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N."Form 10400a OMB AA=V&No 1024-001A <br /> *4% <br /> United States Department of the Interior <br /> National Park Service <br /> National Register of Historic Places <br /> Continuation Sheet <br /> Section number 8 Page 4 <br /> Central City quickly eclipsed Mountain City as the hub of social and <br /> economic life in the mining district and rivaled Denver 35 miles to the <br /> east. After Colorado Territory superceded Jefferson Territory by an Act of <br /> Congress in October 1861, Central City absorbed Mountain City where the Post <br /> Office had been. Gilpin County, measuring only 12 by 15 miles as the <br /> smallest in Colorado, was created with Central City as the county seat, and <br /> the Post Office moved there. Most of the first residents of the communities <br /> were from the California gold fields and the southeastern United States. <br /> They soon were joined by Cornish miners from the Lake Superior region, and <br /> later by English, Cornish, Irish, Welsh, and German immigrants along with a <br /> few Scots, French and Scandinavians. The 1870 Census indicated there were <br /> 3,739 native (most first generation) and 1,751 foreign settlers in the <br /> vicinity, 1,183 of whom were English (mostly Cornish) and Irish.` The <br /> Cornish and Irish made up almost the total population of Nevadaville. <br /> Throughout the first decade, men outnumbered women 7 to 1. <br /> A. Embryonic Communities: 1860s <br /> The Civil War coincided with an era of prosperity for the mining economy due <br /> to inflation and the need for precious metals. The mining towns of Gilpin <br /> County were the center of socioeconomic growth for the entire Rocky Mountain <br /> region. <br /> Gregory and other early prospectors extracted their fortunes by the simple <br /> placer methods using pans, cradles, and sluices. When dirt containing <br /> surface gold was "washed" with a current of water, the heavier gold was left <br /> behind. Once these surface deposits were depleted, however, subterranean <br /> hard-rock mining became necessary, and the extraction process became <br /> tremendously more arduous and costly. First the Spanish "arrastra" was <br /> used, operated by draft animals crushing the gold-bearing rock by pulling <br /> heavy stone "mullets" over it. This slow and inefficient method gave way <br /> rapidly to stamp milling. Heavy iron block stamps crushed the hardrock to <br /> sand, which then was washed by water over large copper plates impregnated <br /> with mercury. The mercury-gold amalgam which was formed by this process was <br /> heated so that the mercury was vaporized and the gold left to be cast into <br /> bars. Only the richest lodes produced a large enough quantity of ore to <br /> make this mining and milling process profitable. <br /> By the end of 1863, the best placers and the weathered, oxidized, and <br /> enriched ores were exhausted. These gave way to vast quantities of less <br /> rich ores which contained gold in chemical combination with sulfides. <br /> Because of the strong odor of sulfur these ores were known colloquially as <br />