The strikes, the rush and the price, from the 1800s to now.
Coming October 2026
Jasper is here because of gold. The federal government accepted a townsite plat for Cornwall in 1897 because a rush was already under way, and the Colorado School of Mines sent a survey party to map ground that men were actively staking. The thesis that party produced is already in this museum and it describes the rush as it was happening.
This exhibit gathers what the newspapers made of it, from the first strikes through to recent times, and sets it against what an ounce of gold was actually worth in each of those years.
Dozens of newspaper clippings covering the gold mining years, along with photographs of the workings and the men who ran them. Each one has to be scanned, dated and checked against the paper it came from before it goes up here, and that is slow work.
The chart below is finished and live now. The clippings will be hung on it as they are catalogued, so you will be able to read what the papers said in a given year and see what gold was worth that same year.
Drag sideways to see the whole span
| Year | Price per troy ounce |
|---|---|
| 1792 | $19.39 set by law |
| 1833 | $19.39 set by law |
| 1834 | $20.67 set by law |
| 1932 | $20.67 set by law |
| 1933 | $26.33 |
| 1934 | $34.69 set by law |
| 1967 | $35.00 set by law |
| 1968 | $39.31 |
| 1969 | $41.28 |
| 1970 | $36.02 |
| 1971 | $40.62 |
| 1972 | $58.42 |
| 1973 | $97.32 |
| 1974 | $159 |
| 1975 | $161 |
| 1976 | $125 |
| 1977 | $148 |
| 1978 | $193 |
| 1979 | $307 |
| 1980 | $615 |
| 1981 | $460 |
| 1982 | $376 |
| 1983 | $424 |
| 1984 | $360 |
| 1985 | $317 |
| 1986 | $368 |
| 1987 | $446 |
| 1988 | $437 |
| 1989 | $381 |
| 1990 | $384 |
| 1991 | $362 |
| 1992 | $344 |
| 1993 | $360 |
| 1994 | $384 |
| 1995 | $384 |
| 1996 | $388 |
| 1997 | $331 |
| 1998 | $294 |
| 1999 | $279 |
| 2000 | $279 |
| 2001 | $271 |
| 2002 | $310 |
| 2003 | $363 |
| 2004 | $410 |
| 2005 | $445 |
| 2006 | $603 |
| 2007 | $695 |
| 2008 | $872 |
| 2009 | $972 |
| 2010 | $1,225 |
| 2011 | $1,572 |
| 2012 | $1,669 |
| 2013 | $1,411 |
| 2014 | $1,266 |
| 2015 | $1,160 |
| 2016 | $1,251 |
| 2017 | $1,258 |
| 2018 | $1,268 |
| 2019 | $1,393 |
| 2020 | $1,770 |
| 2021 | $1,799 |
| 2022 | $1,801 |
| 2023 | $1,941 |
| 2024 | $2,386 |
| 2025 | $3,250 not yet checked |
1792 to 1933 are statutory, not market prices. Coinage Act of 1792 set $19.39. The Act of 1834 set $20.67 and it did not move for ninety nine years. 1934 to 1967 are the Gold Reserve Act price of $35.00, again statutory. 1968 onward are annual averages of the London fix, latterly the LBMA PM price. Rows marked provisional have not been checked against a primary source yet.
Every ounce of gold ever taken out of Jasper was sold at a price set by Congress.
From 1834 until 1933 an ounce was worth $20.67. That was not a market quote that happened to hold steady. It was the law, and it did not move for ninety nine years. The strike of 1895, the rush that followed, the town, the mines and every man who swung a hammer in them all sit inside that one flat line on the left of the chart.
The same ounce in 2025 is about $3,250, which is roughly 157 times as many dollars. Dollars themselves are worth a great deal less than they were, so that is not the same as saying the gold is worth 157 times more. It does mean that the arithmetic every prospector in this valley was doing bears no relation to the arithmetic anyone does today.
The vertical scale is logarithmic, so each major gridline is ten times the one below it. That is the only way to show a price that ran from nineteen dollars to several thousand without flattening the first hundred and forty years into the bottom edge. On this scale a fixed price draws as a genuinely flat line and a revaluation draws as a step, which is exactly what they were.
Three eras are marked across the top. Under the statutory price the figure was set by law. Under Bretton Woods it was still fixed, at thirty five dollars, but the fixing was an international arrangement rather than a domestic one. After 1971 the dollar stopped converting to gold and the price became a market price for the first time in American history. Everything that looks like volatility on this chart happens after that point.
Nearly every clipping puts a figure on a strike. Most of them are guesses, a good many are guesses made by somebody with shares to sell, and the same ore body often turns up in three papers at three different values a fortnight apart.
The tally below adds them up, and it is worth being exact about what that total is. It is a sum of claims, not a sum of gold. Every figure is listed with the words it came from and the paper that printed it, so you can weigh it yourself rather than taking the total on trust.
The obvious question is what was actually recovered, and the honest answer is that nobody knows. Mines of this period were under no general obligation to publish what they produced and most did not. A figure that reached print reached it for a reason, usually because somebody was raising money or answering a rumour. Owners had cause to understate output, since royalties, taxes and partners’ shares were all reckoned against it, and cause to overstate it whenever there were shares to sell. High grading muddied even the honest books, because rich ore walked out in lunch pails and the mill returns only ever showed what was left.
Some of that secrecy was ordinary caution. Some of it was cover for schemes that only worked while nobody could check the figures. Either way the silence was deliberate, and it is as much a part of this record as anything that did get printed.
These figures are illustrations, not records. 3 placeholder rows are still in the ledger. Delete them from museum/data/gold-ledger.json before this exhibit opens.
The sum of every figure the sources put on a strike
That is not a gap in this museum's research. It is what the record looks like.
Mines of this period were under no general obligation to publish what they produced, and most did not. A figure that was made public was made public for a reason. Owners had cause to understate output, because royalties, taxes and partners' shares were all reckoned against it, and cause to overstate it whenever there were shares to sell.
High grading muddied even the honest accounts. Rich ore left the workings in lunch pails, and an owner counting mill returns was counting what was left after the men had taken their share. Some of the secrecy was ordinary commercial caution. Some of it was cover for schemes that only worked while nobody could check the figures.
So the number on the left is what was said. What actually came out of this valley was not written down anywhere anyone has found, and quite a lot of effort went into keeping it that way.
Counted from 2 claims across 2 sources, naming 2 mines or claims. A further 1 entry repeats a claim already counted and is listed below without being added again. Today's figures use $3,250 an ounce. The 2025 price used here is provisional and has not been checked against a primary source.
This is a total of claims, not a total of gold. It records what was printed. Whether the ore was there, and whether any of it was ever recovered, is a separate question and mostly an unanswerable one.
These are nominal dollars and nothing here is adjusted for inflation. A dollar in 1896 bought a great deal more than a dollar buys now, so the value at the time and the value today are not two measurements of the same thing.
| Ref | Mine and source | Basis | Troy ounces |
|---|---|---|---|
| GL-001 |
Example Mine
Example Journal, 1896-03-14
The vein is believed to carry not less than one hundred thousand dollars in free gold. Illustration only. Delete this row and the two below it once real clippings are catalogued.
|
Claimed
Unverified |
4,838
$100,001 in 1896 |
| GL-002 |
Example Mine
Example Weekly Herald, 1896-03-21
Not less than one hundred thousand dollars in free gold, according to reports from the camp. Repeats GL-001, not counted again. Illustration only. A second paper repeating the first a week later. Listed, but not counted twice.
|
Claimed
Unverified |
4,838
$100,001 in 1896 |
| GL-003 |
Second Example Claim
Example Mining Review, 1897-06
The engineer's report places the ore body at three hundred thousand dollars. Illustration only. An engineer's estimate rather than a promoter's figure, which is a different basis and is tagged as one.
|
Estimated
Reported |
14,514
$300,004 in 1897 |
THERE IS NO RECOVERED TOTAL, AND THAT IS THE FINDING. Production figures from this era were commonly kept secret. Mines were under no general obligation to publish output and most did not. Owners understated it to hold down royalties, taxes and partners' shares, and overstated it when there were shares to sell. High grading meant even the owners
If you have newspaper cuttings, assay reports, photographs or anything else about mining in this valley, the curator would like to hear about it. Originals stay with you. A clear photograph of the page is enough to start with, and the date and the name of the paper matter more than the quality of the scan.
Tell the curatorThe museum grows in fits and starts, whenever a box turns up or something finally gets identified. Leave your name and the curator will write when there is something new worth seeing. No more than once a month, and usually less.