Vulcan is a
ghost town
A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...
in
Gunnison County,
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...
, United States,
approximately southwest of the
City of Gunnison. Vulcan was a mining camp established along Camp Creek in 1894 and was deserted within thirty years.
History
In 1894, prospectors discovered
gold
Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...
in the sagebrush-covered hills in southern Gunnison County near the
Saguache County line. Word spread quickly and within a year's time several mines were operating along what was termed the Vulcan vein. The mining camp of Vulcan grew rapidly and had a population of 500 by the summer of 1895. In March 1896, the town's first newspaper, the ''Vulcan Enterprise'', was published.
[
The mines along the Vulcan vein were productive, with the Good Hope, Mammoth Chimney, and Vulcan seeing the most ore shipped. But life in Vulcan saw disruptions brought on by labor disputes between union workers and owners, litigation among the mine owners, problems associated with the high ]sulfur
Sulfur ( American spelling and the preferred IUPAC name) or sulphur ( Commonwealth spelling) is a chemical element; it has symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms ...
content of the rock, and destructive fires. It was just a few years before the mines began playing out. By 1906, essentially all gold, silver
Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...
, and copper
Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...
production had ceased.[
The marketable sulfur deposits in the area extended Vulcan's life. Beginning in 1906, sulfur was mined and shipped until a catastrophic fire ended operations in 1910.][
Vulcan received yet another pulse of activity when copper mining and smelting recommenced in 1916, but this activity was short lived and operations ceased by 1919. In 1920, Vulcan had a population of two. Today, only a few dilapidated structures remain.]
The Gunnison Gold Belt
Vulcan was the most productive mining town to appear along the Gunnison Gold Belt, a gold-rich greenstone belt
Greenstone belts are zones of variably metamorphosed mafic to ultramafic volcanic sequences with associated sedimentary rocks that occur within Archaean and Proterozoic cratons between granite and gneiss bodies.
The name comes from the green h ...
that spans over across southern Gunnison County and adjacent Saguache County. Multiple gold strikes resulted in mining operations and short-lived mining camps throughout the belt. The camps included Camp Willard (established in 1880), Cochetopa (1880), Dubois (1892), Spencer (1893), Midway (1894), Vulcan (1894), Iris (1894), Chance (1894), Taliafaro (1895), and Sillsville (1903). These towns grew rapidly after a strike, were occupied by hundreds of residents within months, and were often abandoned just as quickly. Saloons, boarding houses, general stores were common. Many had post offices and some had schools. The camps were a combination of wooden and tent buildings so enduring structures are rare. All of these camps are now abandoned and time has wiped away evidence of their once robust existence.
See also
* List of ghost towns in Colorado
This is a list of some notable ghost towns in the U.S. State of Colorado. A ghost town is a former community that now has no year-round residents or less than 1% of its peak population. Colorado has over 1,500 ghost towns, although visible remai ...
* Vulcanite
Vulcanite is a rare copper telluride mineral. The mineral has a metallic luster, and has a green or bronze-yellow tint. It has a hardness between 1 and 2 on the Mohs scale (between talc and gypsum). Its crystal structure is orthorhombic.
Vulcani ...
* Boomtown
A boomtown is a community that undergoes sudden and rapid population and economic growth, or that is started from scratch. The growth is normally attributed to the nearby discovery of a precious resource such as gold, silver, or oil, although t ...
References
External links
Vulcan at ghosttowns.com
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Ghost towns in Colorado
Former populated places in Gunnison County, Colorado
Colorado Mining Boom