A catastrophic depression engulfed Colorado in 1893. The government's decision to adopt the gold standard and stop buying silver hit the mining industry like a cave-in. Unemployment reached 90 percent in Leadville, a city built on silver. Strikes by union miners in Cripple Creek and Leadville led to destruction and death. Political parties split along battle lines of gold versus silver. By 1898, the country had begun to recover, but silver mining was never the same. Using firsthand commentary and more than one hundred historic photographs, John Steinle skillfully commemorates the story of Coloradans trapped in the unprecedented social, economic and political conflict of America's first great depression.

In The Trail of Gold and Silver, historian Duane A. Smith details Colorado's mining saga - a story that stretches from the beginning of the gold and silver mining rush in the mid-nineteenth century into the twenty-first century. Gold and silver mining laid the foundation for Colorado's economy, and 1859 marked the beginning of a fever for these precious metals. Mining changed the state and its people forever, affecting settlement, territorial status, statehood, publicity, development, investment, economy, jobs both in and outside the industry, transportation, tourism, advances in mining and smelting technology, and urbanization. Moreover, the first generation of Colorado mining brought a fascinating collection of people and a new era to the region. Written in a lively manner by one of Colorado's preeminent historians, this book honors the 2009 sesquicentennial of Colorado's gold rush. Smith's narrative will appeal to anybody with an interest in the state's fascinating mining history over the past 150 years.

In 1859, 100,000 folks started the journey to the Pikes Peak goldfields, but only 50,000 completed the trip. An additional 25,000 soon gave up and went back home. The remainder not only brought statehood to the central Rocky Mountains, but they also brought the industrial world to isolated areas in the high mountains, where they mined mineral deposits for gold, silver, lead, zinc, and copper, among others. This book, Historic Photos of Colorado Mining, provides an introduction to Colorado's mining history through photographs from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Accompanying captions provide specific contexts for the photos and tell the story of the prospectors, miners, engineers, teamsters, railroaders, and townspeople who served as entrepreneurs and workers in industrializing the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Many ruins from the mining days are now recognized as historic landmarks. But the stories behind the ruins are often as fascinating as the ruins themselves—the struggle to survive and thrive in the wilderness is always a compelling tale.

Revised and updated, Duane A. Smith's classic study of this important silver mining town is back in print.

Colorado Springs has always held a special fascination for visitors. Early Indian tribes, trappers and hunters, the railroad builders, gold and silver prospectors, health seekers, tourists, and the military have all left their mark on the area. Set against magnificent Pikes Peak and the front range of the Rocky Mountains, Colorado Springs enjoys a history rich with all that is authentically American. With the sesquicentennial anniversary of the area and its gold rush in 2009, this look back seems particularly appropriate. Historic Photos of Colorado Springs showcases nearly 200 photographs of the city, focusing on hallmarks of its past while paying homage to lesser known points of interest. Printed in striking black-and-white and handsomely bound, these vignettes of Colorado Springs are sure to delight the history buff, the curious student, and all citizens wishing to explore their colorful local heritage.

By the 1870s, the word was out about Colorado. East coast and Midwest prospectors, European immigrants, and African Americans newly freed from slavery, rushed to Denver to find work and their fortune in silver and gold. Captured here in almost 200 vintage images is the story of the African Americans who escaped the oppression and racism of the post Civil War South, and created a city within a city: the Five Points neighborhood of Denver. Named in 1881 for a bustling five-way intersection, the Five Points area became the commercial and social sector for African American churches, businesses, clubs, and homes, and the heart of Denver's black community. Showcased here are the photographs of once thriving Five Points businesses in the Welton Street business district, such as Otha Rice's Tap Room and Oven and the Rossonian Hotel, as well as the familiar faces of the Cosmopolitan Club, Madame CJ Walker, and Dr. Justina Ford, Denver's first African-American female doctor.

Images from the archives of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I).

A little over a century ago, the Red Mountain Mining District in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado was the scene of a "silver rush" with an output of precious metals second in Colorado only to that of Leadville. In a period of less than twenty-five years, more than thirty million dollars in silver, lead, zinc, copper, and gold were taken from the rich deposits in the mines along Red Mountain Divide -- an amount roughly equivalent to a quarter billion of today's dollars. The histories of the communities that sprang into being with these mines, the railroads constructed to service them, and the men and women who lived, worked and died in them, are the threads deftly woven into the richly textured story of Mountains of Silver. It is a colorful and varied tapestry that depicts the lives of prospectors who made the first rich strikes; the land promoters, speculators, and road-and-railroad builders who capitalized on the frenzied rush to the area; and the motley collection of miners, lawyers, merchants, prostitutes, saloonkeepers, and freighters who attempted to profit from the boom.