if it were possible to remove. Today the majority of the county’s nine thousand residents are nestled along a razor-thin valley bookended by the mountains and Interstate 70. Space and tourism are the most important commodities in the county. There’s literally no room for new mining operations or, failing that, the essential governmental willingness—especially when tourism dollars glitter ever more brightly than gold.
Those interested in mining or prospecting have to do so along the footsteps and in the ruins of those who have come before. Clear Creek travels sixty-six miles from the Continental Divide to the Great Plains, where it eventually merges with the South Platte. It’s along this stretch Reid discovered gold. Like any self-respecting prospector he got a claim, which gives him the right to legally remove the gold from the area, while forbidding all others. Because finding successful pockets of gold has historically been difficult, especially now after nearly one hundred years of mining, Reid said he occasionally finds unfriendly competition.
Every year someone will come down to his portion of the stream and tell him they heard gold was found there. His response is to the point: “‘Yeah, but I own the property, I’m the one who found the gold—and I don’t want you on that property.’ And I have to ask them to leave, sometimes on a daily basis.”
He said that over the years people have become “squirrely” about the issue or even hostile. It has gotten bad enough that he sometimes brings his handgun with him.
“I’ve had some [prospecting] neighbors that were next door that were less than cordial,” he said, “and I wouldn’t go to my property without a gun.”
Gold Fever
Ken Reid said he knows people whom he can trust implicitly with his money. People who will starve before thinking of spending even one dollar of his cash and breaking his trust.
“But they’ll fistfight their brother over a flake of gold—and I’ve seen them do it,” Reid said. “Gold fever is a real thing. People see gold and it just boggles their mind to the point where they think that the gold is more valuable than the cash. I’m not going to fistfight you over a flake of gold—but I’m not going to let you take a flake of gold from me either.”
Between tools and land, Reid has put $100,000 over the years into looking for the yellow metal. “Run away, do not catch gold fever; it will make you obsessed,” he said. “I have spent every bit of gold that I have ever found on acquiring more equipment to go after more gold.”
About twenty-five miles away from Ken Reid’s Man Cave in the town of Golden, Colorado, gold-panning veteran Bill Chapman leaned against the counter of the prospecting supply business Gold-n-Detectors. Chapman said, with all seriousness, that gold fever is a real condition. One that he’s seen in himself and others.
“I have been in the ‘hobby’ over forty years—and I still have dreams about finding gold and about prospecting,” Chapman said. For him, gold fever can be summed up in one word: “lust.”
“It is the thrill of the hunt and the thrill of the find,” Chapman explained. “And if I get a little gold—that is all well and good.” Chapman said going out and finding the precious metal, for almost no money, is a challenge that many are happy to try their hand at.
“But then it gets in your system, it gets in your blood,” Chapman said. “And gold fever is a real thing, it is absolutely genuine, and we have seen it amongst our customers.” Chapman noted it hits people the worst who go out and are successful at looking for gold the first time.
“There’s a lure behind gold that attracts people to it.”
Gold Dust Dreams
Back at the Man Cave, Ken Reid was sitting on an overturned white bucket and panning through gravel and dirt with that old green-colored gold pan. Green is used because it’s thought that the color of gold stands out more starkly against it.
“Every time I find a piece of gold, I’m the first human being to ever put that into the world market,” Reid said. “It’s just the allure of how beautiful it is, every piece of gold is different.” With a plastic snuffer bottle Reid sucked up the small gold flecks he regularly discovers.
He rarely scores an actual gold nugget and most of the gold he collects is in gold dust. He said oftentimes a nugget, however, is worth more than its weight in gold because of its uniqueness.
“When you find a nice specimen, every one is unique, every one is different, and no two nuggets are the same,” Reid said.
It’s not unusual to find Reid walking the streets of Idaho Springs during the summer and digging into his deep pockets to pull out a nugget to show off in the bright mountain light.
“Everybody is looking for that big piece of gold; you’re more likely to find a five-carat diamond in the Earth’s crust than you are a one-ounce gold nugget.” With a dreamy look he recalled the story of how he once found a nugget that was shaped exactly like a horse’s head. For years it replaced the knight on his chess table.
“I never did find the entire chess set.”
Reid said he doesn’t have any difficulty finding people willing to take gold instead of cash.
“I’ve paid for land with gold, I’ve paid for mining equipment in gold, I’ve paid for cars in gold,” Reid said. Another time he found a piece of wire gold shaped like a spinal column. He traded it to a chiropractor for work on his ailing back. Being hunched over a stream with a gold pan is physically difficult work. Reid said he is able find relief from his aches and pains diving under the stream for hours at a time to look for gold.
“It is still a lot of work digging underwater but I have the buoyancy of the water and it really helps the joints, the back, when I’m laid out in the stream,” Reid explained.
“Rock Wrestling”
Under the fast-moving brown water Reid does what he calls “rock wrestling,” or digging up and moving boulders to get his dredge’s hose under them. He’s dove as deep as thirty feet, trying to get at where the gold might be hiding. “I am diving in hypothermic swift water at altitude; these are all dangerous things.”
It’s not always gold that Reid finds under the water. Over the years he’s discovered railroad spikes, railroad tracks, old shovels, broken glass, and other relics from the area’s mining history.
“The top five to six feet of the river is man-made trash,” Reid said. “Clear Creek is literally filled in over the last 150 years of mining up here with man-made debris. Once you get below that six-foot level you’re down to a level where man hasn’t been.”
History states that some hard rock mines were built under Clear Creek, but Reid said he isn’t worried about coming across an old shaft and being sucked into one. He said any shaft that has already come that close to the river is likely already filled in with water, and added he occasionally comes across placer mine shafts in the river that once were located beside it. One in particular he knew was in his area and spent three years looking for with an old photograph.
“I have a 1902 USGS report showing that shaft is sixty feet deep. I want to dive that shaft,” Reid said. Because he is considered a prospector, Reid is allowed to remove seventy tons of material a year without a mining permit from the state of Colorado.
“I don’t count how many tons of gravel that I remove—but the year I find seventy
