tamrock
Platinum Member
- #1
Thread Owner
Out on my little bike trip yesterday I thought I'd check out a hill for artifacts. I saw absolutely nothing in the way of native activity other then one tiny piece of tan jasper. On this hill side the rock outcroppings are of an iron rich type and I would call them limonite and ironite type of formations. Very little iron mining was reported by some accounts in the late 1850's west of here and coal was found in this area that created an industry that carried on into the late 1970's. Seeing this type of iron rock and some slag as evidence of smelting and a hand forged spike chisel leads me to believe this was possibly a small operation that produced a limited amount of raw material for the early settlers in order to have a supply of iron to work with by a local blacksmith and nothing more as it didn't ever go into a large production. This I can only guess was a way to get some iron before all the rail lines reached the area a decade later and then all the cheap raw steel and finished products came flooding in to the area leaving no further need to work your tail off just to get a small amount of iron for the blacksmith to produce a limited amount finished goods. So much more of Colorados history was written about the vast riches of gold strikes going on in the early years of the the Kansas frontier leaving only things like this as something only speculate over. The local written history of this region really only begins in the early 1880's when coal and agriculture became the big industries of this area.
The wife is in the next room watching it now! 
