Oro City is a

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

in Lake 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

Description

The community was an early Colorado gold placer mining town located near Leadville in the California Gulch. ''Oro'' is the Spanish word for ''gold''. Oro City was the site of one of the single richest placer gold strikes in Colorado, with estimated gold production of 120,000 to 150,000 troy ounces (4 to 5 metric tons), worth $2.5 to $3 million at the then-price of $20.67 per troy ounce (31.1 grams).

Geography

The site of Oro City is at . It is in California Gulch, about a mile (1.6 km) northeast of

Leadville Leadville ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Statutory city, statutory city that is the county seat, the most populous community, and the only List of municipalities in Colorado, incorporated municipality in Lake County, Colorado, Lak ...

in the Mosquito Range of Lake County,

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History

Gold was discovered in the area in late 1859, during the Pike's Peak Gold Rush. However the initial discovery, where California Gulch empties into the

Arkansas River The Arkansas River is a major tributary of the Mississippi River. It generally flows to the east and southeast as it traverses the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The river's source basin lies in Colorado, specifically ...

, was not rich enough to cause excitement. On 26 April 1860, Abe Lee made a rich discovery of placer gold on California Gulch six miles (9.7 km) east of the

, and Oro City was founded at the new diggings. By July 1860, the town and surrounding area had a population of 10,000. An estimated $2 million in gold was taken out the first summer from California Gulch and nearby Iowa Gulch, but within a few years the richest part of the placers had been exhausted, and the population of Oro City was several hundred. Many claims (each measuring 100 feet (30.5 meters) along the stream) were consolidated, and worked by ground sluicing. A ditch was dug in 1877 to provide water for hydraulic mining, but the hydraulic mining was reported to be unsuccessful. Placer mining had always been hampered by a heavy brown sand. As early as 1874, one of the miners determined that the brown sand was the

lead Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...

mineral

cerussite Cerussite (also known as lead carbonate or white lead ore) is a mineral consisting of lead carbonate with the chemical formula PbCO3, and is an important ore of lead. The name is from the Latin ''cerussa'', white lead. ''Cerussa nativa'' was ...

, and that the sand also carried high values of silver. Some veins of gold ore had already been found, but following the brown sand to its sources in the bedrock led to the discovery of large and rich silver deposits. The silver started a new and larger rush, and Oro City filled with silver prospectors, but most people went instead to the new city of Leadville nearby.Voynick, S.M., 1992, Colorado Gold, Missoula: Mountain Press Publishing Company, The 1890 census found the population of Oro to be 222.

Notable residents

* John J. Hoover (died 1880), injured in a 65-foot (19.8-meter) fall in a mineshaft in Oro City in 1871; later convicted of murder in Fairplay, Colorado; lynched by a mob, as he awaited transport to the state penitentiaryLaura King Van Dusen, "Crime and Punishment in 1880s Fairplay: People Protest Light Sentencing, Deliver Frontier Justice", ''Historic Tales from Park County: Parked in the Past'' ( Charleston,

South Carolina South Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders North Carolina to the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, and Georgia (U.S. state), Georg ...

: The History Press, 2013), , pp. 89-96 * Horace Tabor, one of the placer miners in Oro City in 1860

References

External links