A lot of history in this area,....the original Mining co. back in the late 1800's were forced to shut down their dredging operations their because they used sooo much mercury that it was poisoning the water supplies in PUBELO, Co.
This is not real history. There was no dredge at Cache creek, it was a hydraulic sluicing operation. Mercury was not the problem, the
1911 lawsuit brought by Pueblo and Canon City was to prevent Twin Lakes mining company from "pollution of the Arkansas river by washing into its waters annually vast quantities of vegetable and mineral matters rendering them unwholesome to the thousands of people along the stream who use the water for domestic purposes".
Mercury was not at issue in the 1911 lawsuit. Cache creek did not cease mining. Mining continued without hydraulics on Cache creek for another 7 years until 1918. Working by hand on a 50 foot deep placer deposit of fine gold at $16 an ounce was not profitable for any but the smallest miners so the Twin Lakes placers value was almost zero after the injunction.
Several other nearby placers continued to operate. The real problem with Twin Lakes Mining and Cache creek came about because local ranchers were having their water stolen from them by Twin Lakes and sediment from the extensive placer operation make the waters of the Arkansas rusty red year round instead of seasonally. Not something people would want to drink if they had a choice.
Twin Lakes did have a debris dam at Cache creek but the water was still murky when it reached a few miles downstream in town. Twin Lakes did try to build a settling pond but all the water disappeared down a sinkhole and no water flowed to the river so they gave up. When ranchers or town people would complain or try to make an arrangement Twin Lakes English management told them to pound sand. They would literally tell them to sue - so they did.
The mercury thing really isn't what it has been made out to be. Copper/Mercury plates were used for cleanup (not sluicing) and a lot of effort was made to recover all the mercury they could. Mercury was $50 a flask at the time. So a flask of Mercury cost 2.5 ounces of gold - not cheap and not easy to transport once purchased in San Francisco (Mercury is shipped in heavy glass flasks). For comparison good developed irrigated farmland in Colorado at the time was less than $40 an acre. Mercury was always recycled - it's the only way to get the gold out and it would be foolish to waste the money when it is so easy to recycle.
By all accounts Twin Lakes mining were bad guys. There were disliked by the locals as well as other miners. The whole thing came to a head when Twin Lakes applied for patents for their placer. Not a single owner or manager at Twin Lakes was a U.S. citizen so the patents were rejected. When that bit of information became public Twin Lakes fate was sealed. Everybody wanted them gone. The 1911 court case was estimated to take years to settle but the courts were having none of it and put an injunction against hydraulic mining on the Twin Lakes properties in record time. The English owners pulled out when the money dried up.
There were a lot of knock on effects from the Pueblo v Twin Lakes case. Mining water rights became a bigger issue and many water rights disputes from that time are still circling the courts today. Twin Lakes changed mining in Colorado and put mining in a bad light in a State where many of it's citizens relied on mining for a living.
If Twin Lakes had not been shut down I suspect Granite would have become the major town in that area and Canon City and Pueblo would have remained minor outposts. Colorado would have mined another 300,000 ounces from the Cache creek placers and life would be very different in that region.
Heavy Pans
