Work hasn’t slowed down much for us as we continue to work towards finishing our new kitchen.  I’ll post about that later, but here, I’d like to share what I found a couple of days ago.

Anybody who knows me knows that I’m fascinated by history.  I’m so intrigued by the past that I often find myself just stopping and imagining who might have stood where I’m standing, thinking about what they were doing, or wondering what they might have left behind.  These feelings are strong in places like the Alamo in San Antonio, Custer’s Battlefield in Montana, or on Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.  The structures that still remain, coupled with the museum displays that illustrate a place’s past and a good imagination make it fairly easy to wander back in time and spend a few moments there.  There is probably no greater example of this than Pearl Harbor.  I’ve seen the video footage of the 1941 attack, I’ve been to the museums, I’ve stood on the Arizona Memorial and looked down into the open turret just under the water’s surface, and I’ve even had the privilege of meeting and talking to several men who were actually there that morning.

This sort of mental  ‘time travel’ is far more difficult when a place lacks the lasting remnants of it’s past.  I traveled all over Germany by train and frequently caught myself staring out at the countryside, knowing that just 40 years earlier, millions of soldiers and civilians from both sides clashed there in the most violent and intense war the world has ever seen.

It’s no surprise, then, that when we moved to Cripple Creek, I took an immediate interest in the area’s rich past.  I read a wonderful history of the region within the first few weeks I was here and was immediately taken with the notion that this quiet, little, high-mountain town of just 1,600 people once boasted over 50,000 inhabitants!  Who were they?  Where did they all live?  How did they live?  What did they do?  What were their stories?  Did any of them occupy the area we now call our own home?  After all, we have twenty acres on the same hill as the city cemetery.  Surely, some of those old-timers walked the same ground that we now walk every day.

We took an afternoon off last week and visited the old Cripple Creek Jail museum.  The lady working there was very friendly and helpful, and suggested a book called ‘Money Mountain‘ .  I found it on Amazon and ordered it that very evening.  What a terrific find!  It describes the efforts of the earliest settlers here in the late 1800’s to find quality grazing land and ample water to raise cattle.  Along the way, one man found evidence of gold and spent years trying to locate it’s source.  A rush followed and the events of the next 120 years have led us to where we are today.

The book describes a survey of the region that took place in the early 1890’s and I found an 1894 US Geological Survey map on-line that shows the many mines, tunnels, and test holes that had been dug in the Cripple Creek Mining District up to that point.  It shows three X’s on our hill and I’ve found a number of ‘craters’ just above the landing where our fifth-wheel is parked, so there’s no question that at some point, men (presumably) with picks and shovels tromped around up here looking for gold.  Since the holes are fairly shallow, I assume they failed to find their fortunes here, but they were here!

I figured that if someone had been here, maybe they left something besides a hole in the ground.  Maybe they broke a shovel or pick handle and just left the useless tool behind.  Maybe, with all the exertion involved in digging, some loose coins fell from a pocket.  Maybe they set something down on a nearby rock and simply forgot it when they packed up and left.  I’m excited by the prospect of finding one of these treasures, so I spent some time with my metal detector and a shovel.  I was actually quite surprised that I picked up a number of ‘hits’ just on the rim of this test hole.  I excitedly dug down several inches and sifted through the topsoil and small rocks to see what I might find.  No tools or coins, but I was still thrilled at my discovery!  It’s going to seem a bit lame to most, and they certainly have very little actual value, but I found……..  nails!!!!

These aren’t modern, mass-produced nails made by automated machines that anyone can just buy at the local hardware store.  These are irregularly sized, square nails that some blacksmith made by hand; one at a time by heating the steel and pounding it with a hammer to create one, single nail.  To me, these are such an awesome find that raise all those questions I described at the beginning of this post: Who made them?  Who left them?  What were they used for?  Why were they left there?  Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to look for those tools and I’m hoping to find a pile of gold coins, but these nails were last held by someone in the 1800’s and represent an actual, tangible link to the past that I can hold in my own hand in 2017.  How cool is that?