Lost Ghost Towns of Teller County

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PART I

RANCHING AND

RESORT TOWNS

1

BISON PARK

THE CITY OF VICTOR’S PRIVATE PLAYGROUND

Local legend records Bison as a logging camp dating to the 1860s and that it was located between Cow Mountain and Pikes Peak near today’s Cripple Creek District. The east fork of West Beaver Creek feeds today’s Bison Reservoir, which, in turn, drains into Bison Creek running south. In 1874, Quincy King, who had just recently discovered the eventual resort of Seven Lakes, partnered with two other men to form the Smith, King and Unrue mining claim in Bison Valley on the east fork of Beaver Creek.³

The few mine diggings aside, the area remained a pristine and most scenic park. Here, a quiet wooded valley opened into wide green meadows surrounded by towering rock formations. Cabin ruins in the woods today attest to times when people worked or lived in the area. The remaining treasures include a small Victorian home built in 1893. A spacious floor plan allowed for two bedrooms, a parlor, a dining area and a kitchen.

Two years after the home was built, on July 2, 1895, a plat map for the Bison Park Town Site was surveyed by R.W. Bradshaw and filed in El Paso County. The map reads more like an advertisement, with the following description:

Bison Park is a romantic and picturesque place. It is in the main mineral belt south of the Peak and is already surrounded with good mines. It is also on the established route of the [Colorado Springs & Cripple Creek District] Railroad. Hence it is destined to become a town of considerable importance. Moral: Buy lots while they are cheap.

The Bison Park town site map encouraged folks to buy lots while they are cheap. Teller County Assessor, Cripple Creek, Colorado.

The caretaker’s house at Bison Reservoir is maintained and still used today by the members of the Gold Camp Fishing Club. Jan MacKell Collins.

Alas, the railroad declined to pass by Bison Park’s remote location, and Bison Park’s plat map shows that the town was vacated in September 1895. In July 1901, the City of Victor proposed purchasing 213 acres of the park from the owner, a woman named Mary Miller, for $10,000. The city wanted to build a reservoir as a water supply for residents.⁴ The Altman Water Company, which already sold water to Victor, raised a slight ruckus at the idea. In the end, however, the city successfully completed the purchase. Bison Reservoir was constructed in about 1901. Several claims—namely, the Park Placer, Park Placer No. 2, Old No. 9 and a small portion of the Maggie A—were covered with water.⁵

In more modern times, Bison continues to serve as Victor’s water supply but is also home to the Gold Camp Fishing Club. Membership to the club is extended to only Victor property owners, who take much pride in maintaining the area’s natural setting and historic sites. Much of the park is surrounded by Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. Numerous members actively volunteer their time, money and labor to Bison Reservoir. The grounds are frequently the scene of weddings, memorials, fishing tournaments and a host of other activities. In essence, visitors to Bison respect the land and its surroundings so that future generations can enjoy this natural playground for many years to come.

2

CLYDE

A HAPPY RANCHING COMMUNITY

Prior to the gold boom in the Cripple Creek District, folks wishing to access today’s Teller County used a series of wagon and stage roads to reach various ranches and other places of note. The oldest of these was the Cheyenne & Beaver Toll Road Company, which began in Cheyenne Canyon near Colorado Springs and joined what is today known as Gold Camp Road. The route was originally established in 1875.⁶ Two years later, the name of the road was changed to the Cheyenne & Beaver Park Toll Road. At the confluence of Bison Creek and Middle Beaver Creek, a new wagon road veered off toward Seven Lakes, a budding resort just below the summit of Pikes Peak. A stage stop was established at this junction that would later be known as Clyde.⁷

Though only a stop on the toll road, Clyde had amenities that included a place to stay for the night, food and libations. Clyde prospered as the last stop before the ascent to Seven Lakes. The road from Colorado Springs also flourished, its name changing again in 1879 to the Cheyenne, Lake Park and Pikes Peak Toll Road Company. With the gold boom in the Cripple Creek District beginning in 1891, the road through Clyde gained even more popularity as the shortest route to the district from Colorado Springs. Promoters, including the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, spent upward of $18,000 to improve the toll road.⁸

As the few merchants of Clyde prospered from miners and other travelers, a post office opened under the name of Seward in August 1896. The name was changed to Clyde in October 1899, after the son of resident George McCarthy. The post office application explained that the office would serve thirty-five people and was expecting to serve one hundred or more in time.⁹ Families at Clyde were of the hardworking variety with lots of children. Being far away from good medical facilities especially took its toll on babies in this remote spot. Unable to afford tombstones or reach nearby graveyards in winter, many ranch families simply buried their stillborn or deceased infants on the family property. Most of these graves were never marked and have been forgotten over time.¹⁰

The Colorado Springs & Cripple Creek District Railroad, later dubbed the Short Line, was built through Clyde in 1899. The railroad was developed by mine owners sick of paying expensive freight fees to the Florence & Cripple Creek and the Midland Terminal Railroads, both of which also served the Cripple Creek District. Irving Howbert, president of Colorado Springs’s First National Bank at the time, convinced the mine owners to finance their own railroad. The Short Line was a limited success; even with the renowned Seven Lakes Resort above town abandoned, passengers still favored accessing trails to Pikes Peak from Clyde.¹¹

The Cripple Creek District directory for 1900 notes that George McCarthy was serving as postmaster at Clyde City while working on the side as a miner. There were other miners, too, and a sawmill operator named W.S. Garber who rented a home from P. McNeny. The house was located next to the post office building, owned by a Mr. Swink. In May 1900, Garber, hoping to cash in on insurance money for his household goods, burned both buildings.¹² Counting Garber, the entire population, according to the 1900 census, numbered only twenty-nine people. The post office closed in September.¹³

Clyde, as well as a number of satellite camps, remained home to prospectors and ranchers for many more years. One outlying community was Saderlind, identified on a 1901 Short Line timetable as a stop roughly 2.2 miles from Rosemont and 6.0 miles from Clyde.¹⁴ That same year, the Short Line engaged in a fare war with the Colorado Midland and Midland Terminal railroads, which ran from Colorado Springs and Divide to the Cripple Creek District. The railroads had been charging two dollars for a round-trip ticket, but the Short Line won by charging just twenty-five cents. The resurgence of interest in Clyde was so good that Frank Cady, postmaster at the nearby community of Love, submitted a new application to reopen the post office there. Cady cited 140 people as living in Clyde proper, with the total number of people using the post office as 300. The post office successfully reopened in September 1901.¹⁵

With the post office back in place, a new railway station and water tank were constructed in November. There was also a school. Among the best natural features was Cathedral Park, just around the bend from Clyde along the railroad. The sublime scenery, fantastic rocks and cathedral spires of this amazing formation beckoned passengers from the Short Line, which offered daily excursions to the park. Awaiting patrons were a dance pavilion complete with a corrugated iron roof, a five-room dwelling and two refreshment stands installed by the railroad. It was perhaps around that time that an artificial lake was constructed at Clyde for recreational purposes.¹⁶

There was little crime around Clyde, but in 1904, assassins Harry Orchard, Johnnie Neville and Neville’s son Charlie camped near Clyde. The group was working on behalf of the striking miners during a most violent and tumultuous labor war in the Cripple Creek District. Orchard was orchestrating a plan to blow up the depot at the Cripple Creek District town of Independence, which the group did successfully on June 5. Thirteen men were killed and several others injured.¹⁷

Cathedral Park, shown here in 1901, was a favored picnic ground along the Colorado Springs & Cripple Creek District Railroad. Jan MacKell Collins.

Throughout the early 1900s, Clyde’s population remained at a mere handful of residents. In 1905, when the number was around fifteen citizens, the figure included Joseph and Elmira Schneider. Joseph worked as a section boss on the Short Line, but the family homestead eventually grew into a large ranch totaling two thousand acres. Those who knew Schneider remembered when he bought his first car. In learning how to work the newfangled machine, Schneider would yell, Whoa! and, cussing at the vehicle, jump to safety when it went out of control.¹⁸

People at Clyde in 1908 included schoolteacher Miss J.E. Kenton, as well as station agent and postmaster Chas. F. Redman. But the tiny village could hardly justify its post office, which closed a final time in September 1909. When the population shot up to eighty-three residents in the 1910 census, the figure included numerous temporary railroad workers. Eighteen section hands shared quarters in the railroad’s section house, ten of them being Greek immigrants. Eight others were Japanese. Also living in Clyde were schoolteacher Harry G. Goves, employees of the Clyde Timber Company and the McCarthy family, including young Clyde, who was now eighteen years of age. Young McCarthy and his brothers were employed as farmers on the family homestead.¹⁹

The 1910 census at Clyde also is notable because at the time, several satellite camps surrounded the community. They included Bald Mountain, Bunker Hill District, Rosemont, Saderlind, Summit and Seven Lakes. The five residents at Bald Mountain included prospectors Frosty Clemens, Frank Nelson and James Snodgrass, all widowers in their forties and fifties. Clemens, in particular, was a character of sorts whose name has become legend in his part of the country. Born in 1865 in Missouri, Clemens was allegedly a cousin of Samuel Clemens, better known as the prolific writer Mark Twain. By the time he arrived in the area, Clemens was a widower who apparently had been prospecting for some time. Local folklore cites that he dug several mines but never found much. Ultimately, according to legend, he died in 1916, when he pulled a permanent lid of gravel down over himself in one of his mines. It is also believed that he built what is now known as Frosty Clemens Trail in Frosty Park.²⁰

The Bunker Hill District was located on Bunker Hill between Bald Mountain and Rosemont. Residents of the district were all farmers, most of whom had departed the area by the time of the 1920 census. Part of the reason for their exodus might have been because the Pike National Forest was formed and took over much of the land. A ranger station was built at Clyde between 1912 and 1917. The new forest designation mattered little since, by that time, the Cripple Creek District mines were dwindling and fewer people were using the Short Line. When the dance pavilion roof at Cathedral Park collapsed during a heavy snow, nobody bothered to rebuild it.²¹

Longtime homesteaders in the twentieth century included Isadore and Minnie Meyers, who moved to Clyde from the Cripple Creek District town of Goldfield in 1914. The Meyerses’ daughter Glenora remembered that the schoolhouse was just one room with a dozen or so students. She also gave a complete description of the family home. The house was a one-and-a-half-story cabin made from square logs. The bottom floor contained the front room, kitchen and the Meyerses’ bedroom. Their many children slept on the second floor in a large room, with a curtain dividing the girls from the boys. There was a cellar and an outhouse, and water was carried from Middle Beaver Creek across the road.

Glenora remembered that there never was any shortage of snow in winter. Sometimes, the snow drifts were so high that we could walk over the tops of the fences. Of course, to go anywhere, the road had to be shoveled out by hand or plowed out with what was called a go-devil. This was a triangular shaped contraption that was weighted down with rocks or sometimes with us kids and pulled by our faithful team of horses. In winter, the family would take trips to Victor with hot rocks wrapped in newspapers to keep everyone’s feet warm. Beginning in about 1917, the Meyerses alternated their time between Clyde and a nearby place they called simply Camp near Gould Creek. The family felled and sold timber at Camp. They were also farming by 1920. After Minnie died in Colorado Springs in 1926, Isadore continued alternating his time between there and Camp. He died in 1961 and was buried in Manitou Springs.²²

In about 1918, the telegraph office at Clyde was replaced by a telephone system so engineers on the Short Line could talk with the dispatcher. In 1920, however, the Short Line ceased operations altogether, and residents of Clyde were counted in the population of Victor during the census that year. Longtime residents remembered that in about 1921, a particularly heavy rainstorm threatened to break the dams at Seven Lakes above town. The local children were sheltered in the second story of the sturdy ranger station until the danger passed. Everyone survived, and in 1922, the old railroad bed gained new life when W.D. Corley purchased it at auction for $370,000. Corley, a coal operator turned capitalist, beat out three other bids, including one representing mining and freighting millionaire A.E. Carlton. Corley tore up the tracks, filled in the trestles and turned the rail bed into the Corley Mountain Highway toll road. The toll was $1 and, on a good day, reaped $400 in fees.²³

The Meyers homestead is one of a handful of structures surviving at Clyde. All of them are now on private property. Jan MacKell Collins.

The toll road enabled others at Clyde to prosper as the area remained a popular picnic ground. In 1924, Jim and Helen Schneider moved into the former Clyde Pavilion and converted two of its rooms to living quarters. In 1927, a new post office application was submitted by the Clyde Eating House but was denied. During the 1930s, Pike National Forest took over the Corley Mountain Highway, renaming it Gold Camp Road and opening it for free to all. The Schneiders and their children continued living off the land. They grew hay, harvested block ice from some nearby caves and traded hand-churned butter to Seven