Old Gold Mine
by Michelle Frizzell-Thompson
Title
Old Gold Mine
Artist
Michelle Frizzell-Thompson
Medium
Digital Art - Photography/digital Art
Description
"Known as the "Pike's Peak Gold Rush" because Pike's Peak was a landmark visible 100 miles (160 km) out on the plains.The Cripple Creek mining district covers a Miocene volcanic caldera filled with quartz latite porphyry. The ore bodies are veins and replacement zones within the quartz latite. The ore minerals are gold and silver tellurides, with accessory fluorite.
Most people know of the California gold rush and the historic 49'ers but Colorado also has a very storied and larger gold rush of it's own. Gold was actually discovered in Colorado in 1849 and 1850 by prospectors heading to the California gold rush; however, the amounts of gold found in the South Platte river were not enough to keep these early Colorado prospectors from the much-hyped wealth of the California gold rush. It wasn't until 1859 that the Colorado gold rush was officially in full swing on the front range of Colorado around Denver and Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs. The Colorado gold rush was the largest in American history and these prospectors were called the 59'ers for the peak year of the rush. The boom continued until around 1861 when most of the placer gold had been panned. The focus then turned towards hard rock mining but in those early days, the technique for extracting the gold from the sulphide ores was not productive. This extraction process was later improved and prospectors began searching other parts of the state for gold ore deposits. It is estimated that Colorado has over 23,000 abandoned mines, many of which are gold mines on public lands and open to anyone who wishes to poke around."
Uploaded
March 10th, 2013
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