SUMMIT COUNTY - Shortly after Pug Ryan and his gang robbed patrons of their valuables at the Denver Hotel on Main Street in Breckenridge, deputies tracked the men and a shoot-out ensued.In the end, men on both sides died, but Ryan got away and the loot was nowhere in sight, said Robin Theobald as he recounted the story. It wasn't until years later that children playing near the site at Kokomo found the hidden treasures, including the hotel owner's watch, in a log.Today, Theobald has that watch. It belonged to his great grandfather Robert Foote, one of the early mining engineers of Summit County."Breckenridge has always been kind of a wild place, certainly it was wilder then," Theobald said with a laugh, adding that there may even have been more drinking in those days.He is the fifth generation of his family in Breckenridge. He grew up hearing the fascinating tales of the mining days and looking for remnants of the past that sit in all corners of the county. Even now, he owns a fully permitted mine south of Breckenridge that hasn't been in operation since 1982."Once mining gets in your blood you can't quit," Theobald said.And the same could likely be said about researching the history of mining. Locals Mary Ellen Gilliland, Bill Fountain and Charlotte Clarke are three of the experts on Summit County history - a lively history that is full of tales of riches, dreams, scoundrels, dangers. It is the history that left an indelible mark, shaping the area today, they said.When Gilliland sat down to tell the story of Summit County's history, she smiled sweetly and began to share stories about the characters of the past who have become imbedded in her life."As residents today everywhere we go we hear whispers on the wind and everywhere we look we see relics of the past," she said.Gold is discoveredThe date was Aug. 10, 1859. A party of 29 men and one woman had made their way over what is now Boreas Pass and dropped into the valley of the Blue River, determined to strike gold for the first time on the western slope of Colorado, Gilliland said.On first try, Ruben J. Spalding found what they came for in a sandbar near where the Breckenridge Recreation Center sits today."We sunk a hole three feet deep on a bar," wrote Spalding in Hall's History of Colorado 1894 according to research by Fountain. "And I having mined in California was selected as the most experienced man in the company to do the panning. The result of the first pan was 13 cents of gold, the largest grain about the size and shape of a flax seed. The second panful gave 27 cents, both yields being weighed in gold scales brought for the purpose."To put that in perspective, a good job at the time would have paid a $1 a day.Immediately, the group pulled the blank log book off the back of burro carrying it and went to work setting up "Spalding Diggings," the mining district, Fountain said. And like other districts, they determined the laws, elected officials and set up claims that stretched 100 feet from the discovery site.

It wasn't long before the news of gold discovery spread.Gilliland said with a smile, "I like to say that (Spalding's) cry of 'Eureka' rang across the walls of the Continental Divide and caused a horde to come over."However, people feared the winter so it wasn't until the spring of 1860 that those driven by dreams of riches battled the mud and snow and poured into Breckenridge, she added. That first winter following the discovery, Spalding and his crew became "amazingly rich" when they struck gold on Gold Run Gulch, Gilliland said.Extraction technologiesIn the 1860s, miners panned for gold. They also came up with a way to divert streams and dig down to the bedrock. However, that was "extremely dangerous" and many men lost their lives because of the loose rock and water, Fountain said.By the middle of the 1860s, hydraulic mining was taking off, he said. This is where miners would bring water through ditches or three-sided flumes to a reservoir and run it into hydraulic piping to wash gold out of the mountains, he added."Picture a firehose," Fountain said. "If a fireman stuck it against a hillside it would dig it away pretty fast. That's what this did."Yet another way would be to collect a reservoir that when it reached a certain height would be released to race down the hill and take out what was in its path - a method that led to the end of a town by the Swan River, Parkville.In January 1862, the Board of County Commissioners held their first meeting in Parkville, Fountain said. The town was complete with cabins, saloons, a theater with weekly performances and a mint, he continued. However, it wasn't long before sludge of trees and everything that ran down the nearby mountainside from the hydraulic mining reached above the rooftops, he said."Mining was more important than the town," Fountain said.And mining also continued to draw gold seekers. The population rose until the 1870s when much of the gold had been panned out of the rivers.Then, in 1878, Will Iliff struck another kind of gold on Shock Hill - he found a vein of ore running through the mountain, Gilliland said. With that discovery came hard rock miners, who dug into the mountains and extracted the gold, she said. Property lots that had been selling in Breckenridge for $5 to $25 climbed to $250 and people once again pour over The Divide, she said."It was like a tidal wave occurred," Gilliland said. And miners weren't the only ones attracted to the area. Merchants rushed to open shop and the cost of goods soared.A railroad was in extreme demand as mines sprung up all over Summit County."It was just a wild circus of humanity," Gilliland said.

An era of eleganceIn 1880, track for Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad began to be built, and on Aug. 2, 1882, a train rolled into town - "their salvation," Gilliland said. Before that, goods were transported from Denver in wagons.Throughout the next decade companies and corporations formed and investors from the east bought into the action. It turned into an era of elegance that Summit County hadn't known before, Gilliland said.The miner in overalls and boots gave way to the gentleman in the three-piece suit and Derby hat, she added. Ladies wore corsets and lavish gowns. Hotels went from offering beans and salt pork to champagne and oysters, she said."Breckenridge came of age. ... The riches poured out of the mountains and swelled the town to where there was high society," she said, adding that the town's population was about 2,000.In July 1887, within just four hours Tom Groves and Harry Lytton had extracted 243 ounces of gold (which would be worth about $160,000 today) from Farncomb Hill by French Gultch Road. Part of that included a 13-pound nugget, Tom's Baby, which was the largest found in the state.The discovery at Farncomb was also worth more than just regular gold. It was "specimen gold," Fountain explained. Leaf gold, crystal gold and wire gold - named for the shapes they took- were all pulled from the hill.Through the turn of the century the gold rush flourished, and according to research by Fountain a Mining News article lists the total output of ore in Summit County for 1903 as $700, 361. Today, that would translate to about $15.7 million, accounting for inflation.Dwindling boom, and the advent of the dredgeBut merely seven years later the boom dwindled. "It seemed like things kind of played out," Gilliland said.Still, Montezuma's Pennsylvania and Breckenridge's Wellington mines kept operating - and kept the economy above float, she said. In 1989, dredge mining began with a boat designed by Ben Stanley Revett and soon injected vitality into the community.The first few boats were too light to handle the depth of rock they would have to dig through. Then, in 1905, the Reliance in the French Gultch proved dredge mining could be hugely successful. It dug through 35 to 80 feet of gravel to gather ore from the rivers, Gilliland said.Dredge mining continued until 1942, extracting $32 million in ore out of the Blue, Swan and French rivers, Gilliland said. The boats quit by order of the government because of the World War II, she said. Summit County went into economic decline, and while many miners fled as quickly as they came, others turned to ranching to survive.

White goldAfter the mines shut down, they never ramped back up again, Gilliland said. The county was a "shadow of its former self."The populations of the towns dwindled. The price of land dropped to $55 an acre. Tools were left. Mines were abandoned.Then, "white gold" was discovered, Gilliland said.Following World War II, skiing soldiers from the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division returned to the Colorado mountains where they had trained, according to Gilliland. And in 1946, Arapahoe Basin opened with "unpredictable U.S. Army surplus parts for lifts and generators," she wrote in an article.Breckenridge Ski Resort was the next to open in 1961, then Keystone Ski Resort in 1970 and Copper Mountain Resort two years later. However, the opening of ski areas wasn't the first time snow sliding had been tried in the county. To pass the time in February1860, one of the miners in the first party to arrive in Breckenridge, Balce Weaver, made a crude pair of skis, Gilliland said.Also, one of the discoveries Clarke made in her research is that it was a mining engineer who first invented the aerial tramway that was modified by the ski industry to create the chairlift.Ore in the hills, but will it ever be mined again?Today, millions of dollars in ore still linger throughout Summit County, but the mining industry will not likely be returning to its former days any time soon.While it may seem impossible to imagine now, "I think the time will come when mining will come again," said Theobald, who tinkers with the mining that is an integral part of his family history.Valuable resources still are present throughout the county and there may come a time when the country will rely on this, he added."Gold diggers really devoured the beauty of the land. ... Today people are tempted to rush in and develop. We can learn a lesson from (the miners)," she said.Lory Pounder can be reached at (970) 668-4628, or at lpounder@summitdaily.com.