It doesn’t take too active an imagination to envision what Silver Cliff might have been like 120-odd years ago. View a streetscape photograph from that era, wander down Cliff Street (the town’s once-boisterous red-light district), and one can almost smell the stale beer and the coal smoke, and hear the shift-change steam whistle from the Geyser Mine on the hills just above.

 

One’s imagination won’t have to be tapped  much at all this weekend, when Silver Cliff hosts its fifth annual Mining and Heritage Days celebration. It’ll be a community event for the whole family, with a slew of demonstrations, tours, a dance and other activities commemorating its fascinating past.

 

This year’s festival coincides with the 150th anniversary of the Pikes Peak or Bust gold rush into what is now Colorado. In 1858, a party of Southerners – likely a bunch of liars and cheats – “discovered” gold near the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River, near present-day Denver. Word spread easterly, and several months later, in 1859, thousands of speculators, prospectors, low-lifes and fortune-seekers headed into the soon-to-be Jefferson Territory. As it turns out, some legitimate and substantial gold discoveries were made elsewhere in the mountains in 1859. And here we are.

 

It wasn’t until 1875 that things started perking up around here. A bit of gold was discovered in the east hills, and the town of Rosita was our first full-fledged mining boom-town. (We can assume that the rowdiness of Rosita was a welcome diversion for the hundreds of hapless German colonists who settled here in 1870 only to have their dreams dashed by the harsh realities of farming at 8,000 feet.)

 

In 1878, silver was discovered along the Oak Creek Grade, and that same year the town of Silver Cliff was established. Because the feds artificially propped up the price of silver for a decade or so, as many as 5,000 lived in Silver Cliff. How many actually “thrived” in Silver Cliff is less well known.

 

In any case, our older sister city to the east has an incredibly fascinating past. Learn about it this weekend. And have fun in the process, imagining what things were like when the mine steam whistles were blowing, and the stale beer was flowing.