No one knew it then, but Creede would be known as The Last of the Silver Towns. The area’s bonanza began in 1890, a scant three years before the Silver Crash.
“Holy Moses!” Nicholas Creede is supposed have exclaimed to his partner when he found a rich silver outcropping in 1889. He staked his claim in that name. When David Moffat, Denver & Rio Grande Railroad president, toured the Holy Moses in 1890, he bought into the mine for sixty-five thousand dollars.
When others heard that a respected man like Moffat was involved, the rush began. By the fall of 1890, houses, cabins, tents, and businesses lined Willow Creek for six miles with such density that one pioneer recalled there was not one square foot unstaked. The lots were going at prices so outrageous that crafty settlers out-smarted lot owners by extending planks across Willow Creek and erecting shacks on them. Crafty it was, until the creek rose.
Several towns evolved along Willow Creek, including two of considerable size. The original Creede, up the canyon from the present town, became known as North Creede. South of that was Stringtown, followed by the other large settlement, Jimtown, which became present-day Creede. High above Jimtown to the west was Bachelor, the largest “suburb.”
The Denver & Rio Grande arrived in 1891. Each new train brought as many as three hundred people to an already overcrowded Creede. Life moved at a frantic pace. A load of lumber one day was a store the next. Just five days after a groundbreaking for a power plant, Creede had electricity. As newspaper editor Cy Warman wrote in an oft-quoted poem, “It’s day all day in the day-time /And there is no night in Creede.”
Floods and fires plagued Creede and Jimtown because of their locations in or near narrow, deep canyons. Mere cloudbursts sent torrents of water through both towns. A saloon fire in 1892 reduced most of Jimtown’s business district to charred sticks.
In 1893, Jimtown, by then called Creede, had a reported ten thousand citizens. They took the seat of newly created Mineral County from now-vanished Wason. Legend says they seized more than the seat: Piece by piece, they moved the courthouse as well.
The demonetization of silver in 1893 ended Creede’s bonanza, and by 1900, fewer than a thousand residents remained in Creede. Although the boom was over, significant mining continued off and on until 1985. The current population is less than four hundred.
And what became of Nicholas Creede, who began the bonanza? In 1897, he committed suicide with a morphine overdose in Los Angeles because, a contemporary report stated, “his wife, from whom he had separated, insisted on living with him.”
The Creede Cemetery stands behind this Victorian Gothic-style catholic church, built around 1898, which was moved to this location in 1976. A complete restoration of the building is planned by its current owner, Creede Mining Heritage.
WALKING AND DRIVING AROUND CREEDE
Creede’s 1891 railroad depot, in the middle of town on Main Street, now houses a museum that features old photographs, a hand-drawn fire truck, a hearse, gaming tables, and other interesting items, including a piano that came to Creede by wagon. The piano was last played by Chester Brubacher, who didn’t read music. To fill the music stand in front of his eyes, Chester placed a Sears catalog on it. When he played happy music, he turned the catalog to women’s bras. When he played a sad song, he paged over to the corset section.
Downtown Creede has several other attractive buildings, including the Creede Hotel, the tin-false-front Quiller Gallery, and a mercantile that was later the firehouse (now a bed-and-breakfast inn).
WHEN YOU GO
Creede is 52 miles southeast of Lake City and 21 miles north of South Fork on Colorado Highway 149.
The Bachelor Historic Tour
The Bachelor Historic Tour, named for the “suburb” high above and west of Creede, is one of the best scenic loops in the West. The drive requires a vehicle with reasonable power for a couple of steep grades, but in good weather a passenger car or van will certainly suffice.
You will enjoy this loop to the fullest if you use the well-written, well-illustrated booklet that is available, at a very modest cost, at the Creede Visitors’ Center on Main Street.
The seventeen-mile tour begins at a display just north of downtown Creede. Because you will have that booklet, I won’t duplicate the tour, except to say that you will gasp at the Commodore Mine buildings early in the loop. Another stop is at Bachelor, named for its single, male inhabitants. Today, the site shows hardly a trace of its former vitality.
The next-to-last stop on your tour loop is at the Creede Cemetery, which contains more wooden fences and markers than most Colorado graveyards.
The final stop of the tour is north of the cemetery, where Bob Ford, who gained ignominy for shooting Jesse James in the back, was buried, himself the recipient of a gunshot. His wife, however, had the body exhumed and taken to Missouri for reburial.
If you don’t have time to do the entire tour, at least drive north on Main Street and visit the base of the dramatic buildings of the Commodore Mine.
The Commodore Mine operation.