Montana City: Ghost Town Gold or Bust?

I received an email from one of our Goldstrike Adventure customers (thank you Kevin) asking about the ghost town of Montana City as a possible location to include for our gold adventures. I had heard of Montana City and I had also researched the gold strikes at the confluence of Little Dry Creek and the South Platte River with some success, but had never put the two together... till now.

From Wiki-
"Montana City was the first settlement in what was later to become Denver, Colorado. It was established during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush on the east bank of the South Platte River, just north of the confluence with Little Dry Creek, in 1858. At the time, the site was in the Kansas Territory.

The site selected because it was adjacent to placer gold diggings along the South Platte River. However, the gold diggings at Montana City proved disappointing, and the site was soon abandoned in favor of the settlement of Auraria, a few miles downstream.

The Montana City site is now Grant-Frontier Park and includes mining equipment and a log cabin replica."

Two main groups of gold-seekers came to Colorado in the summer of 1858. The "Russell" group from Georgia founded Auraria while the "Lawrence" group from Lawrence, Kansas laid out Montana City near where present West Evans Avenue crosses the Platte River in Denver.

The "City" was abandoned by the winter and the group laid out the St. Charles townsite on the East bank of Cherry Creek. This letter was sent by a member of the Lawrence group.

"Here I am in the Gold Mines (so called) & I guess it is properly named, for I have seen the gold...There is quite a rush here to the mines, as there are within a few miles of this place over 500 persons. There were only about 30 or 40 when we arrived."

So, Kevin and I are going out on Friday to do some "testing" at Montana City together... hopefully you will see it added to our growing list of locations to choose your next gold adventure from.

UPDATE: Friday Oct 14th 10:30pm - Montana City is no bust!

Met with fellow Goldstriker Kevin and also a guy named Ron who has been coming down to the Montana City site for a few years now, emailed me about today and I now know why Montana City is his favorite place to pan.

First, what a beautiful place, once you get down into the river itself you are completely unable to see any sign whatsoever of a building or city... even though you are in the middle of one of the oldest industrial and business parks in Denver, the trees and riverbank shield the view. Simply beautiful I must say.

Oh yeah, about the gold. The clay false bedrock is down only a few feet at the most and in some cases is exposed. We found good amounts of fairly decent sized (12-20mesh) gold with lots of 100-400 mesh stuff underneath lots of dense black sands.

We have immediately added Montana City to our list of Goldstrike Adventure Locations. Call us if you'd like to try your luck at Montana City with our state of the art equipment.

As Kevin said today.... "Wow, you have all the toys".

"At your service", I added!

Meteorites Delivered Gold To Earth

Originally published by Leila Battison BBC News

Scientists have shown that the Earth's surface became enriched with precious metals by impacting meteorites.

The Earth's crust and mantle has considerably more gold than expected from favoured models of planetary formation.

A study from the University of Bristol looked at some of the oldest rocks on Earth, demonstrating that gold was delivered by meteorites long after their formation.

Their results are published in Nature.

While the Earth was forming, iron sank to the centre of the planet, forming the core.

Any precious metals in the planetary mix would have gone with this iron and concentrated in the core, leaving the mantle devoid of elements such as gold, platinum, and osmium.

But this is not what we observe. In fact, the silicate mantle has up to 1,000 times more gold than anticipated.

Several reasons for this enrichment were proposed in the past, including delivery by meteorites, although until now it has not been possible to prove.

By measuring isotopes in rocks that are nearly four billion years old from Greenland, the team has managed to date the gold delivery, and to relate it to an event known as the "terminal bombardment".

Impact theory
Earth formed by a snowball-effect known as accretion 4.55 billion years ago. The iron core with its accompanying mixture of precious metals formed very soon after that, within just a few million years.

A final impact of a Mars sized body with the Earth formed the Moon and finalised our planet's formation. By this time all gold would be locked up in the core.

A final burst of meteorite impacts around 3.9 billion years ago is known as the "terminal bombardment" and caused the cratering that we still see on the Moon.

"The proportions of gold and other precious metals are difficult to measure because they concentrate into nuggets, and we need to analyse a lot of rocks to get meaningful data." said lead researcher Dr Matthias Willbold.

They have therefore developed a way of telling this remarkable story of gold's extraterrestrial origin using a completely different element - tungsten.

Tungsten acts very similarly to precious metals like gold, but importantly it comes in different forms, or isotopes.The team have looked at the proportions of the different isotopes in modern rocks and in the most ancient rocks in Greenland.

They found a small but significant difference in the proportions, indicating that the modern rocks had received a dose of tungsten, and therefore also gold, from meteorites.

The Greenland rocks showed no such enrichment, giving a date to the input of gold. This date corresponds to the time of the terminal bombardment around 3.9 billion years ago.

During this time, the Earth would have been hit with 20 billion billion tonnes of asteroid material, although "it is not clear whether this would have come in the form of many small impacts, or just two or three mega-impacts", Dr Willbold said.

The research group at the University of Bristol are the first to successfully make such high-quality measurements of tungsten in ancient rocks, but so far have only analysed samples from Greenland.

"We hope to find more," said Dr Willbold, "and look at a time sequence for one billion years after the Greenland rocks, to see how the tungsten anomaly develops."

Related Stories...
Life origins clue from meteorite 28 FEBRUARY 2011, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
Life-from-asteroid idea bolstered 26 JANUARY 2011, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT

Clear Creek Upstream Testing

We sampled and tested 7 new locations yesterday for the Goldstrike Colorado Gold Experience. I forget sometimes how slow and how much work and hassle panning for gold is compared to running the sluice or a highbanker.

At any rate, we started at 8am upstream from Idaho springs near Georgetown and worked our down stream to Trail Creek, sampled Trail Creek near the Phoenix Mine and then on downstream to Chicago Creek where we went up Chicago Creek and took a couple of samples, then stopped at the confluence of Chicago Creek and Clear Creek in Idaho Springs.

It is very tough going with the water as high as it is now, but our tests revealed quite a bit of information for the Goldstrike gold adventures operation.

We then made a couple of quick stops along HWY 6 on Clear Creek between tunnel #1 and the HWY119 split before stopping by one of our favorite places, Arapahoe City and the Arapahoe bar (even though it is very close to Coors, it's not that kind of bar) before heading home at 8pm.

Long day, sore hands and fingers and back and feet... well worth it.

The Peoples Republic of Boulder and Wheatridge

Doing some research on places to go recreational gold panning in the Denver area led me to something quite disturbing and even shocking. In a state that was literally founded only because of gold panning and mining, we now find that apparently the state and most specifically a couple of small thinking towns not only are embarrassed by the states heritage, but have outright banned their own heritage.

The Peoples Republic of Boulder and Wheatridge in fact banned their own heritage. That's right, it is illegal to pan for gold in Boulder (the entire county in fact) and also within the City limits of Wheatridge (I know it's Wheat Ridge, but nobody says it as two words) which is now attempting to annex Clear Creek all the way to the Golden city limits. Wheatridge banned prospectors in a park named "Prospectors Park". Absurd? You betcha.

You can fish in Clear Creek in Wheatridge, lose sharp hooks and lead sinkers and plastic bobbers and nylon line in the stream and catch and kill the wildlife there, you can kick rocks around while wading and disturb the stream bed all you want if you are a kayaker or fisherman (I have nothing against kayaking or fishing, in fact I enjoy fishing myself, but lets keep it real, shall we?) You can dump your trash in the stream (as evidenced by all of the trash in the streams) but don't you DARE even thinking about removing any gold.

No sir. not here is a larger issue at stake here. The right of a city or county or private individual to "claim ownership" of what the Colorado Constitution says is owned by the citizens of the state of Colorado (the public).

It seems to me, that Boulder and Wheatridge believe for some reason that they can "opt out" of the Colorado State Constitution.

Public Trust Doctrine-
Section 5 of article XVI of the constitution of the state of Colorado: (summary, emphasis mine)

"(1) The water of every natural stream within the state of Colorado is hereby declared to be the property of the public, and the same is dedicated to the use of the people of the state, subject to appropriation as herinafter provided.

(2) This Colorado Public Trust Doctrine is adopted, and implemented, by the people of the state of Colorado to protect the public's interests in the water of natural streams and to instruct the state of Colorado to DEFEND the public's water ownership rights of use and PUBLIC ENJOYMENT.

(3) This Colorado Public Trust Doctrine provides that the public's estate in water in Colorado has a legal authority superior to rules and terms of contracts or property law.

(4) The Public confers the right to the use of its water, and the diversion of the water under section 6 of this article, to an appropriator for the beneficial use as a grant from the people of Colorado to the appropriator for the common good.

(5) (A) Access by the public along, and on, the wetted natural parameter of a stream bank of a water course of any natural stream in Colorado is a right of the public to the use of its own water in concert with provisions of this Colorado Public Trust Doctrine.

(B) The right of the public to use of the water in a natural stream and to the lands of the banks of the streams within Colorado shall extend to the naturally-wetted high water mark of the stream and is impressed with navigation servitude for commerce and public use as recognized in this Colorado Public Doctrine.

(C) The water of a natural stream and its streambed, and the naturally-wetted lands of the shores of the stream, shall not be subject to the law of trespass as the water of natural streams and the banks of their stream courses are public highways for commerce and public use.
(D) Public use of water, recognized as a right in this Colorado Public Trust Doctrine, shall not be controlled in law as a usufruct but shall be a right of the public to protect and ENJOY its own water.

(6) Enforcement and implementation of provisions contained within this Colorado Public Trust Doctrine to protect the public's rights and interests in water is mandated to the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of Colorado State government to act as stewards to protect the public's interest in its water estate. ANY citizen of the state of Colorado shall have standing in judicial actions seeking to enforce the provisions of this section.

(7) Provisions of this section are self-enacting and self-executing."

It seems pretty clear that we (the citizens of Colorado) own the water and the streambed and the naturally wetted land up to the high water mark in fact.

It seems pretty clear that Boulder and Wheatridge believes otherwise, that THEY (the city of) own the land the water and the sky above and we (gold prospectors) are mere annoyances, to be banned and outlawed and run out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered to make room for the environmentally friendly kayakers, fishermen, rafters and such. You know, the activities this state was founded and built upon. (lol)

I think it was in 1845 or maybe '46 that the first kaykers and bicyclers discovered Colorado and the kayak bicycle boom was on, by 1859 over a million kayakers from back east had populated the area and built Denver to be the city we know and love today. Thank God for kayaks and bicycles.

What a disgrace that Colorado has shunned it's own heritage, led by the likes of the Peoples Republic of Boulder and now Wheatridge.
Ask the average Okie what a sooner is and every single one of them can give you a detailed description with great pride of how that state was formed by a bunch of cheaters basically (hey I'm originally from there so I can say that, besides it's true) the point is they know their states history.

Ask the average Coloradoan where the first gold strike was or where gold is found or anything about gold and you will most likely get a blank stare... followed by a lecture on the evils of gold mining.

Where is our state government as ordered to do in the above articles, in protecting our right to our waterways?

Wake up Colorado, your rights are being stripped away while you pretend to care about the state, the heritage and our streams.

Write or call the state attorney generals office and ask them why Boulder and Wheatridge get to opt out of the articles of our state constitution Public Trust Doctrine and take away our rights?

Goldstrike Colorado Gold Experience

If you are planning a trip to the Denver area or live in the area and want to create a wonderful lasting memory, go on one of the Goldstrike Colorado Gold Experience adventures.

RD and son RJ provide guests with a half-day or full-day guided creekside gold mining experience which includes snacks, drinks and even a creekside lunch and YOU keep all the gold from the day in a free glass vial. Using Goldstrike's latest technology equipment and training you will recover beautiful placer gold at historic locations within minutes of downtown Denver and take home a free gold pan too!

Visit their website Goldstrike Colorado Gold Experience and schedule your own Goldstrike Colorado gold experience... it's an experience you will never forget!

Gold Strike Colorado Prospecting Blog

A blog dedicated to Colorado gold prospecting sites, history, methods, equipment, results and the people we meet.
We will be posting about locations to go gold prospecting, new equipment to recover gold and anything else we think is interesting in the world of placer gold mining.

Stay tuned, we promise NOT to be like every other gold prospecting site.
RD