Gilpin Observer (Central City, Colo.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,138 issues from 1898 to 1920, published in Central City, Colorado, digitised for Chronicling America.
The “Little Kingdom of Gilpin” sprouted up in the early 1860s, 40 miles west of Denver, where John H. Gregory first discovered four dollars’ worth of gold in a single pan of dirt in 1859. The area was quickly named Gregory Gulch, and, as the Gilpin Observer noted on March 9, 1911, the discovery “put the first mark of verity upon the tales of Pike’s Peak gold treasure that thus far had proved more mythical than true.” Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, even traveled to Gregory Gulch in 1859 to “ascertain the facts about the new land of gold” (Gilpin Observer, March 9, 1911). On that visit, the Observer speculated, Greeley would have seen saw 5,000 “keen, alert, steel muscled gold seekers swarming the deep, narrow gash in the hills.”
A teeming camp, three miles long, filled the gulch. It was divided into three municipalities: Black Hawk, Central City, and Nevadaville. Black Hawk and Central City, in particular, thrived and prospered in the area that became Gilpin County in 1861. By 1867, in that county alone, miners had panned more than $240,000 in loose placer gold and extracted more than $9 million in lode gold from the hills, using dynamite and coal-powered drilling. In the 1870s the area became known as the “richest square mile on earth,” as rich silver deposits were also discovered.
The Gilpin Observer began its life as the Black Hawk Times in July 1886, but by July 1887 it had been purchased from the estate of A. J. Crosson, moved to Central City, and…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Central City, Colorado, United States
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress