Buckskin Joe, Park County, Colorado

This article is about the ghost town. For the Western-style theme park, see Buckskin Joe.
The Park County courthouse, originally built in Buckskin Joe, was later moved to Fairplay, and is now in the South Park City Museum in Fairplay

Buckskin Joe, also called Laurette or Lauret, is a deserted ghost town in Colorado, United States. It was an early mining town, and county seat of Park County, Colorado.

History

The area was first settled by Americans in 1859 during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush, when gold was discovered along Buckskin Creek, on the east side of the Mosquito Range. 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.[1] 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; 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 veins. By 1861, when the Laurette/Buckskin Joe Post Office opened, in the newly formed Colorado Territory, the town boasted two hotels, fourteen stores, and a bank. On January 7, 1862 the county seat of Park County moved to Buckskin Joe from Tarryall, now also a ghost town.[2] At its peak, the town was credited with a population of 5,000, but historian Robert L. Brown considers this number far too large.[3]

Tabor's store, now in the Buckskin Joe movie set and theme park near Cañon City, Colorado

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 county seat of Fairplay. 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, 70 miles (110 km) away from the original site.

Notable residents

Location

The site of Buckskin Joe is about 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Alma, Colorado, at 39°17′35″N 106°05′17″W / 39.29306°N 106.08806°W / 39.29306; -106.08806, at an altitude of 10,761 feet (3,280 m) above mean sea level.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "From the silver mines," Daily Rocky Mountain News, 18 Sept. 1860, p. 2.
  2. ↑ Park County Local History Archives: Hiking through history Retrieved November 29, 2008.
  3. ↑ Robert L. Brown. Ghost Towns of the Colorado Rockies. Caxton Press. p. 69. Retrieved November 30, 2008.
  4. ↑ "Biography of Famous Preacher Father Dyer Part 1". trivia-library.com. Retrieved January 19, 2014.
  5. ↑ Laura King Van Dusen, "Colonel Frank Mayer: Buffalo Hunter, Civil War Drummer Boy, Author, Met Dancehall Entertainer Silverheels When U.S. Marshal of Buckskin", Historic Tales from Park County: Parked in the Past (Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press, 2013), ISBN 978-1-62619-161-7, pp. 53-58.
  6. ↑ Robert L. Brown. Ghost Towns of the Colorado Rockies. Caxton Press. pp. 71–73. Retrieved November 29, 2008.

External links

Coordinates: 39°17′35″N 106°05′17″W / 39.29306°N 106.08806°W / 39.29306; -106.08806

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