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NPS F"10-N" OMB AWWW ft fo?soole (deal United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number 8 Page 10 The Central City-Black NHL District illustrated in bold relief the typical pattern of mining frontier development in the second half of the 19th century: rapid, telescoped population growth and urbanization based on natural resource depletion using massive technology that became increasingly expensive. It was in this rapid, explosive, and resource-exploitative manner that the arid Intermountain West was settled. III. CRITERION 4: Significance as a Distinctive Type, Period and Method of Construction that is an Exceptional Illustration of Mining Community Development in the Rocky Mountain West A. Embryonic Communities: 1860s Crude tents and lean-tos were built hurriedly along the steep and narrow land along Clear Creek and up the gulches in the first year of mining near the Gregory diggings. More substantial log and frame structures soon replaced these temporary structures. By 1865, the mining district had made the rapid transition from the "camp phase" of log and wood frame construction to the prosperous and more permanent "town phase" of urban development, when buildings were constructed of stone and brick and had more stylistic elements.16 A building boom occurred between 1862 and 1865 that reflected the expectant prosperity of new residents and produced an "instant" urban industrial landscape with the surrounding mountainsides denuded of trees used in building and industrial activity. Laid out in accordance with the topography of the mountainous area, the buildings of the three towns follow the gulches and curves of the hillsides, some seeming to sit precariously on steep slopes or overhanging Clear Creek. The commercial districts of Black Hawk and Central City are built as tightly-packed, contiguous buildings, most sharing common walls- -a typical configuration for American frontier architecture of this period. In the commercial, government, and social buildings many stylistic elements imitate Gothic, Romanesque, Renaissance Revival, and Italianate styles, popular earlier in the eastern United States and western Europe and resurrected on the frontier by emigrants from the East. The commercial buildings have full storefronts often adorned with iron columns, bracketed entablatures, and arched windows of the Italianate style. This frontier version of Eastern styles was greatly enhanced by the coming of the railroad in the 1870s and the ensuing availability of stylistic elements such as wooden scroll and scallop work seen even in modest dwellings, and cast iron columns and entablatures on the storefronts. The elaborate storefronts and the impression of massiveness created by the contiguous configuration of the commercial structures was an