Rocky Mountain History in Chaffee County Colorado

Indians had roamed the upper Arkansas River valley for centuries before white men of any sort became acquainted with the region. It's difficult to determine who the first white men to visit Chaffee County were. However, historians believe the first were a Spanish troop under the command of Juan Bautista de Anza, governor of Northern New Spain. They chased a band of Comanches led by Cuerno Verde — Greenhorn — north over Poncha Pass into the area that would become Poncha Springs in 1779.

Earlier, Spanish and French explorers passed through and in 1802, mountain man James Purcell reported bountiful beaver on Chalk Creek. Purcell told Capt. Zebulon Pike of gold in Bayou Salado (South Park) in 1806. Pike dutifully noted the report, but it didn’t trigger a gold rush. That was to come a half-century later. Pike and 22 men, assigned to set the southwestern boundary of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, sought the Arkansas’ headwaters. The Christmas 1806 historic site on U.S. 285 commemorates Pike’s visit.

Visit salida.com for a complete historical timeline of Chaffee County

Some unknown, daring and untiring prospector in 1859-60 made his way up the Arkansas, and found glittering gold in its sand and gravel. Prospectors working the river came at Kelley’s Bar, about 4 miles south of Granite, staked the first official claim April 12, 1860. The rush to gold in the central Rockies was on!

To serve the thousands of miners in the valley and booming mines, railroads pushed west. The Denver & Rio Grande Western battled for and ultimately won the Royal Gorge route up the Arkansas, establishing Salida in late May 1880. D&RG crews raced the Denver, South Park & Pacific coming over Trout Creek Pass through Buena Vista, reaching Leadville July 20. The D&RG laid rails through Poncha Springs, up Poncha Pass along Otto Mears’ toll road and over Marshall Pass to Gunnison and points west. The DSP&P, meanwhile, turned south and west, the first railroad to punch through the Continental Divide at the famed Alpine Tunnel near St. Elmo. A few years later, the Colorado Midland, the first standard gauge line into the valley, came over Trout Creek on it’s way to Aspen.

By the 1920s, however, only the D&RG survived, with some 500 employees working out of the Salida yard. From the mid-1950s, the D&RG’s presence in the valley gradually diminished. Tracks over Marshall Pass came up and in the 1980s, rails west of Salida to Monarch Quarry were yanked out. Owned today by the Union Pacific, rails through the valley over Tennessee Pass remain though the line sees little use.

Along with ranching and agriculture, booms and busts are a part of the region’s heritage. Through the 1900s, precious metal mining continued, though on nothing like the scale of the late 1800s. Later in the 20th Century, molybdenum once again fueled a boom. Established in the 1920s, the Climax Mine north of Leadville produced a steel-hardening agent, growing to 1,700 miners by 1970, surging to 3,100 by 1980, with some 900 living in Chaffee County. The bust of the 1980s, however, decimated mining once again. Today, only maintenance crews and a handful of employees work the Fremont Pass mine and the last silver mine in Leadville closed in the late 1990s.

From a severe depression in the late 1980s, with unemployment of from 15 to 30 percent, upper Arkansas communities slowly rebuilt. Today’s diverse economy is based on recreation, real estate and construction, a growing arts community, lone eagles, small manufacturers and prison services.