April 2026 – The Pull Of The Land

The prior post intended to give an overview of the area around Creede, Colorado, and its colorful (no pun intended) history. Many have found the area fascinating, not least those with an affinity for the outdoors and for spectacular mountain scenery.

The post concluded with an allusion to the majority of the people who constituted the original miners, trappers, and settlers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of whom remain unknown to us. Like Nicholas Creede, these folks were “modest, reserved, courageous, and decent.”

These are the folks George Eliot spoke of in her masterpiece, Middlemarch: “The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and with me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

Our most recent visit to Creede was rather rushed as we had limited time; therefore, as we drove the 17-mile Bachelor Loop, and came to the Creede cemetery, as much as I wanted to stop for a while, we simply could not do so and also arrive at that day’s destination before night.

However, we have walked the cemetery in prior visits and photos thereof are easily found online.

I don’t know if this is true, but we were told that people were buried heads to the west and feet to the east so as to face the east on the brightness of Resurrection Day; however, the outlaws that died or were killed in Creede were buried north-south to lie “crosswise” in death as they had lived in life. On my next visit to Creede I’ll look into that to see what truth, if any, there might be in what I was told.

The names of the people buried there are for the most part unknown to most and they outnumber, by far, the more notorious outlaws that lived in the area in the years of boom. The cemetery also attests to the tough life the pioneers faced in the late 19th Century. It seemed to me that babies and children were overrepresented; however, I cannot state that as a scientific certainty. But we did see a good number of tombs holding children and babies.

Some years back I picked up a book of letters from a homestead in southwest Colorado. These were written in 1902 by, Edith Shaw, the wife and mother of that home and are a good representation of the people who ventured far from their birthplaces to make a living and to prosper as best they could.

In this case, the husband and wife moved from Massachussets and eventually acquired a 160-acre homestead.

The following excerpts from the letters give us an idea of the life of many in that area and era:

“The cattle we bought arrived from New Mexico in a poor condition — weak from lack of food and stunted in size for the same reason…. The very next day [after branding and dividing up from other’s herds] after ours were separated from theirs, one of them got mired, and before we found him he was so exhausted that he died before morning. Hadn’t strength enough to pull himself out.

“Two days after that, they were turned out to another field and when the boys went to bring them in, nine were missing. They finally found them at the foot of a cliff, three with legs broken, one with ribs all broken, one with neck broken, two had their back bones broken, and the rest in such a state that they could not walk at all. Ernest [her husband] killed two of ours immediately for they couldn’t possibly get well and Mr. Stark [owner of another herd] also killed two of his.

“It is a great mystery what should have sent them off that cliff for nothing has ever happened like this in this country. Some say it was a mountain lion, some think it may have been a jealous cattle owner who does not want us to come into this country — we shall probably never know the cause….”

More extracts from her letters that year:

“We came to a pitch … the wagon rolled and the near horse fell, thus wedging her between the wagon and the tree. Whatever saved her neck or her legs from being broken is a mystery …. Well, we went back about a mile to a house and borrowed a wagon, put our stuff in it, and started once more….

“Meanwhile, the cattle had wandered on, joined more cattle, and we had a lot of cutting out to do. We struck a swampy place. The horses had balked several times during the day and of course did it right in the middle of the mud. The wheels sank immediately to the hubs and the bronco was also mired. Nothing to do but unload right there and not one inch would those horses pull to get the wagon out. We tried leading, whipping, and yelling — ’till we were hoarse and not an inch would they move.”

…..

“Please all of you write us. I haven’t been homesick at all, nevertheless I am hungry for home news.”

…..

“I have enclosed a very slight object in remembrance of your birthday. You will know that my heart prompts much more than my hands or pocket book can carry out. But a great deal of love goes with it from both of us.”

The following is an extract from the unpublished memoir of the letter-writer’s brother-in-law:

“She was an eastern city girl who knew nothing about wilderness camping such as this. But she seemed to take it all in stride, as I could see when it was my turn to drive the wagon. But we had many mishaps during that lengthy two-day drive to our homesteads, which must have taxed all her physical and spiritual resources to their utmost, and she met them with as much courage as any of those wives of the early pioneers of our West.

“She had my real admiration for her inner fortitude, though she never did know it.”

I deeply admire such folks. Throughout the letters their desire to succeed and to do well was matched by their desire to be of assistance to and to serve their neighbors. The extraordinary work and efforts of such folks were truly community affairs.

The lone wolves were few.

There is a lesser known quote in Middlemarch, which comes to mind as we think about these sturdy folks: “…what do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” Paul, speaking in the synagogue in Antioch said similarly concerning David, “… after he had served his own generation by the will of God ….”

To be continued

Creede cemetery

18 years, 5 months, 24 days — allusion to the psalm: “Teach us to number our days….”

The Creede cemetery has folks of all ages; however, the seemingly overrepresented number of children and/or infants has always impressed me

Ernest and Edith Shaw and their two sons, circa 1908. Edith became a crack shot. She died of cancer in 1920 in Montana, age 45. Ernest worked for the US Forest Service and returned to Massachussets where he inaugurated a second career in the cranberry business. He remarried in 1923 and died in 1957. I estimate his age to have been in the early 80s.

Never underestimate the childhood experiences you offer your young ones.

Having been born in a mining (iron ore) camp, and having a father who’d take me “to the mine” and a mother who’d participate on “giras” [tours] of historical or natural wonders relatively nearby, I was not only born in what surrounded me, I was purposefully immersed in it.

I don’t think my parents did this “intentionally” — I’ll have to ask them on Resurrection Day — but I do know they believed in the importance of gratitude. Therefore, they wanted their children to appreciate their birthplace and their heritage — in my case that would be both Venezuela and Spain as well as Massachussets and England. So as we grew up, we learned to respect, if not love, “where we came from”.

We also learned, albeit intuitively at first, the tremendous capital — human and material — necessary to carve out a mine and camp and to provide sustainable living in the Venezuelan jungle.

So, although we never had much of an interest in engineering or prospecting or related fields, we certainly respected the immense effort and costs and sacrifices entailed in any mining operation.

Early in my career, I was in an economics conference in California where a gentleman spoke of miles of pipeline being laid from Alaska down to the 48 states.

I do not recall exactly what his involvement in that multi-billion-dollar project was, but I do recall that he told of how he insisted his daughter accompany him on one of his trips to the project. She was in college and into all the trendy activism of the time.

He wanted her to see the colossal efforts and investments required to enable her to turn on her blow dryer and to successfully turn on her car ignition. And the men working the required 10 to 12-hour days to make her creature comforts happen.

As I listened to him, I felt gratitude in my heart for my parents, who did similarly to that man, only my folks did not wait till I was in college to do so.

Another aspect of mining towns was the colorful nature of some of the men who worked there. This was an aspect that a child did not automatically pick up. Rather, it was something that grew inchoately over the years, in many cases long after the child had moved away from the camp and reflected on certain characters and, if lucky, was able to ask others, still living, about them.

How many novels yet remain to be written and movies to be filmed!

So mines, any kind of mines, have always drawn my attention. I even once seriously considered accepting a position in mining operations in Senegal! Colleagues and friends advised me to wait on something like that. So decades later I was much better prepared to accept a position in Saudi Arabia.

In 1991 or thereabouts, during a family trip to Southwest Colorado, we were intrigued by a dot on the map, on the Continental Divide, that was labeled as having been a booming silver mining town in the late 19th Century.

We decided to visit and we’ve been heading back there whenever we have an opportunity to do so, most recently after my son’s wedding last month.

To summarize, Creede is named after a man who was born around Fort Wayne, Indiana circa 1843. In infancy his family moved to Iowa territory and began farming. In his late teens he volunteered with the army and worked as a scout in cavalry campaigns against the Sioux. It was during this time that he traveled through Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and other western areas. He also witnessed the discovery of gold in the Black Hills and that piqued what became his lifelong interest in prospecting.

The man’s birth name was William Harvey. After his service in the army his intention was to return to Iowa to woo a gal he knew “back home”. But he had been gone nearly a decade and upon returning he found that the girl had married his brother and was mother to a young child.

This discovery greatly rattled William Harvey, provoked him to change his name to Nicholas C. Creede, and spurred him in his resolve to become a successful prospector, which is (most of) the rest of the story.

His first strike was near Monarch Pass, on the Continental Divide in Central Colorado. He sold his strike and promptly struck another, which he also sold for a larger sum which he used to tour the areas he considered most promising and, as he went, to study and learn about prospecting and minerals. He clearly had the desire, energy, and intelligence to become a successful entrepreneur.

After several other strikes, Creede discovered what became known as the Holy Moses strike and this drew the attention of David H. Moffat, a well known financier and industrialist, one of the pioneers of Denver, Colorado. He and his partners not only leased the Holy Moses from Creede, but also partnered with him in his further prospecting. This arrangement became very lucrative for all parties and we can only imagine how encouraging this was for Nicholas C. Creede.

And this led to his greatest find: the Amethyst vein, from which several mines were developed, including the Bachelor, which we will see in later posts. The years of study, hard work, and wise dealings and associations finally rewarded Creede, as he was now a millionaire and even lived to see a town named in his honor: Creede, Colorado, sitting on the Amethyst vein. He was described as reserved, modest, and courageous.

The town of Creede was the last silver boom town in Colorado, growing from 600 inhabitants to over 10,000 by end of 1891. The boom was over by 1893; however, Creede was never a ghost town and continued to operate well into the 1960s, relying on other minerals in addition to silver.

While mining in the area was very successful, the town attracted men and women whose primary interest was to relieve the miners of their money while in turn making “easy money”. This unfortunate state of affairs — common throughout history — was, ironically, exacerbated by “reform” activities in Denver which pushed underworld characters and their businesses out of the capital onto Creede where their trades were welcome.

So Creede (and Bachelor) were known as “having no night” and yet also had churches and, in Bachelor, even an opera house.

If you visit the Creede Mining Museum, you will learn about Jefferson “Soapy” Smith, known as the king of the Creede underworld, whose brother-in-law happened to be the deputy sheriff. You’ll also be reminded of the notorious Robert “Bob” Ford, the murderer of outlaw Jesse James. Ford moved to Creede where he himself was murdered by Ed O’Kelley whose motive for doing so was never ascertained with certainty. O’Kelley served less than a decade in prison and, after release, moved to Oklahoma where he was killed in a shootout with a policeman.

Another resident of Creede was the famous buffalo hunter, scout, and lawman, Bartholemew William Barclay Masterson, better known as Bat Masterson. In Creede, however, Masterson ran a gambling operation while also betting on prizefighting. He eventually succeeded in journalism in New York City where he died in 1921, a few months after attending his last prize fight, where Jack Dempsey defended his heavyweight title.

By the way, Jack Dempsey lived in Bachelor as a child. He likely learned how to fight there.

Creede’s population today is just under 300.

As for Nicholas C. Creede, he, sadly, did not marry well. He eventually moved to Los Angeles and died of an accidental morphine overdose in 1897. He suffered from chronic and severe stomach pain and took morphine frequently. The coroner ruled his death accidental, which most at the time considered a reasonable conclusion.

Creede and Bachelor are types of mining towns all over this earth as well as microcosms of society everywhere. Good, pious folks, living among genuinely bad or shady people.

The names above are well known to us because of so many works of fiction and non-fiction, not to mention movies and television shows. Nevertheless, we must also remember that such were not the majority of these towns. They also had folks, like Mr. Creede, who were modest, reserved, courageous, and decent.

To be continued.