Fears Regarding the Future

It was when our people had hardly recovered from the effects of the fire that this flood came upon us. There were many, like Mr. Middleton and me, who had asked for credit in the east to continue their business, and were not yet sufficiently on their feet to meet this new disaster.

Because of the Civil War, the easterners were no longer flocking in such numbers to the gold fields, and again, what we call placer mining had seemingly come to an end, the supply having been exhausted. Therefore almost on the last wave of the flood came the knowledge that there was no longer anything in our city of Denver, or in the other towns of Colorado, which had flourished like green bay trees, to attract miners or settlers from the states.

Now you must know that placer mining means simply the digging of gold out of the soil, where it has been washed by streams or by floods from some parent mass. At that time miners had no notion of how to crush the metal from the quartz. In fact, ignorance of the methods of treating ore was universal, so that it seemed as if the wealth of our territory of Colorado had suddenly been destroyed or exhausted, not only by fire and by flood, but by the thousands upon thousands who had delved in valleys and on the hillsides, until in all that vast area the natural deposit of gold near to the earth's surface had been used up.

It makes my heart swell with pride when I remember that all these discouragements failed to break the spirit of those brave pioneers who had built up this city in the wilderness.

A few faint hearts may have given over the struggle and gone east again; but if such was the case, I failed to hear of it.

All whom I saw or heard stood ready to fight for the life of their city, as they would for their own lives, and it is no exaggeration to say that in those dark days our city seemed threatened with annihilation.