Buckskin Joe, also called Laurette or Lauret, is a deserted

ghost town Ghost Town(s) or Ghosttown may refer to: * Ghost town, a town that has been abandoned Film and television * ''Ghost Town'' (1936 film), an American Western film by Harry L. Fraser * ''Ghost Town'' (1956 film), an American Western film by All ...

in Park County,

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

, United States. It was an early mining town, and the former county seat of Park County.

History

View of log cabins and a dirt road at Buckskin Joe in 1864 - DPLA - eed1db6bbe4640bc54353f8b916590bf

The area was first inhabited by Non-Native Americans in 1859 during the

Pikes Peak Gold Rush The Pike's Peak Gold Rush (later known as the Colorado Gold Rush) was the boom in gold prospecting and mining in the Pike's Peak Country of western Kansas Territory and southwestern Nebraska Territory of the United States that began in July 1858 ...

, when

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

was discovered along Buckskin Creek, on the east side of the

Mosquito Range The Mosquito Range (elevation approximately 14,000 ft) is a high mountain range in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado in the United States. The peaks of the range form a ridge running north–south for roughly 40 mi (64 km) fr ...

. At the time of its first settlement, the town was in the western part of Kansas Territory. The town was formally organized in September 1860 and named Laurette, a contraction of the first names of the only two women in the camp, the sisters Laura and Jeanette Dodge. But it was always more popularly known as Buckskin Joe, after Joseph Higginbottom, an early trapper and prospector. Little is known for certain about Higginbottom. Some accounts refer to him as an

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...

; some accounts say that he was the one who first discovered gold in the vicinity of the town. Mining shifted to rich hardrock deposits in the Phillips lode and other

vein Veins are blood vessels in humans and most other animals that carry blood towards the heart. Most veins carry deoxygenated blood from the tissues back to the heart; exceptions are the pulmonary and umbilical veins, both of which carry oxygenat ...

s. By 1861, when the Laurette/Buckskin Joe Post Office opened, in the newly formed

Colorado Territory The Territory of Colorado was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from February 28, 1861, until August 1, 1876, when it was admitted to the Union as the State of Colorado. The territory was organized in the ...

, the town boasted two hotels, fourteen stores, and a bank. On January 7, 1862 the

county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is in use in Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, Taiwan, and the United States. The equivalent term shire town is used in the US st ...

of Park County moved to Buckskin Joe from Tarryall, now also a ghost town. At its peak, the town was credited with a population of 5,000, but historian Robert L. Brown considers this number far too large. TaborStore-BuckskinJoeCO

The placer and vein gold deposits were rich, but were quickly exhausted. By 1866, the town was reported to be deserted, and the courthouse building was moved down the valley to the new

Fairplay FairPlay is a digital rights management (DRM) technology developed by Apple Inc. It is built into the MP4 multimedia file format as an encrypted AAC audio layer, and was used until April 2009 by the company to protect copyrighted works sold ...

. In the late 1950s, Horace Tabor's general store was dismantled, hauled away, and reassembled at the tourist attraction and movie set also called Buckskin Joe, away from the original site. It remained there until 2011 when it, along with the entire tourist attraction and movie set, was sold to a private collector and moved to a private ranch in western Colorado.

Notable residents

John Lewis Dyer John Lewis Dyer (1812-1901), "The Snowshoe Itinerant," was a circuit rider, that is, a preacher who rode from one church to the next. He was a Methodist. Biography Dyer was born in Franklin County, Ohio, spending most his early years in Illino ...

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

circuit rider missionary, also arrived in Bucksin Joe in 1861, having migrated from

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

. * Frank H. Mayer, former U.S. marshal in Buckskin Joe, former

buffalo hunter Buffalo most commonly refers to: * Bubalina, including most "Old World" buffalo, such as water buffalo * Bison, including the American buffalo * Buffalo, New York Buffalo or buffaloes may also refer to: Animals * Bubalina, a subtribe of the ...

*Silverheels (proper name unknown) was a popular

dance hall Dance hall in its general meaning is a hall for dancing. From the earliest years of the twentieth century until the early 1960s, the dance hall was the popular forerunner of the discothèque or nightclub. The majority of towns and cities in ...

girl at Buckskin Joe and the subject of many apocryphal stories.

Mount Silverheels Mount Silverheels is a high and prominent mountain summit in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains of North America. The thirteener is located in Pike National Forest, northeast ( bearing 41°) of the Town of Alma in Park County, Colorad ...

is named in her honor. *

Horace Tabor Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

, later a mining millionaire and U.S. senator, arrived in Buckskin Joe in 1861 and ran a store with his first wife.

Location

The site of Buckskin Joe is about west of

Alma, Colorado Alma is a Statutory Town in Park County, Colorado, United States. The town population was 296 at the 2020 United States Census. Alma is located West and South of the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Front Range ...

, at , at an altitude of

above mean sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance ( height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as '' orthometric heights''. Th ...

References

External links

Legends of America: ''Buckskin Joe - Gone & Back Again''

{{authority control Ghost towns in Colorado Former populated places in Park County, Colorado 1859 establishments in Kansas Territory

History

Notable residents

Location

See also

References

External links