The Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has a section dedicated entirely to minerals. This section contains hundreds of different mineral samples from around the world. There they are stored, categorized, studied and a select few are taken to other parts of the museum to be put on display.
Marc Wilson is the head of the minerals section at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He works there with his wife Debra, who is his assistant and photographer. Together they take on the momentous task of making certain that each mineral sample located in the museum’s mineral section is properly labeled and recorded. During a routine day Marc Wilson came across a vial that appeared to have been mislabeled. It was a thin vial with a granular black material inside it and had an old wooden stopper. The vial had been around the museum for decades. With the challenge of conclusively identifying the sample, Marc Wilson decided to begin the process by looking at it under a microscope.
“I examined it under the microscope and saw the material was a typical heavy concentrate of something you would get from panning a stream. The material itself is black. That’s because heavy minerals are usually black. It was magnetic so the heavy mineral is magnetized, which is very common in pan stream sediments. I did indeed find flecks of gold in the sample so I felt this panned concentrate with gold could actually be gold from Pike’s Peak as its label indicated.”
It’s not an uncommon occurrence for a certain portion of the thousands of gems and minerals housed off-display in a sea of filing cabinets to lose their identifying information or not be labeled correctly. Usually every specimen is kept in a box and has a paper label with it. There is usually a number affixed to the sample that will correspond to a list or data base that will identify each of the samples in the collection. It is the job of Marc and Debra Wilson to make sure each of the labels to all the specimens, no matter where they came from or how old they are, provide accurate information.
“What happened is that many of the specimens have labels with them that are not reliable. So we’re going back to the labels with specimens (in the collection) and correct them. In the course of this larger project we ran across a reference which allowed us to address that particular piece. Just because the a label says it’s a sample of the first gold from Pike’s Peak and is with that vial means nothing, because it could very well be a different gold from the collection and for some reason the labels got switched. So finding a letter which allowed us to verify that the vial was indeed, the vial that was supposed to go with that particular label, and that it was indeed a specimen from Pike’s Peak, was a bit exciting.” said Marc Wilson.
The sample of Pike’s Peak gold that was discovered just happened to be part of a mineral collection which had been purchased by the steel baron Andrew Carnegie in 1904 from a banker named William Jefferies for the sum of $20,000. It appears that Jefferies built his gem and mineral collection over many years and from several different dealers. He had hundreds of well-documented mineral samples. Jefferies collection was the first mineral collection to be a part of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
As Marc and Debra Wilson started looking at everything contained within the collection they found a note that referenced something called “Jefferis archived correspondences.” They searched through several boxes of records in the minerals section of the museum, but weren’t able to obtain the referenced correspondence. On a hunch, Debra Wilson visited the Museum’s library to conduct a search.
Once at the library she was able to find some very important correspondence.
“When Marc ran across a reference that there was correspondence from Jeffers, which is our collection here, I went over to the (Carnegie Museum of Natural History) library. When I went over there the librarians helped me locate five bound volumes of letters that Jeffers had kept and because the label with the gold referenced a J.M. Palmer with a specific date, I was able to go to the correct volume. Jeffers had these indexed alphabetically by last name and I was able to find the letter with the transcription. Palmer did mention in the letter to Jeffers that the gold he was sending was in a vial. Since that was the only gold in the Jeffers collection contained in a vial that really helped identify the piece.”
Jeffers had kept hundreds of letters from mineral dealers from around the world. One of the dealers was named J.M. Palmer. Palmer had sent a letter from Council Bluffs, Iowa, in August of 1859 to Jeffers, describing gold found at Pike’s Peak and referencing a vial of the gold sent for examination. The letter talked about a possible rush of people to Pike’s Peak that fall and the following spring. He says that if it (the specimen) creates as much excitement as a first sample did there will be plenty of visitors to see it.
He was absolutely correct.
The beginning of the Pike’s Peak gold rush started in 1858. An expedition led by a man named William G. Russell followed reports of gold that had been discovered in a place called Ralston Creek, which is located near present day Denver. The expedition consisted of miners from goldfields in Georgia and California. They searched the Ralston Creek area for a few days and did not meet with any success. After experiencing such a disappointment most of the miners returned home. The remaining members of the expedition discovered gold in a place called Cherry Creek and other tributaries in July of 1858. Exaggerated claims of gold discoveries hit the press during the winter of 1858. Pikes Peak was the most popular landmark so the region adopted the name. Business people and newspapers saw an opportunity to provide goods to all of the potential gold miners so the encouraging stories of gold discoveries spread quickly. Unfortunately at the time only a meager amount of gold had been taken from the area. As a result of the continued alleged gold finds people kept going to the area in large numbers. The continued influx of people in 1859 created the need for the Leavenworth and Pikes Peak Express which became the first stage line to Denver.
Many of the people who arrived at Pikes Peak discovered that there really wasn’t all that much gold and left. On January 7, 1859 a prospector named George A. Jackson discovered placer gold where Chicago Creek empties into Clear Creek. Placer gold is actually gold that has been weathered from its host rock where it was formed and has been "placed" either on hillside, stream bed etc. by the action of water, glaciers or other geological forces.
The placer gold was the first substantial gold discovery in the area. Jackson was able to keep his discovery a secret for several months but when he paid for some of his supplies with gold dust there was a mad rush to Jackson’s digging site. In the spring of 1859 John H. Gregory, who was a very experienced miner from Georgia, made a major gold strike in the area around Pikes Peak now known as North Fork at Gregory Gulch. He discovered rich placer deposits and was able to mine the first lode discovered in Colorado. Many other major gold discoveries soon followed by other miners.
When the news of this large gold discovery made its way back east the gold rush began. With the slogan “Pikes Peak or Bust” large numbers of prospective miners and settlers made their way across the Great Plains to the area known today as Denver. Some estimated as many as 100,000 set out for the gold region, but it seems only half of them made it to the mountain areas. By the winter of 1859 this area had experienced a large population increase consisting prospectors and every type of business designed to meet their needs. When the year 1860 arrived Denver City, golden City and Boulder City were substantial towns which were serving mines. The quick increase in population led to the creation of the Colorado Territory in 1861.
The Pikes Peak gold rush was an event that enabled a very few prospectors to become wealthy from mining gold but in the course of that event occurring Denver and other cities in Colorado were created.
It appears to Marc Wilson and his wife Debra that the vial that was found in the collection actually does contain some of the first gold samples sent back east from Pikes Peak in 1859.
“According to the letter this was part of the gold that was some of the first gold that created the Pike’ Peak gold rush, and according to (letters by) Jeffers, it was the first gold sent east from Pike’s Peak. Whether that’s true or not he said it was. So the actual letter, if you read it, deals with people coming back from that gold find with gold dust to the city. This is the first year that such a thing had happened and he’s predicting that a lot more people will go out there and that it’s going to become a boom town, which of course it did” said Marc Wilson.
The discovery of the Pike’s Peak gold has led to many inquiries about it. Marc and Debra Wilson have enjoyed all the attention the sample has gotten but for them it is only one in hundreds and hundreds of fascinating minerals they deal with on a daily basis.
“We’ve had several inquiries about that particular specimen because it’s from Pike’s Peak, it’s famous, but it’s just one of hundreds and hundreds of specimens that we are researching to put into their proper context. All the things you see around our work area are all specimens that we are re-cataloging with all of the little notes sticking out of them. Each specimen has to be researched individually and a big part of dealing with international specimens is that over the last 100 plus years the names of the localities where they have been discovered have changed. I’m working on a sample right now that’s identified as being from a place in Hungry. Unfortunately, at the time when the sample was taken from that particular area it was part of the Austro Hungarian Empire, but it is now a town located in Slovakia. Each one of those samples has to be carefully researched. With that we have to be sure that the specimen actually matches the material that comes from the locality to make sure it’ actually the right label and right identification. Pike’s Peak gold was just one of many thousands of such identifications we’ve done. We actually have no idea what we could find next.”
