Caribou is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

silver mining town located near Nederland in Boulder County,

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

, United States. It was named after the nearby Caribou silver mine. The

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

of Caribou City and the former Caribou Ranch recording studio are located east of the ghost town.

History

1861 to 1969

A prospector named Conger discovered placer gold downstream from Caribou in 1861. He eventually followed the gold up Coon Trail Creek, and discovered the first silver vein in what later became the Caribou district. Caribou was established about 1870 to house miners from the Caribou silver mine.Voynick, S.M., 1992, Colorado Gold, Missoula: Mountain Press Publishing Company, The Caribou, Colorado, post office operated from January 31, 1871, until March 31, 1917. The town had one church, three saloons, a brewery, and its own newspaper, the Caribou ''Post''. The Caribou mine was sold for $3 million in 1871 to Dutch investors, but the new owners found that the best ore had already been removed. The mine struggled until 1876, when controversial Colorado entrepreneurs Jerome B. Chaffee and

David Moffat David Halliday Moffat (July 22, 1839 – March 18, 1911) was an American financier and industrialist, who was one of the original pioneers of Denver, Colorado. History Moffat was born in Washingtonville, New York, to David and Catherine Gregg. ...

bought the mine, incorporated it, and sold shares in New York. A fire burned down the town in 1879. By the 1920s, Caribou was home to fewer than 50 people. At its peak in 1875, Caribou's population was estimated to be about 3,000 people.

1970 to present

Caribou and its silver mines were completely deserted by the time 19-year-old geology student Tom Hendricks saw it in 1970, but Hendricks became convinced that the silver mines at Caribou could make a profit, and has made the mines his life work. After he got his geology degree, he acquired the old Cross mine in 1973, and began shipping silver concentrate in 1977. He acquired the famous Caribou mine in 1980. He has struggled to keep the Cross and Caribou mines operating through low silver prices. Hendricks, through Calais Resources, started exploring for gold instead of silver, but business conflicts resulting in lawsuits, specifically with former Colorado senator Tom Wiens have delayed attempts at gold mining.Steve Raabe "Colorado gold mines in play after dispute between prospector, investor", ''Denver Post''; April 27, 2016 (updated from January 31, 2014)

Geography

The Caribou townsite is located an elevation of .

William Henry Jackson William Henry Jackson (April 4, 1843 – June 30, 1942) was an American photographer, American Civil War, Civil War veteran, painter, and an explorer famous for his images of the American West. He was a great-great nephew of Samuel Wilson, t ...

took a picture of the town in 1877, and well-known Colorado photographer

John Fielder John Fielder (August 2, 1950 – August 11, 2023) was an American landscape photographer, nature writer, the publisher of over 40 books, and a conservationist. He was nationally known for his landscape photography, scenic calendars (which ha ...

took another photograph of the same view in 1998. Only two stone ruins, and one collapsed wooden cabin remain of the town.

References

External links