “singlejacker” two and a half hours to bore a single 18-inch hole, striking the rock with a full swing once every five seconds. About 25 holes needed to be hammered before a blast could be orchestrated. They then packed the holes with dynamite and detonated the explosives, a process that gained just 10 forward inches. In this way men tunneled for miles into the igneous subsurface of the Rocky Mountains, and not without risk.
The mine tours offer not only an adventurous glimpse of a historical industry and an exciting journey beneath the ground, but also an education about the massive scale of mining in the Rockies and its effects on our environment today. In the French Gulch drainage, once a beautifully forested valley stretching from the high peaks of the Continental Divide to the town of Breckenridge, water seepage through old mine shafts has polluted the rivers and fish stock. In nearby Eagle, complete clean up of the mine and water supply cost an estimated $70 million. That’s as much as the Wellington mine earned in its 87 years of operation and enough to make you wonder whether the profits reaped in the past outweigh the costs of reclamation now. 