History
Gold was discovered in the area in late 1859, during the Pike's Peak Gold Rush. However the initial discovery, where California Gulch empties into the Arkansas River, was not rich enough to cause excitement. On April 26, 1860, Abe Lee made a rich discovery of placer gold in California Gulch, about a mile east of Leadville, and Oro City was founded at the new diggings. By July 1860, the town and surrounding area had a population of 10,000 and an estimated $2 million in gold was taken out of California Gulch and nearby Iowa Gulch by the end of the first summer. Within a few years the richest part of the placers had been exhausted, and the population of Oro City dwindled to only several hundred. Many claims were consolidated, and worked by ground sluicing. A ditch was dug in 1877 to provide water for hydraulic mining, but the hydraulic mining was reported to be unsuccessful.
In 1874, gold miners at Oro City discovered that the heavy sand that impeded their gold recovery was the lead mineral cerussite, that carried a high content of silver. Prospectors traced the cerussite to its source, and by 1876, had discovered several lode silver-lead deposits. The city of Leadville was founded near to the new silver deposits in 1877 by mine owners Horace Austin Warner Tabor and August Meyer, setting off the Colorado Silver Boom. By 1880, Leadville was one of the world's largest silver camps, with a population of over 40,000. The city's fortunes declined with the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893 which resulted in a drop in the price of silver, although afterwards there was another small gold boom. Mining companies came to rely increasingly on income from the lead and zinc.
The last active mine in the district, the Black Cloud mine, owned by ASARCO, closed in 1999.
Read more about this topic: Leadville Mining District
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