Hard Gold (14 page)

July 7

In the afternoon we crossed a stream called Bijou Creek, and in the distance for the first time we saw blue mountains. We stopped and stared, for it was not easy to grasp what we were seeing. Hard to know if they were close or far. Hard to know if
we
were close or far.

July 8

Continued south along the riverside. At the end of the day, we saw Pike’s Peak, or at least so Mr. Boxler claimed. Our whole company thrilled. Lizzy said it looked like an immense thundercloud.

But the skies above were a brilliant blue.

July 9

Traveled all day. Mountains always to the west, growing bigger. At first I saw what I believed were small white clouds against those mountains. Then it occurred to me that I might be seeing gold, and my heart was in my eyes. Mr. Boxler disabused me by saying that what I saw was snow. Snow in July! Someone also said that while the mountains were now known as “the Rocky Mountains,” they used to be called the “Shining Mountains.” I liked that name better. It held more hope. We needed some.

July 10

Passed ruins of Fort St. Vrain. Sunday, nobody wanted to stop. Last of the dried fruit gave out. Coffee almost gone.

The river was pretty. Many little islands. A fair number of trees. I thought they were willow.

Skies so blue, it made my eyes ache.

At campfire the only talk was what people would do with the gold they found. No talk about
how
they would find it.

July 11

Still in Nebraska. Reached Fort Lupton, which, being abandoned for a reason I didn’t know, was in complete neglect.

Skies blue. I had never seen such white clouds. Each day, late afternoon, they towered toward the heavens. Against the far horizon you could see rain falling—like a distant veil.

In the west you can see farther. Having no boundaries, even distance feels different.

July 12

When we camped for the night, we knew that next day we would pass the border that marked the divide between the Nebraska Territory and the Kansas Territory. Growing excitement. We were so close to our great purpose: the gold of Cherry Creek!

Though I’d pined for our travels to be over, I was more nervous than ever. For once we were there, what would I find?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Cherry Creek!

July 13, 1859

A
FTER A journey of more than two months and feeling as though we’d walked a million miles through heat and desert, we went twenty miles more and thereby reached the place where the South Platte River met Cherry Creek. We had arrived!

Though there was no town called Cherry Creek, the creek itself was real enough. It got its name from the chokecherries growing along its banks. I tasted them and they were bitter. But the Arapaho Indians—who lived thereabouts—used the juices to preserve their meat.

For most of the year, the twenty-foot-wide stream was a dry streak of reddish sand. When it did flow, it came out of the treeless prairie into the South Platte, along whose banks grew cottonwood trees.

After the long trek to Cherry Creek some folks just rested, glad not to move for a while.

Some explorers from Georgia first “raised color”—prospector talk for finding gold—a few miles upstream on the Platte. The gold they got was worth six or seven
cents.
True, they found more in other places along the river, but not much. That was enough. The word
gold!
sped back to the states. To think that so many emigrants came because of that tiny find!

Stand where creek and river met, look south, and you could see Pike’s Peak looming. Look northwest, and you could see what they call Long’s Peak, a great mountain, too, sharp at the top. Gaze beyond the river straight west some forty miles, and there was nothing
but
mountains: the Rocky Mountains.

They were vast, jagged, monster mountains, cliffs, towers, and peaks reaching up into the sky, sometimes higher than the sky and into the clouds. They had snow that never fully melted, but remained, glistening and glowing white, all year round: a place where summer never came. These mountains stretched clear across the western horizon as if to say “You’ve come this far, but you’ll go no farther!”

In truth, though we had traveled long, hard, and close together—so close we knew the number of buttons in one another’s shirt—no sooner did we arrive, foot-sore and weary, than we began to go our separate ways.

I was surprised but glad to see Mr. Mawr’s back as he trudged off, never saying a word, going I didn’t know where. But since I hardly thought that he’d come so far only to give me up, I knew I needed to watch for any sign of him.

Mr. Bunderly chose to bring our journey to an end on the banks of the South Platte. There, on a dirt path they called Ferry Street, was a small raft ferry that had a rope-and-pulley system to haul people and their wagons to the western side of the river.

Once Mr. Bunderly had halted, he set his barbering tools on a barrel, shaved himself clean pink, then wrote on the wagon canvas:

CHERRY CREEK BARBERING
25¢
SHAVE!

Lizzy and I helped with encouraging words. Then he set out a box to sit on and waited for his first patron to stop by.

Once all was set, he stood before us, hand on heart. “Dear children,” he said, “behold Ebenezer T. Bunderly, a living mountain of hopeful enterprise. Let us only hope that my head is not in the clouds.”

For my part, I was so eager to learn some news of Jesse, I announced I was going to start right away. When Lizzy said she’d join me, her father requested that we seek a place for the Bunderlys to live.

We started wandering. To either side of Cherry Creek were towns. On the north side was what they called Denver, named after a Kansas territory governor so as to gain his favor—except by the time they did, he was no longer in office. On the south side was Auraria, named after the place in Georgia state where the people who had first found gold came from. As we later learned, the two towns were always feuding—not that it mattered to us.

There were a few dusty streets, eighty feet wide with names such as Blake, Larimer, and McHaa. On them a fair number of pigs, chickens, and dogs ran free.

All told there were, at most, a hundred and fifty houses—for the most part, poorly built log ones with canvas roofs, probably from the wagons in which folks arrived. I’d say a quarter of the houses were not finished and sat abandoned. Some were frame houses, with a few glass windows, roofs, and real doors—but not many. Tents were plentiful. By the creek, some Arapaho Indians were living in their teepees. But in this paltry setting, there actually was a newspaper,
The Rocky Mountain News.

An early view of Denver (on the right) and Auraria (on the left)

This is Denver after about a year. It really grew fast.

We were informed that about a thousand people lived in both towns. They were mostly from the states, but Mexicans and Canadians were there, too. They looked much like Council Bluffs people, which is to say young men (salted with a few gray heads), plus a very few women and children. Ragged clothes were the fashion, slouch hats (along with some bowlers and top hats), tattered red wool shirts, and sagging trousers, from which revolvers and bowie knives hung. Boots were worn, but bare feet were not uncommon. And—if beards were ever going to be shaved—which seemed unlikely—Mr. Bunderly was bound to become the richest man in the territory.

To be fair, Lizzy and I looked no less tattered. My gar ments were threadbare and ill-patched. The hem of Lizzy’s long skirt was much singed from campfire embers. Her bonnet was long gone, her red hair woven into one long braid.

As we wandered, I kept glancing back.

“What are you looking for?” asked Lizzy.

“Mawr. Can’t believe he just left us. But it’d make sense for him to act like he was going away so he could follow us.”

In Auraria, we noted two hotels, one bakery, a printer’s shop, two meat markets, a blacksmith, carpenter, tinsmith, and a tailor. There were three dry goods stores. And what stock they had was expensive!

BREAD—Fifteen cents a pound!

SUGAR—Fifty cents a pound!

BUTTER—Seventy-five cents a pounds!

That was more than double—and sometimes triple—the cost back home.

As for saloons, while there were too many to count, there was no church, and there wouldn’t be a school until October. For that matter, there was nothing that looked like a city hall, or any kind of government building. Cherry Creek seemed to be about riches and drink.

But what about those heaps of gold that you could scoop up with a shovel such as Jesse had read about in the newspaper? All we had to do was look about and see there was nothing of the kind. But if dirt, dust, and mud were gold, I’d have been twice as rich as King Croesus. The truth was, everyone I saw looked as poor as Job—and just as miserable.

In other words, those first 1858 reports of gold did prove a bust. “Humbug” had been an apt word. But that was only the beginning of the story. In the early spring of 1859, prospectors went into the mountains and
did
find gold. A lot of it. When word got out about these new discoveries, people flocked in from the east. This time they didn’t stop at Cherry Creek, but headed straight for the mines.

I asked a man on the street where I might find information about someone.

“A miner?” He spoke loudly, as if not used to speaking. Perhaps he was partly deaf.

“I think so.”

“You can look around,” he said. “But most folks have gone to the mountains, to the Gregory diggings!” He waved a hand in a westerly direction, taking in the numberless mountains. “Who you looking for?”

“Someone named Jesse Plockett.”

The man had been paying scant attention until I said the name. Then he turned, studied me, and glanced away again, as if trying to make up his mind. Shifting back, he pointed and said, “Try Denver House. Blake Street. On the Denver side. Can’t miss it. Biggest building in town. If any one knows about Plockett, they will.”

Lizzy and I started off. As we went along, Lizzy said, “Early, the way that man reacted when you said Jesse’s name—it didn’t seem good.”