Mines and Roads
OF BOOMAND
BUST
G o l d . Nothing made the hearts of many nineteenth-century Americans beat faster than the possibility of finding it and becoming independently wealthy overnight. Stories of feverish activity abound from the placer claims of California to the Comstock Lode in Nevada, and from Cripple Creek and Leadville in Colorado to the Black Hills of South Dakota. The reward for most of the large number of people who flooded to these areas were claims that did not pan out, debts that remained for years, and an experience that was better left forgotten. When the boom went bust there was little reason to remain, and so the miners packed their essentials and left for the next strike, where conditions would undoubtedly be better. San Juan County has seen its own rushes-first for silver and gold, then oil, and finally uranium-each with its own get-rich-quick pattern, ebb and flow of men and machines, and frenzied quest for wealth. Strikes have occurred all around the county, in the Carrizo, Henry, Sleeping Ute, and La Sal mountains. Even before the area became a county, there were miners on the prowl, trying to find that Eldorado that was going to make them rich.
