Mules for Sale near Leadville, CO

About Leadville, CO

The Leadville area was first settled in 1859 when placer gold was discovered in California Gulch during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush. By 1860, a town, Oro City ( oro is the Spanish word for gold), located about a mile from present-day Leadville, had sprung up, and a year later its population had reached more than 5,000. But the boom was brief because the placer-mined gold soon ran out, and Oro City never became a major settlement. The early miners had noted that mining for placer gold was hampered by heavy black sand in the sluice boxes, and in 1874 it was discovered that the heavy sand that impeded gold recovery was the lead mineral cerussite, which has a high silver content. Prospectors traced the cerussite to its source, present day Leadville, and by 1876 had discovered several silver-lead lode deposits.