Independence, Colorado: The Gold Camp That Left on Skis

01A Strike on the Fourth of July

Billy Belden led a party of Leadville prospectors over the Continental Divide in the spring of 1879 and found a gold placer at the head of the Roaring Fork River. They called the camp Belden. On July 4 they made what Caroline Bancroft, in Unique Ghost Towns and Mountain Spots, describes as "another big strike a few yards away," and renamed their holdings for the day.

The ground they were working belonged to the Utes. Earlier prospectors had retreated to Leadville after trouble with the Utes, and Governor Pitkin had ordered settlers to stay east of the Divide. The miners who held on formed a mining district to protect their own claims and those of the men who had gone back.

The trail over Hunter's Pass kept bringing men west. One party, recalled in an old Aspen Times reminiscence, was made up of Henry Staats, William Blodgett, Mitchell Lorenz, J. Warren Elliott and W. A. Root. From Twin Lakes they crossed Hunter's Pass and went down through Independence camp to Ute City. The same piece notes another arrival: "In February, 1880, Proffessor B. Clark Wheeler, with several men, came into camp over the Independence trail." Wheeler had come from Leadville on Norwegian snowshoes. In 1880 and 1881 he cut the first true road over the pass, a toll road built with hand tools and manual labor. By 1882 an improved toll road was carrying daily stages between Leadville and Aspen.

02Why Did Independence Have So Many Names?

The first arrivals resented the men who came after them, and, as Bancroft puts it, "feuds began to flare." Rival groups wanted control of the camp so they could sell town lots, and the fighting played out over what to call the place.

William Kinkead turned up about the time the Farwell company began building its mill. He renamed the camp Chipeta, after the wife of the Ute chief Ouray, and in January 1881 secured himself a postmaster's job at a new office called Sidney. The Farwell Mining Company disliked his choice and got a post office of its own, named Farwell. In September 1881 residents voted between Chipeta and Mammoth City. Then, in February 1882, a third faction that wanted nothing to do with either of the others won an office called Sparkill, and the Sidney and Farwell offices closed before the year was out. Mount Hope and Hunter's Pass had their turns in local speech as well.

Half the residents paid no attention and went on saying Independence. "Independence is the town of many names," Bancroft wrote, "and yet it never had an official post office of 'Independence!'" The Sparkill office lasted until 1887. A post office called Chipeta opened briefly in 1899, the year the camp emptied.

03Thirty Stamps on the Roaring Fork

The Farwell Consolidated Mining Company, a group of Leadville investors, put up the capital. John V. Farwell, whose name it carried, had already built mills at Georgetown and Leadville and wanted a third here. The company drove the Brown Tunnel in 1880. It had planned a 10-stamp mill but opened with 15 stamps, and in late 1881 it enlarged the mill to 30. That year the district produced roughly $100,000 in gold.

More than 40 businesses opened, among them a bank that came before any in Aspen or Ashcroft. At the east end of Main Street the New England House charged $2 for room and board. The Independence Miner began publishing in October 1881 and was short-lived. The site's National Register nomination passes along the camp's reputation: "It is said that the camp was on the wild side, with many saloons, gambling halls and brothels."

Mrs. M. B. Hall came in 1881 from Kansas and Iowa with a baby daughter after her husband took a job in the stamp mill office. The family stayed only into 1882. Half a century later she set down her memories of both camps as "Experiences in Leadville and Independence, 1881-82," published in the March 1933 Colorado Magazine.

The veins played out almost as fast as they had been found. The district's output for 1881 and 1882 together topped $190,000, but in 1883 it came to $2,000. The Farwell mill closed in January 1883, and miners drifted down the valley to Aspen and its silver. When the railroads reached Aspen in 1887 and 1888, Wheeler's toll road lost its traffic and fell into disuse. By 1888 fewer than a hundred people remained in Independence.

04The Hunter's Pass Ski Club

The holdouts lasted another decade. Storms struck in February 1899, and up to 18 feet of snow was reported. Down in Aspen it snowed every day that winter. With supplies cut off at nearly 11,000 feet, the people of Independence chose not to wait for a thaw.

They took their houses apart, shaped the planks into 75 pairs of skis, and rode them down the Roaring Fork to Aspen. Afterward they made a joke of the whole thing, calling it a race held by the "Hunter's Pass Ski Club." The marker at the townsite gives the entry fee as "one ham sandwich."

Jack Williams stayed behind. After 1900 he was the only resident of Independence and kept watch over the idle mill. He came to be known as the town's hermit and "the Mayor of Independence." He left in 1912, and the mill was torn down in 1920.

05What Remains of Independence Today

Highway 82 runs right past the townsite on its climb over Independence Pass between Twin Lakes and Aspen. A small pullout serves for parking, and there are no other services. The Aspen Historical Society manages the site with the U.S. Forest Service, and a short loop trail with interpretive signs threads through what is left.

About two dozen log structures survive in various stages of collapse. Eight or nine still have walls and part of a roof, among them a row of miners' cabins along the old main street. The foundations and timbers of the stamp mill remain as well. In July wildflowers grow over the tailings, and the Roaring Fork runs fast and clear just below the site. The town and its mill were listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 11, 1973, as the Independence and Independence Mill Site.

Snow closes the pass from about November until Memorial Day, so the cabins can be reached only in the warm months. Visitors should come ready for thin air and sudden weather.