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NPS Form 104004 OW Appr"W 1024- 0/8 United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number s Page 3 communities. The bridging of these gaps by improved transportation facilites helped open all the Far West to latecomers who completed its transition.3 Settlement of the Gregory mining district in the principal towns of Black Hawk, Central City, and Nevadaville initiated this process in the interior of the North American continent eastward from the far western coastal areas and westward from the Missouri frontier. Between 1848 and the first gold rush to California, and the late 1870s, a series of rushes brought the first large wave of permanent settlers to much of the territory west of the Mississippi River. In their frantic rush to the California gold fields, the first wave of prospectors skipped the mountainous and arid lands of the United States west of the 105th meridian, formed by a chain of plateaus bounded by the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges on the west. Then in 1858, news of gold found in the Pikes Peak region attracted settlers to new camps along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in present-day Denver, Jefferson, Clear Creek, and Gilpin Counties, Colorado. A strike early the following year further up the mountain gulches drew prospectors away from the new towns into Clear Creek Canyon. John Gregory's discovery on May 6, 1859, on the north bank of the creek made "Gregory Gulch" the center of new mining activity in the area. Three camps sprang up in the summer of 1859 in the vicinity of the Gregory discovery, with a population estimated variously from 800 to 5,000 men by June. Journalist Horace Greeley reported seeing only five white females that year. The initial camps were named Mountain City, Nevada City (Nevadaville) , and Central City. Mountain City and Central City grew up near the Gregory diggings; Central City was named for its place as geographic center of the settlements in the area. The settlement at Nevadaville in 1859 was near the discovery of the huge Burroughs, Kansas, and California-Hidden Treasure lodes. In 1861, Nevadaville residents claimed that their population of 2,705 rivaled Denver's (2,603) . Black Hawk, the fourth settlement, appeared in the spring of 1860 around a stamp mill named "Black Hawk" after a famous Sauk Indian chief in Illinois. In a short time, a number of steam quartz mills were erected there, and it became known as the "City of Mills." The four towns formed one continuous area of settlement with no established boundaries. It ran the length of Gregory Gulch to the point it intersected Spring Gulch, then spread southwest up Nevada Gulch and farther west up Eureka Gulch.