Tiger Lily Claim
Summit County, Colorado
Gold
LODE, 20.66 acres
$8,000
History
In the fall of 1859, a party of prospectors traveling westward into the mountains to reach the new placer diggings around the future site of Breckenridge discovered enormously rich placer gravels in several tributaries of the Swan River. Georgia Gulch in particular would become the single most productive gold placer in Colorado history. In the first two years of operation, miners took out 150,000 ounces of gold from Georgia Gulch. In total from 1860 to 1900, the gulch produced over 600,000 ounces of placer gold and many nuggets up to 20 ounces in weight. The placers in Georgia Gulch were known as “pound diggings” because a man working with just a pan could recover up to one pound of gold per day! More commonly, a group of three or four men working together could sluice out 25 ounces of gold per day.
Farncomb Hill Placers and Veins
The placer gold in Georgia, Little Georgia, Humbug, American and Dry Gulches was sourced from a series of narrow but spectacularly rich gold veins on the northeast slope of Farncomb Hill. It was obvious to the placer miners that the gold in the gulches had to be sourced from the hill but for 20 years, they failed to find any obvious veins.
The first vein called the “Wire Patch” was found by Harry Farncomb in 1879, from which he quietly mined 580 pounds (7,000 ounces) of coarse wire gold before the discovery went public! The first veins discovered on the east side of the hill were found by prospector, E.C. Moody, in 1879 at the head of Georgia Gulch. A pit sunk on one of these decomposed veins yielded 30 ounces in wire gold and nuggets in the first six feet from surface!
Prospectors ultimately found six major gold veins on the northeast side of Farncomb Hill – the Ontario, Key West, Boss, Gold Flake, Bondholder and Fountain veins. The veins were difficult to follow and either pinched out or swelled into bonanza pockets literally filled with crystalline gold masses containing several pounds of gold. The gold was most commonly in the form of flattened leaves, up to 6 inches across, or as tangled masses of wire gold, called “bird’s nests” with individual gold wires up to 2 inches long. The vast majority of Colorado’s largest gold nuggets were obtained from the veins and placers of Farncomb Hill, including nuggets of 161 oz, 141 oz, 90 oz, 30 oz, 25 oz, 23 oz, 22 oz and over a dozen weighing more than 13 ounces.
The most famous gold discovery in the history of Colorado was made on July 23, 1887 when miners, Tom Groves and Harry Lytton, blasted into a pocket on the Gold Flake vein filled with crystalline gold weighing 243 troy ounces (20.2 lbs)! The largest surviving chunk weighed 136 ounces and was nicknamed “Tom’s Baby”. This nugget, along with several hundred ounces of Farncomb Hill gold are featured in the Campion gold collection at the Denver Museum of Natural and Science.
Little Georgia Gulch
About halfway up from its confluence with the Swan River, Georgia Gulch splits into two branches: Little Georgia Gulch on the west and Humbug Gulch on the east. Humbug Gulch directly drained the productive Ontario, Key West and Boss gold veins and was extremely rich. Little Georgia was prospected in the early days and found to be less rich than other gulches on the hill but this was because of a thick alluvial fan that covered the placer gravels.
Once the Fuller Placer Mining Company completed a ditch to Farncomb Hill in 1871, Little Georgia Gulch was worked via hydraulic monitors and found to be very rich, although the gravels were deep. In 1876 and 1877, 35 men working in the gulch recovered an ounce a day per man through sluicing. Production records for the Fuller Company are not known but one surviving record indicates that the result of a week’s cleanup in the gulch in August 1877 yielded 374 ounces of gold. The Fuller Company ultimately washed a section of the gulch measuring 950 feet long by up to 300 feet wide, covering about 4.5 acres. Some large nuggets were found, including nuggets weighing 4 oz, 7 oz and 20.85 oz. Unlike Georgia, Humbug and American Gulches, the mother lode source for the placer gold in Little Georgia has never been found!
Claim Potential
The Tiger Lily Claim covers the upstream edge of the Fuller placer cut in Little Georgia Gulch. Little Georgia was placered right up to the Fuller ditch and could not be washed any further upstream due to the lack of water, although the gravels were still rich where mining ceased!
By examining a newly obtained LIDAR survey of Farncomb Hill, Outwest has discovered over 30 substantial exploration pits sunk through the slope wash on the Tiger Lily Claim immediately upstream of the Fuller placer cut. This suggests the prospectors suspected a concealed vein source for Little Georgia Gulch gold was nearby.
A test sample of colluvium in the bottom of a narrow gully was panned and produced some hackly crystalline gold, including one small nugget consisting of a flattened mass of hackly wires. This piece of gold could not have traveled far from its mother lode!
These rediscovered pits are located just 2,000 feet from the Ontario vein, which was the first point of discovery of lode gold at Farncomb Hill. Farncomb Hill was famously spotty ground. Stretches of wash would be barren but below a decomposed gold vein, miners encountered pockets containing several hundred to several thousand ounces of coarse gold. Outwest considers it likely that at least one of the sources for Little Georgia Gulch gold exists on the Tiger Lily Claim that could be discovered through diligent sampling and/or metal detecting.
