The Union Colony of Colorado (also called the Greeley Colony and The Union Temperance Colony ) was a 19th-century private enterprise formed to promote agricultural settlements in the South Platte River valley in the Colorado Territory . Organization of the colony began in October 1869 by Nathan Meeker in order to establish a religiously oriented utopian community of "high moral standards". The colony was founded in March 1870 at the site of present-day Greeley, Colorado . Union Colony was financially backed and promoted by New York Tribune editor, Horace Greeley , a prominent advocate of the settlement of the American West . The homesteaded colony greatly advanced irrigation usage in present-day northern Colorado, demonstrating the viability of cultivation at a time when agriculture was emerging as a rival to mining as the principal basis for the territorial economy.
49-629: Horace Greeley had journeyed west in 1859 at the height of the Colorado Gold Rush , going from Denver to Fort Laramie via the Overland Stage Line before continuing on to California . Greeley's route took him up the valleys of the South Platte and Cache la Poudre near the eventual location of the colony. In 1869 Greeley sent Meeker, then employed as the agricultural editor of the Tribune, to
98-580: A Cherokee woman, and through his connections to the tribe, he heard about Ralston's 1850 discovery of gold along the South Platte River. Green Russell organized a party to prospect along the South Platte River, setting off with his two brothers and six companions in February 1858. They rendezvoused with Cherokee tribe members along the Arkansas River in present-day Oklahoma and continued westward along
147-656: A dramatic but temporary influx of migrants and immigrants into the Pike's Peak Country of the Southern Rocky Mountains . The rush was exemplified by the slogan "Pike's Peak or Bust!", a reference to the prominent mountain at the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains that guided many early prospectors to the region westward over the Great Plains . The prospectors provided the first major European-American population in
196-537: A general buoyant feeling of a "free-for-all" in income mobility , in which any single individual might become abundantly wealthy almost instantly, as expressed in the California Dream . Gold rushes helped spur waves of immigration that often led to the permanent settlement of new regions. Activities propelled by gold rushes define significant aspects of the culture of the Australian and North American frontiers . At
245-456: A gold-bearing vein may be oxidized, so that the gold occurs as native gold, and the ore needs only to be crushed and washed (free milling ore). The first miners may at first build a simple arrastra to crush their ore; later, they may build stamp mills to crush ore at greater speed. As the miners venture downwards, they may find that the deeper part of vein contains gold locked in sulfide or telluride minerals , which will require smelting . If
294-570: A party of Spanish-speaking gold seekers from Taos, New Mexico , worked a placer deposit along the South Platte River about 3 miles (4.8 km) above Cherry Creek at a location later known as Mexican Diggings near the Overland Park Golf Course in Denver . William Greeneberry "Green" Russell was a Georgian who worked in the California gold fields in the 1850s. Russell was married to
343-809: A simple pan or equipment that may be built on the spot, and only simple organisation. The low investment, the high value per unit weight of gold, and the ability of gold dust and gold nuggets to serve as a medium of exchange, allow placer gold rushes to occur even in remote locations. After the sluice-box stage, placer mining may become increasingly large scale, requiring larger organisations and higher capital expenditures. Small claims owned and mined by individuals may need to be merged into larger tracts. Difficult-to-reach placer deposits may be mined by tunnels. Water may be diverted by dams and canals to placer mine active river beds or to deliver water needed to wash dry placers. The more advanced techniques of ground sluicing , hydraulic mining and dredging may be used. Typically
392-456: A time when the world's money supply was based on gold , the newly-mined gold provided economic stimulus far beyond the goldfields, feeding into local and wider economic booms . The Gold Rush was a topic that inspired many TV shows and books considering it was a very important topic at the time. During the time, many books were published including The Call of the Wild , which had much success during
441-516: Is a discovery of gold —sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals —that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia , Greece , New Zealand , Brazil , Chile , South Africa , the United States , and Canada while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere. In the 19th century, the wealth that resulted
490-424: Is recognized in the region's history. Greeley remained a dry municipality until 1972. As a result, several nearby towns grew more rapidly as a source of liquor; and at least two small towns, Rosedale , and Garden City , were established and incorporated largely to allow saloons, bars, and liquor stores to feed the demand of nearby University of Northern Colorado students and faculty. Fire protection services for
539-663: The Cariboo district and other parts of British Columbia, in Nevada , in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado , Idaho , Montana , eastern Oregon , and western New Mexico Territory and along the lower Colorado River . There was a gold rush in Nova Scotia (1861–1876) which produced nearly 210,000 ounces of gold. Resurrection Creek , near Hope, Alaska was the site of Alaska's first gold rush in
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#1732884894377588-603: The Fort Collins colony in 1872. With the collected membership fees, Meeker journeyed west in the Spring of 1870 with two other officers. They purchased a tract of land in Weld County , near the confluence of the Cache la Poudre and South Platte Rivers and founded the settlement. Initially, the colony thrived and expanded, attracting other homesteaders to the area. The religious nature of
637-737: The Georgia Gold Rush to the California gold fields. The party followed the Trail of Tears west, and on June 22, 1850, they crossed the South Platte River (a few miles north of what is today Denver ) and camped near the confluence of two streams. One of the prospectors, Lewis Ralston panned for gold near the mouth of the smaller stream (in what is now Gold Strike Park in Arvada, Colorado .) He found about ¼ troy ounce (8 g) of gold, then worth about five dollars (about $ 550 USD today.) While Ralston
686-534: The Santa Fe Trail . Others joined the party along the way until their number reached 107. Upon reaching Bent's Fort , they turned to the northwest, reaching the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte on May 23. The site of their initial explorations is in present-day Confluence Park in Denver. They began prospecting in the river beds, exploring Cherry Creek and nearby Ralston Creek but without success. In
735-456: The City of Greeley are today provided by the " Union Colony Fire Rescue Authority ". A major city building complex is located at the "Union Colony Civic Center." Colorado Gold Rush The Pike's Peak gold rush (later known as the Colorado gold rush ) was the boom in gold prospecting and mining in the Pike's Peak Country of western Kansas Territory and southwestern Nebraska Territory of
784-696: The Colorado Territory to seek out a location for a colony to promote settlement in the West. Meeker returned to New York City in the autumn of 1869, reporting that the South Platte Valley presented a good opportunity for the colony. In October, Meeker began organizing the enterprise, and on December 14, 1869, he placed an advertisement in the Tribune calling for volunteers to join him in the new venture. Meeker's advertisement specifically sought volunteers of high moral standards, who were literate and adherents to
833-460: The Pike's Peak country. Some even dared to go out in the winter of 1858 to try to get a head start, only to realize that they would have to wait until the snow melted to begin mining. Hardrock mining boomed for a few years, but then declined in the mid-1860s as the miners exhausted the shallow parts of the veins that contained free gold, and found that their amalgamation mills could not recover gold from
882-505: The UAE with the exports affirmed by the African states. According to Africa's industrial mining firms, they have not exported any amount of gold to the UAE – confirming that the imports come from other, illegal sources. As per customs data, the UAE imported gold worth $ 15.1 billion from Africa in 2016, with a total weight of 446 tons, in variable degrees of purity. Much of the exports were not recorded in
931-621: The United States that began in July 1858 and lasted until roughly the creation of the Colorado Territory on February 28, 1861. An estimated 100,000 gold seekers took part in one of the greatest gold rushes in North American history. The participants in the gold rush were known as " Fifty-Niners " after 1859, the peak year of the rush and often used the motto Pike's Peak or Bust! In fact,
980-675: The United States was in Cabarrus County, North Carolina (east of Charlotte), in 1799 at today's Reed's Gold Mine . Thirty years later, in 1829, the Georgia Gold Rush in the southern Appalachians occurred. It was followed by the California Gold Rush of 1848–55 in the Sierra Nevada , which captured the popular imagination. The California Gold Rush led to an influx of gold miners and newfound gold wealth, which led to California's rapid industrialization, as businesses sprung up to serve
1029-558: The colony was not agreeable to all the settlers, however, so a portion of them spread out to other nearby lands in the area. Jacob Flowers , for example, was one of these. In 1872, the success of the colony inspired some of its officers to found another colony upstream on the Poudre River at Fort Collins . The Town of Greeley was incorporated on November 15, 1885. During the 1870s, the colony became known for its heavy use of irrigation, with one visitor reporting that nearly every person in
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#17328848943771078-455: The cooperative was involved in the maintaining of at least one irrigation ditch. Meeker was killed by Utes at the " Meeker Massacre " in western Colorado in 1879. The irrigation system built by the Colony remains an important part of the area today, although growing urbanization threatens more and more of the productive croplands the irrigation systems allowed to be utilized. The Colony's influence
1127-489: The deeper sulfide ores. Colorado produced 150,000 ounces of gold in 1861 and 225,000 troy ounces in 1862. This led Congress to establish the Denver Mint . Cumulative Colorado production by 1865 was 1.25 million ounces, of which sixty percent was placer gold . 39°39′35″N 105°00′10″W / 39.65972°N 105.00278°W / 39.65972; -105.00278 Gold rushes A gold rush or gold fever
1176-463: The first week of July 1858, Green Russell and Sam Bates found a small placer deposit near the mouth of Little Dry Creek that yielded about 20 troy ounces (620 g) of gold, then worth about 380 dollars (about $ 44,000 USD today.) This was the first significant gold discovery in the Rocky Mountain region. The site of the discovery is in the present-day Denver suburb of Englewood , just north of
1225-474: The focus may change progressively from gold to silver to base metals. In this way, Leadville, Colorado started as a placer gold discovery, achieved fame as a silver-mining district, then relied on lead and zinc in its later days. Butte, Montana began mining placer gold, then became a silver-mining district, then became for a time the world's largest copper producer. Various gold rushes occurred in Australia over
1274-459: The gold may be washed from the sand and gravel by individual miners with little training, using a gold pan or similar simple instrument. Once it is clear that the volume of gold-bearing sediment is larger than a few cubic metres, the placer miners will build rockers or sluice boxes, with which a small group can wash gold from the sediment many times faster than using gold pans. Winning the gold in this manner requires almost no capital investment, only
1323-493: The gold, they came up short because he could not quite remember the location. On January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall found placer gold near Coloma, California , and unbeknownst nine days later, Mexico ceded California and the rest of northern Mexico to the United States with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo . The California Gold Rush ensued. In the spring of 1850, John Beck led a party of predominately Cherokee veterans of
1372-437: The heyday of a placer gold rush would last only a few years. The free gold supply in stream beds would become depleted somewhat quickly, and the initial phase would be followed by prospecting for veins of lode gold that were the original source of the placer gold. Hard rock mining, like placer mining, may evolve from low capital investment and simple technology to progressively higher capital and technology. The surface outcrop of
1421-536: The increased population and financial and political institutions to handle the increased wealth. One of these political institutions was statehood; the need for new laws in a sparsely-governed land led to the state's rapid entry into the Union in 1850. The gold rush in 1849 also stimulated worldwide interest in prospecting for gold, leading to further rushes in Australia, South Africa, Wales and Scotland. Successive gold rushes occurred in western North America: Fraser Canyon ,
1470-691: The junction of U.S. Highway 285 and U.S. Highway 85 . This discovery was announced with great excitement by the Kansas City Journal of Commerce on 26 August 1858 with the headline, "THE NEW ELDORADO!! GOLD IN KANSAS!!" The first decade of the boom was largely concentrated along the South Platte River at the base of the Rocky Mountains, in the canyon of Clear Creek in the mountains west of Golden City, at Breckenridge and in South Park at Como , Fairplay , and Alma . By 1860, Denver City, Golden City , and Boulder City were substantial towns that served
1519-469: The location of the Pike's Peak gold rush was centered 85 miles (137 km) north of Pikes Peak . The name Pike's Peak gold rush was used mainly because of how well known and important Pike's Peak was at the time. The rush created a few towns such as Denver and Boulder that would develop into cities. The Pike's Peak gold rush, which followed the California gold rush by approximately a decade, produced
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1568-667: The mid–1890s. Other notable Alaska Gold Rushes were Nome , Fairbanks , and the Fortymile River . One of the last "great gold rushes" was the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon Territory (1896–99). This gold rush is featured in the novels of Jack London , and Charlie Chaplin 's film The Gold Rush . Robert William Service depicted in his poetries the Gold Rush, especially in the book The Trail of '98 . The main goldfield
1617-420: The mines. Rapid population growth led to the creation of the Colorado Territory in 1861. The Pike's Peak gold rush sent many Americans into a frenzy, prompting them to pack up their belongings and head to Colorado. This initial boom influenced people to begin falsifying information, often sending people out to the west without any proof of a true presence of gold. As early as the spring of 1859, people raced to
1666-429: The mountains in present-day Colorado contained numerous rich gold deposits. In 1835, French trapper Eustace Carriere lost his party and ended up wandering through the mountains for many weeks. During those weeks he found many gold specimens which he later took back to New Mexico for examination. Upon examination, they turned out to be "pure gold". But when he tried to lead an expedition back to the location of where he found
1715-610: The new arrivals who came looking for gold. While some found their fortune, those who did not often remained in the colonies and took advantage of extremely liberal land laws to take up farming. Gold rushes happened at or around: In New Zealand the Otago gold rush from 1861 attracted prospectors from the California gold rush and the Victorian gold rush and many moved on to the West Coast gold rush from 1864. The first significant gold rush in
1764-465: The ore is still sufficiently rich, it may be worth shipping to a distant smelter (direct shipping ore). Lower-grade ore may require on-site treatment to either recover the gold or to produce a concentrate sufficiently rich for transport to the smelter. As the district turns to lower-grade ore, the mining may change from underground mining to large open-pit mining . Many silver rushes followed upon gold rushes. As transportation and infrastructure improve,
1813-457: The period. Gold rushes occurred as early as the times of ancient Greece , whose gold mining was described by Diodarus Sicules and Pliny the Elder . Within each mining rush there is typically a transition through progressively higher capital expenditures, larger organizations, and more specialized knowledge. A rush typically begins with the discovery of placer gold made by an individual. At first
1862-431: The region. The rush created a few gold rush towns such as Denver City and Boulder City that would develop into cities. Many smaller camps such as Auraria and Saint Charles City were absorbed by larger camps and towns. Scores of other mining camps have faded into ghost towns , but quite a few camps such as Central City , Black Hawk , Georgetown , and Idaho Springs survived. For many years, people had suspected
1911-644: The region. The gold deposits in this area are identified as one of the largest in the world. In South Africa, the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in the Transvaal was important to that country's history, leading to the founding of Johannesburg and tensions between the Boers and British settlers as well as the Chinese miners. South African gold production went from zero in 1886 to 23% of the total world output in 1896. At
1960-537: The second half of the 19th century. The most significant of these, although not the only ones, were the New South Wales gold rush and Victorian gold rush in 1851, and the Western Australian gold rushes of the 1890s. They were highly significant to their respective colonies' political and economic development as they brought many immigrants, and promoted massive government spending on infrastructure to support
2009-520: The smuggling of billions of dollars' worth of gold out of Africa through the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East , which further acts as a gateway to the markets in the United States , Europe and more. The news agency evaluated the worth and magnitude of illegal gold trade occurring in African nations like Ghana , Tanzania , and Zambia , by comparing the total gold imports recorded into
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2058-503: The tenets of the Temperance movements . The cost of membership for those accepted to the colony was set at $ 160. Of the more than 3000 people who responded, Meeker selected 700 applications as prospective colonists, ninety of whom later backed out. Former Union general Robert Alexander Cameron served as the first vice president and later president of the colony, as well as the colony's superintendent. Cameron would also become president of
2107-546: The time of the South African rush, gold production benefited from the newly discovered techniques by Scottish chemists, the MacArthur-Forrest process , of using potassium cyanide to extract gold from low-grade ore. The gold mine at El Callao (Venezuela), started in 1871, was for a time one of the richest in the world, and the goldfields as a whole saw over a million ounces exported between 1860 and 1883. The gold mining
2156-575: The world, according to Communities and Small-Scale Mining (CASM). Approximately 100 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on small-scale mining. For example, there are 800,000 to 1.5 million artisanal miners in Democratic Republic of Congo , 350,000 to 650,000 in Sierra Leone , and 150,000 to 250,000 in Ghana , with millions more across Africa. In an exclusive report, Reuters accounted
2205-764: Was along the south flank of the Klondike River near its confluence with the Yukon River near what was to become Dawson City in Yukon Territory, but it also helped open up the relatively new US possession of Alaska to exploration and settlement, and promoted the discovery of other gold finds. The most successful of the North American gold rushes was the Porcupine Gold Rush in Timmins, Ontario area. This gold rush
2254-534: Was distributed widely because of reduced migration costs and low barriers to entry. While gold mining itself proved unprofitable for most diggers and mine owners, some people made large fortunes, and merchants and transportation facilities made large profits. The resulting increase in the world's gold supply stimulated global trade and investment. Historians have written extensively about the mass migration, trade, colonization, and environmental history associated with gold rushes. Gold rushes were typically marked by
2303-661: Was dominated by immigrants from the British Isles and the British West Indies, giving an appearance of almost creating an English colony on Venezuelan territory. Between 1883 and 1906 Tierra del Fuego experienced a gold rush attracting many Chileans, Argentines and Europeans to the archipelago. The gold rush began in 1884 following discovery of gold during the rescue of the French steamship Arctique near Cape Virgenes . There are about 10 to 30 million small-scale miners around
2352-476: Was elated, the rest of the party was unimpressed and continued on to California the next morning. Ralston continued panning for gold, but gave up after a few days and caught up with his party. As the hysteria of the California Gold Rush faded, many discouraged gold seekers returned home. Rumors of gold in the Rocky Mountains persisted and several small parties explored the region. In the summer of 1857,
2401-493: Was unique compared to others by the method of extraction of the gold. Placer mining techniques were not able to be used to access the gold in the area due to it being embedded into the Canadian Shield , so larger mining operations involving significantly more expensive equipment was required. While this gold rush peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, it is still active today with over 200 million ounces of gold having been produced from
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