Please note photos in this post may be viewed larger by opening in a new tab (right-click)

This post was started to show some photos from a particularly forlorn cemetery near me, the Caribou Cemetery. But while I'm at it, I decided to include some photos of the surrounding area. (and as usual, it got a bit out of hand — "some" = quite a lot) Caribou is actually responsible for the name of my town, Nederland, because the gold and silver were mined at Caribou at over 10,000 feet above sea level, but transported down to a mill that lay 2,000 feet lower in Nederland, which in Dutch means "lowlands," so it's all relative. I used to volunteer at our town's Visitor Center and we got quite a few Dutch visitors, and they always wanted to know why our town at 8,200 feet above sea level was named after their country meaning "lowlands."

There is much literature on Caribou and I love the area, and someday I may make my own post about its history. But today we're just going to visit the cemetery and some environs. The first photos here depict all that remains of the town of Caribou that was once home to as many as 800 people. Tons of internet sources claim 3,000 people and I don't know the original source of that which everyone regurgitates. One acquaintance checked the actual census log for one of the boom years, which listed the population at 500, and another extremely knowledgeable source has mentioned, firsthand, 800. So I'm going with 500-800 during the boom years. The first photo shows the skeletons of a couple stone buildings in the distance; now in 2022, that is all that stands. The second photo shows the waning remains of a wooden cabin from some years ago which is now almost wholly digested by the plants. When I first moved here, it was still standing, the only other remnant besides the stone structure, and I've watched it melt back into the earth. It is a beautiful landscape, though, and I can hardly begrudge the flowers for taking back their land.

My original post  of this title proceeded now to the cemetery, but by 2025 I had so much new information, updates and photos to add about the cemetery and the mines, I decided to break the post into two parts. So the cemetery and landscape parts now reside in the article, "Caribou Cemetery and the Glories of the Mountain." So here we will now start with the mines. All the old mountain communities in my 'hood are mining communities established in the 1800s, which experienced varying levels of success and longevity. Like so many in Rocky Mountain Colorado, Caribou was a boom-bust town. The rich lodes were discovered in 1869; by 1870 the place was packed; and by the latter 1890s it was all but deserted. Mining was revived on and off in subsequent decades for different mineral veins. In the other article of this now broken-apart post you can read about the last real miner, Tom Hendricks. His mines, the Caribou and Cross, are now operated by another company ... and that is a bit of another story I won't cover here.

The extended region around Caribou townsite is known as the Caribou Mining District. Within it lies, among many others, the Pandora Mine, which basically overlooks this valley.

It was part of the WWI revival of the area, extracting tungsten, which was a highly sought mineral during the Great War used to harden the steel of gun barrels. We have visited these meager ruins, mostly just some machinery for a hoist at the headframe, several times but I only now took the effort to do the research to figure out what mine this is. Like the 3,000-person bustling town of Caribou reduced to nearly nothing, I was surprised to see photos from 1966 of this mine, long abandoned by that time. I'll replicate my experience for you.

First are the remains that we find today. The top photo is from the hoist; the mine shaft is directly beneath it (to the left) but now filled in, as nearly all shafts are by now.

Now my surprise at finding the photos below in the Carnegie Library for Local History, Boulder, collection — a bunkhouse for the workers. The forest has certainly reclaimed that building so completely it makes me wonder if it was actively torn down. Next time we are there, we will try to see where this bunkhouse could have been.

And this pic matches the first one in my series, showing the machinery inside the shaft house, which now just sits in the open air.

According to thediggings.com there are 80 claims and 46 mines — 29 "producers" and 17 "occurrences" — in the Caribou Mining District. And the Anchor Mine is another one of them still accessible by a combination of 4x4 road and walking. I couldn't find much information about it online and published this article anyway in 2022 with the pittance I could find. In 2024 I received an email from a guy whose great-great-grandfather, Moses Ingram, staked the original claim in 1859 as a member of the 59ers -- the earliest rush of pioneers seeking mineral wealth in Colorado. His family still owns the property and has tried to maintain and protect the site from the harsh winter conditions over the decades, though doing so is a mighty tall order. He shared with me some information about the mine site, and its state today. This was greatly appreciated and now I can share it with you.

Mr. Cass wrote, "The Anchor is a silver mine that produced a bunch of purest silver in the region. In the mid to late 1800s silver was just as expensive as gold, but in the 1920s when the United States decided to go with a Gold Standard (instead of a Silver Standard), the silver market crashed. My family was still able to keep the mine open until the beginning of WWII because of the purity of the ore."

The mining cart tracks are still intact from where they exited the mine, which is now collapsed, to the sorting shed. It's a fairly common sight around here to see old mining cart tracks disappearing into a mountainside or just seemingly petering out (the mills or ore bins having collapsed and rotted away). Here you can still see some of the ties covered in moss in the water stream that comes out of the mine. I always like these "roads to nowhere."

At the ore bin, or "sorting shed," the miners would sort out the good ore from the rock they chiseled out of the mountain into one bin, and the rest into the second bin to be emptied onto the ore dump. Mr. Cass mentions that the ore dump at the Anchor is very small owing to how much rich pure ore there was inside the mine. Once there was enough good ore in the bin, the miners would park an ore wagon (or later a dump truck) below the "good" chute, open the bin door and load the ore, then take it to the ore mill southwest of Caribou to be smelted. 

This is the shorting shed, as photographed prior to 2024. 

Mr. Cass wrote, "There used to be what was called a snow shed (that was actually a corrugated metal tunnel) running from the mine entrance, past the tool shed and connected to the sorting shed. The snow shed allowed the mine to be active even in the winter." You can see the tracks passing by the well-maintained tool shed, below.

"Back in 1986, when the Hunt brothers artificially inflated the silver market, we thought about reopening the mine. A cousin of mine, knowing that the snow shed would be in the way of modern mining operations, completely took out the snow shed. He did this without consulting the rest of the family. This still provides consternation within the family to this day. This action left the west facing entrance of the sorting shed open to the harsh winter elements. A few days after we decided to reopen the mine a gentleman from Arizona (who had researched wonderful producing silver mines to capitalize on the (unknown at the time) artificial market inflation. He chose our Anchor Mine as the best bet to go into partnership with. He brought in a bobcat to start removal of the caved-in entrance to the mine. Once he got to the first main timbers of the mine, the mine completely emptied of thousands of gallons of water captured by decades of snow peculation from above timberline. The man from Arizona declared no further progress of reactivation because every single timber inside the mine would have to be replaced due to the size of the mine and water rot. This, in itself, would cost a fortune to do so. So, we immediately abandoned the idea of reopening. This was a Godsend, because it was only a few weeks later that the Hunt brothers were caught and jailed for the deception they created.

"By the time it was apparent the sorting shed would eventually succumb to Mother Nature’s wrath, it was too late. We regretted not installing some sort of protection on the west entrance to keep the snow out." Indeed, when I visited the mine in 2024, I was saddened to see the shed had further collapsed (photo below), with the side wall leaning over precariously. Its saving grace might be the trees it's basically leaning against, they might help keep it from completely collapsing to the ground.

Mr. Cass continues, "Shortly after the loss of the original residence in the early 1950s, the family decided to restore the original compressor house into a livable cabin (what you see today)." This is the quaint cabin today, below. There is a bench beside the brook there that I love to sit on and relax in the peaceful setting. 

Machinery is sitting out in the open on the site, but seems to be faring relatively well. I imagine this came from inside the compressor house, ousted with the remodeling. But I will need to confirm.

In spite of the sad collapse of the sorting shed, the family agreed it would be "a fool's errand" costing a lot of money to restore and maintain it against the ceaseless forces of Mother Nature. She always wins in the end.

This I believe is the original cabin of the first miners, just up the hill from the later one, at the edge of a pleasant hillside meadow. It's quite large for a wooden cabin of its day, compared to what we often see in the area. 

Can you find the little forest troll peeking at me??

I was delighted to find the meadow was full of perfectly plump, ripe raspberries in the fall.

I'm always commenting on how amazing it is that we find new-to-us old cabins or mines or miscellaneous mining equipment in the forests. And all these years we've been going up to Caribou and exploring around, it wasn't until 2025 that we learned of the New Jersey Mill foundation remains! And only because a friend told and showed us. I can't believe I was oblivious to it all this time. A large population of the miners at Caribou's mines were Cornish and were expert stone masons. All around this whole area in Boulder and Gilpin Counties you can see the remains of their handywork in retaining walls and foundations. They could build amazing structures without mortar. (Europe's Incas! haha) 

Here are a couple historic photos from the Carnegie Library Collection of the mill. You can see the stone foundation underneath the wooden structure on the right side of the first photo. Some miners sit atop the roof in the second one.

Some closer shots of the expertise of their stone work.

As sturdy as the man-made structures are, still the trees have an unmatched tenacity. And if they want to grow into the middle of a wall, well that's just what they'll do.

Lastly, we'll head back toward the Caribou townsite but west of it for some hilltop views of the area, most of which is contained within the Indian Peaks Wilderness. 

Up above the clouds.

There's Pinzy down on the trail. You can see all the way to the flatlands from up here where Boulder and Denver sprawl to the east. 

 *

Read more about the Caribou district

Read more articles about Colorado

Read more articles in Three-Hour Tour