British Guiana – The Pull Of The Land

Before the men of El Pao brought their wives and children, the pioneers had to build the camps.

So the Bethlehem Steel set out to build a camp on the banks of the Orinoco River to receive supplies and materials needed to clear and grade a roughly 40-kilometer road through the thick jungle and also build the administrative and labor camps housing the workforce that was to come later, not to mention the mine itself.

These efforts required intelligence, strength, determination, and capital to pay for mine development and required facilities such as hoisting and power plants, mine machinery, and so on.

Visiting the Creede mining camp area, I was immediately reminded of the iron mines in Venezuela. The geography and topography, not to mention the latitudes, are nowhere near the same; however, the spirit and type of men and women drawn to such endeavors were certainly so.

The last time I visited El Pao in 2005, it was awfully quiet compared to my childhood and youth there. Nevertheless, it was nowhere near being a ghost town. A number of families still lived in the labor camp while a much smaller number occupied some of the houses in the administrative camp where I used to live.

The temperate climate and green jungle were still ubiquitous as always and the folks remained friendly.

But the dynamiting and the ore crushing and the shouts of miners and the freight movements — truck or train — were gone.

Visiting the Creede mining area provoked similar observations. The spectacular ruggedness which greeted the prospectors and, later, the miners, is still there beckoning hardy souls who dare to trespass; the sites of the numerous mines can be seen and, in some cases, visited; the areas where camps once thrived are there. But all is quiet, even though Creede itself has never become a ghost town to this day.

Many were the men and women who left their mark in this area. Many whose names are known to us and who-knows-how-many whose names remain unknown but to God.

This post seeks to note only a few, which, hopefully, give a glimpse of the many more whom space does not permit to mention.

It is believed that the first settler in the area around Creede and Bachelor was Tom Boggs, brother-in-law to Kit Carson; however, his interest was in fur trading, not mining. Of interest is the fact that Boggs, who was not only Carson’s brother-in-law but a good friend, was present at Carson’s death, when he uttered his last words, “Adiós, compadres [Goodbye, friends].”

Carson’s wife, Josefa, died a month before Carson in 1868, and Boggs became guardian to his children and also executor of his will.

In learning about the Creede mining area, my attention was immediately drawn to John MacKenzie, a Canadian known as the “father of Bachelor”. He learned the prospecting and mining trade in the gold fields of Nova Scotia in the 1860s. He also successfully prospected for gold on the Essequibo in then British Guiana and also on the Caroní in Venezuela, areas now dominated by Tren de Aragua and other bands of robbers.

MacKenzie’s health suffered in the damp, hot jungles of Venezuela and British Guiana and he returned to North America after several years. He successfully identified a number of mines in Creede including several in Bachelor, which he believed was perfectly situated for a picturesque town. His health finally gave out and he passed away in 1894. The Creede Candle reported his death:

“[He was] well known to nearly all the people of Creede camp and the mining men of the west…. He left no will …. Was unmarried and the only known relative is a brother in Halifax…. The death of Mr. MacKenzie removes one from the ranks of the old pioneers who was respected by all and held in the highest esteem as a man, a citizen, and a friend.”

Fred Ryden’s early childhood and youth were lived in Bachelor and, after Bachelor’s demise, in Creede where he still lived in 1952 when a Rocky Mountain News reporter found him and spent a day conversing and hearing his accounts of a life long since gone:

“It was the riches of the hills — the Last Chance, Bachelor, Amethyst, Commodore [mines] — that had brought the thousands there to build the stores, drink in the saloons, pray in the churches, learn in the school…. Fred Ryden went to grammar school in Bachelor, from 1893 to 1904 when his family moved down to Creede. And it was a sentimental picture to watch Fred try to find the exact spot where the old school had been. For there was nothing there now at all.”

Until relatively recently, Creede was home to families who first arrived a century before. One of these was John R. Jackson, whose grandfather, William T. Jackson, Sr., came to Creede in the 1890s during the silver boom. He and his house first made a home in a small cabin in Bachelor where he worked in the Last Chance and Amethyst Mines. Later, the family moved to Creede from where he worked the Commodore Mine. He died in his early 50s from silicosis, a common disease among miners of that era.

Jackson, Sr.’s son, “Billy” Jackson was born and spent his early childhood in Bachelor before the family moved to Creede, two and a half miles away. He too worked the mines, with a hiatus for service in WWI. He also contracted silicosis and had to resign his mining activities in the late 50s but remained in Creede, working as undersheriff and eventually as the city clerk.

His son, John, followed his grandfather’s and father’s footsteps, working the mines, serving in WWII, and returning to the mines afterwards, eventually becoming a successful investor in the business. In the 70s he worked for the Freeport Exploration Company in Nevada as a prospector for precious metals. He retired and returned to Colorado where he wrote of the people he knew in the Creede mining camps and also wrote poetry.

This multi-generational aspect is quite common in the mining industry.

In my first post of this series I told about the violence in Creede and Bachelor, while mentioning that the camps were also home to decent, hard working families. One of the incidents could have been violent but was handled creatively and successfully. The account is taken from Boom Town Boy, by Edwin Lewis Bennett, as cited in Bachelor, Colorado by Charles A. Harbett:

“I saw two fights in Bachelor that spring and each was odd in its own way.

“The first was not between men but between two women, one of them Irish and the other Cornish. They had been quarreling at each other for some time and, coming downtown that day, had run into each other and started jawing.

“Their husbands, fed up with the long feud, agreed that was the time to get it settled so they made the wives fight it out, Marquis de Queensbury, without any scratching or hair-pulling, but man style. Foster’s saloon was at the upper end of town, and the fight took place right out in front, so we had a ring-side seat. Occasionally one of the women would revert back to type and bare a claw or get a handful of hair but her husband would make her back up and start clean again, so it was a nice, respectable battle.

“There were no rounds. The women were both fairly well padded and short-winded, and the time came when they were panting and taking wild, aimless swings at each other. As one had the makings of a good black eye and the other had a bloody nose, their husbands thought they ought to have it all out of their systems and stopped the fight. The battlers sat down on the bench in front of the saloon to rest and get their breath, and, one of them happening to mention that she had some beer on ice up at the house that might do them both good, they went there, leaving their husbands to get the groceries they originally started after.

“After that fight each of them had one more friend than she had before and the husbands didn’t have to listen to any more name-calling.”

Children in such camps did not have difficulty finding excitement and adventure. In one example, Fred Foster recalls, he at 15 years old, and a buddy at 16 years old decided to go over the Continental Divide in the dead of winter to Spring Creek where his family had a ranch. They went by skis and it took them two days, and a mountain lion followed them part of the way. Imagine a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old setting out today to cross the Continental Divide in the dead of winter!

Similar to El Pao, both Bachelor and Creede had a Roman Catholic church and also a Protestant church, with a well attended Sunday school.

Charles Nelson, one of the founders of Creede camp, a friend of Nicholas C. Creede and also of John C. MacKenzie, was known as an honorable and pious man. In the winter of 1890-1891, he built a cabin in Creede. “The first church services in the new camp were held in his cabin by the Reverend Sanderson of Denver in the summer of 1891. Nelson, upon hearing that there was a preacher in camp who could not find a place to preach, insisted that he use his cabin whenever he wished [cited from A Silver Camp Called Creede by Richard C. Huston].”

After making his fortune in Creede camp mines, Nelson returned to his native Denmark where he died in 1919 after undergoing a major surgery:

“He made few enemies and many friends, to whom he was always loyal, standing by them to the finish. His death marks the passing of another one of those boom-day characters who did so much to make the state of Colorado famous. There are many old timers here yet, in the camp he helped to discover, who remember the things he did, and who will regret to learn of his death [The Creede Candle, February 21, 1920].”

The Protestant church in Bachelor at an altitude of 10,531 feet was known as the “highest church in the country”.

To be continued.

John MacKenzie, 1838-1904

Ore house and chutes for the Commodore Mine, one of the most productive in the Creede – Bachelor mining camps. The Last Chance and Amethyst were even more productive.

Next to the Commodore Mines ore house.

Five sons further up the Bachelor Loop

Son, Jonathan. Note the ruggedly beautiful yet isolated landscape

Moose, near the Bachelor camp site

View from near Bachelor camp site

Mostly under the radar to the rest of the world, but very much on the minds and attitudes of the people of Guyana and on the Venezuelan political class, the long simmering Venezuelan claim over a vast, oil rich area of the Guiana Highlands is dangerously close to erupting.

The highlands are “a heavily forested plateau and low-mountain region north of the Amazon and south of the Orinoco River. This extensive natural border, coupled with nonexistent infrastructure and insufficient political willingness to cooperate from both sides, has left Guyana — and its institutions, customs, culture, and people — as an enigma to the majority of Venezuelans [Caracas Chronicles, February 2, 2024]”. No doubt the same can be said about the Guyanese people’s perceptions about Venezuela.

Two months ago, on December 3, 2023, the Maduro regime claimed an overwhelming “victory” in a referendum where over 95% of the Venezuelan people in effect voted to take over the region and to reject any past or future international arbitration agreements. Of course, since the early naughts any results from “elections” or “referendums” in Venezuela are trusted only by those who believe in the tooth fairy.

Nevertheless, the Maduro regime is proceeding as if an invasion is the “will of the people” (Rousseau is very much with us, no?).

As noted by the Caracas Chronicles, “In the slums of Caracas and in towns closer to the border with Guyana, people remain focused on their many other problems and see the chauvinistic campaign as a bad thing.”

As well they should.

Since the referendum, the people and authorities of Guyana see the 20,000-plus Venezuelan immigrants as Trojan Horse infiltrators and are making life increasingly difficult for them. These are not “military age single men” such as are being seen in the United States southern border, but rather very poor people who escaped Venezuela in search for a way to feed their families. Guyana has historically never refused them entry.

Brief Background

British Guiana was a possession of England since long before Venezuela had come into existence in the 19th Century. It was only after the terrible revolutionary wars of South America that Venezuela, seeing that the British region contained gold deposits, claimed much of the British colony for herself.

The British were not impressed; however, they were willing to settle the controversy. As far back as 1840 they commissioned Sir Robert Schomburgk to ascertain the true boundary. He made a careful survey which the Venezuelans promptly dismissed.

Then, in 1895, the Venezuelans turned to the United States whose Anglophobe Secretary of State, Richard Olney, wrote a fierce letter to England’s Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, who replied several months later, correcting Olney’s interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, which barred European powers from imposing their systems of governance onto the Americas but did not enter into border disputes. His reply also had the air of a college professor correcting a freshman student’s obvious grammatical errors.

Salisbury was undoubtedly correct; however, he was diplomatically unwise, not having read the American mood at the time, which was not very pro-British. Lord Salisbury turned his attention to England’s far flung empire, no doubt figuring the Americans would not bother further over that jungle-matted territory.

He figured wrong. President Grover Cleveland sought approval from Congress to appropriate funds for American arbitration of the border dispute, which request was approved unanimously, with a whoop and a holler, by both houses of Congress. The mood was of war with England, should it be necessary.

This was, of course, foolish on the part of the jingoists. England’s navy alone could wreak havoc on America’s coasts. Also, most American’s did not even know where British Guiana was on the map and could not care less, meaning enthusiasm was only temporary.

Across the ocean, similar sentiments prevailed. Most Englishmen agreed that a mosquito-infested piece of the South American jungle was not worth any war, no matter how many gold reserves it might have; after all, England had a corner of the world’s gold without counting the disputed highlands. Besides, the British were far more concerned with the rising power of Germany and also the obstreperous Boers in South Africa, which Germany was cheering on.

Europe’s discords continued to work to America’s advantage.

So the British agreed to arbitration and provided the Americans with massive amounts of documents and data which helped greatly in the push towards a reasonable and fair settlement. The Americans persuaded the Venezuelans to sign a treaty with England which called for the submission of the border dispute to international arbitration. This was a significant concession by England who knew that arbitrations tended to “split the difference”. The concern was that Venezuela, most unreasonably, claimed most of British Guiana, while England claimed far less of Venezuela.

The decision was issued about two years later and generally followed the Schomburgk line, with two important exceptions. “First, Venezuela secured a considerable area at the southern end; secondly, and much more significantly, she obtained control of the mouth of the Orinoco River [A Diplomatic History of the American People].”

It was Venezuela who had sought “Yankee intervention”. And when Cleveland died in 1908, Venezuela lowered her flags to half mast.

Current Situation

And now, Venezuela has moved “light tanks, missile-equipped patrol boats, and armored carriers to the two countries’ border in what is quickly turning into a new security challenge…. [Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2024].”

Historically, “revolutionary” regimes, which emphatically include Communist and Socialist inspired governments, seek confrontations and conflicts as they point fingers to “the other” as excuses for their own failures. History has ample evidence of this, from the French Revolution and it’s progeny throughout the earth, including the South American revolutionary wars of the 19th Century, the Russian Revolution and its progeny in the 20th, and the thirst for wars of the “free” governments of the 21st.

Essequibo refers to the name of a major river in Guyana. Venezuela aims to push their territorial claims to that river as they seek to take over most of her neighbor’s territory.

Pray for the peoples of Venezuela and Guyana.