Gold in Jasper | The Jasper Museum

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.

Opening October 2026

Twenty one clippings are up

Twenty one newspaper clippings are catalogued and readable below, running from 1882 to 1929, each one transcribed and tied to the paper and the date it came from. Ten papers are represented, from the Rocky Mountain News down to the La Jara Gazette. More are being scanned and will go up over the next few weeks.

The chart and the ledger below are both live. Every clipping that carries a figure is entered in the ledger against the gold price for its year, and every clipping that does not is listed there too, carried at nothing, so the gaps are as visible as the numbers.

Twenty one clippings1882 to 1929, transcribed and linked to their scans
PhotographsThe workings, the headframes and the men who worked them, still to come
The price seriesLive below, and updated each year
Dates and sourcesEvery clipping tied to its paper and its date

The clippings, 1882 to 1929

In the order they were printed. Forty seven years separate the first from the last, and the striking thing about reading them together is how little the assessment of the ore changes. In 1887 a correspondent for the Weekly Register calls it refractory sulphides that no mill will treat. In 1899 the Monte Vista Journal calls it mostly low grade but exceedingly rich in pockets. In 1922 the Antonito Ledger calls it an inexhaustible body of low grade ore containing streaks and pockets of high grade. Between those sentences lie a boom, a headline assay, and a succession of mills and smelters that were built and did not pay.

Each one is transcribed on its own page, with the scan alongside so the reading can be checked. Where a scan is cropped and words are lost, the record says so rather than guessing at them. The last item is undated and the curator would like to know what it is.

Newspaper column headed Strike in Minneapolis Tunnel, reprinted from the Alamosa Independent

Newspaper column headed Jasper Coming to the Front, a promising gold mining camp 20 miles from Monte Vista

Newspaper column from a correspondent describing the Jasper mining camp and its ore

Newspaper clipping headed The Little Anna, rich strike made in this famous mine

Newspaper column headed Mines Near Jasper, large quantities of low grade gold ores exposed

Newspaper headline reading Opening Up the Jasper Mines, work is being actively pushed on Senator Moody's tunnel

Newspaper column headed Jasper Once More, on the Jasper mining camp thirty five miles southwest of Monte Vista

Newspaper headline reading May Install New Concentrating Plant above a report from Jasper

Newspaper column describing a proposed tunnel to develop claims on Cornwall mountain at Jasper

Newspaper column headed May Become Center of Mining World, describing claims at Jasper

Newspaper headline reading Monte Vista Gives $10,000 for Road to Mine District

Newspaper column headed Items From the Gold Camps with short notices from Jasper and Platoro

Newspaper column headed Strike at Jasper, reporting rich gold ore uncovered in the Mizer tunnel

Newspaper front page headline reading Rich Strike at Jasper, ore assaying to the value of $32,618 a ton uncovered by leasers in property owned by Alva Adams at Jasper

Newspaper page headed Rich Strike Made in Old Abandoned Mine, Miser patented property at Jasper shows record vein

Newspaper headline reading Rich Vein Widens at Jasper above two columns of text

Newspaper column headed Mining News Reported and Clipped From Our Exchanges

Newspaper column headed Miser Mine at Jasper Will Be Reopened

Newspaper column headed New Smelter at Jasper describing a ten ton electric smelter at the Miser mine

Newspaper column headed Considerable Mining Activity, reprinting a Monte Vista Tribune report on the Jasper Mining Company

Newspaper page headed Rio Grande County Gold, surveying the mining camps of the county

Drag sideways to see the whole span

The price of gold, 1792 to now United States dollars per troy ounce. The scale is logarithmic, so each gridline is ten times the one below it. On this scale a statutory price appears as a flat line and a revaluation as a step. 1Numbered markers are the 12 years the museum holds clippings for, and the same numbers run down the claims list below. The dot on the line is the year. The badge is pushed along its rail far enough to be read, so follow the leader rather than the badge when reading a date off the axis.

See the figures behind the chart

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 taken out of Jasper was sold at a price fixed by law.

From 1834 until 1933 an ounce was worth $20.67. That figure was set by statute rather than by a market, and it did not change for ninety nine years. The 1895 strike, the rush that followed and the working life of the mines all fall inside that period, which is the flat line on the left of the chart.

The same ounce in 2025 is about $3,250, roughly 157 times as many dollars. The dollar is worth a good deal less than it was, so this is not a statement that the gold is 157 times more valuable. It does mean that figures quoted in period sources cannot be compared with present day values without conversion.

Reading the chart

The vertical scale is logarithmic, so each major gridline is ten times the one below it. It is the standard way to show a range this wide, and without it the first hundred and forty years flatten into the bottom edge of the chart. 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 periods are marked across the top. Under the statutory price the figure was set by United States law. Under Bretton Woods it remained fixed at thirty five dollars, but by international agreement rather than by domestic statute. After 1971 the dollar stopped converting to gold and the price has been set by the market ever since. All of the variation visible on this chart occurs after that point.

How much gold was there

Most of these clippings put no number on anything. Of the twenty one catalogued so far, two carry a figure that can be totalled, and one of those two accounts for essentially the whole tally on its own.

In June 1896 the Rocky Mountain News printed a mining expert's estimate of thirty million tons of ore in sight on two groups of claims, averaging $9 to $13 a ton. At the low end of the paper's own range that is more gold than Colorado has produced in its recorded history, claimed for one camp in one paragraph. It is in the ledger because it was printed. Read every other figure here against it.

The rest report a rich pocket, a widening vein, an unlimited amount of ore, and in two cases an assay per ton, which is a grade rather than a quantity and cannot be added to anything without a tonnage nobody published.

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 was ordinary commercial caution and some of it was cover for fraud. Either way the absence of production figures is itself part of the record.

The running tally

What the sources claimed

Reported

13,064,828 troy ounces

Worth at the time: $270.0 million
At 2025 prices: $42.46 billion

The total of every figure the sources put on a strike

Recovered

Not known

No production figure is recorded because none was published.

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 affected even accurate accounts. Ore removed by miners never reached the mill, so an owner's returns recorded only what remained. Some of the secrecy was ordinary commercial caution and some of it was cover for fraud.

The figure on the left is therefore a total of what was reported, not a measure of what was produced. No reliable production record for these mines has been located.

The claims in order

Each clipping as it was printed, and the total as it stood after it. 2 of the 20 carry a figure that can be added up. The rest report a rich pocket, a widening vein or an unlimited amount of ore, and are listed here carrying nothing, because that is what they say. Entry 5 alone is 99.98 per cent of the total, so the column is a record of one estimate set against 19 reports that mostly decline to put a number on anything they describe. The numbers match the markers on the price chart above.

Number	Printed	Mine and source	Claimed	Running total
1	20 January 1882	Minneapolis tunnel Colorado Chieftain, from the Alamosa Independent	No figure given	0oz
2	12 August 1887	Champion San Luis Valley Graphic, Vol. III	No figure given	0oz
3	14 October 1887	Cornwall mountain veins Weekly Register	No figure given	0oz
4	20 April 1894	Little Anna Rocky Mountain News	No figure given	0oz
5	12 June 1896	Jasper Gold Mining, Milling and Transportation company Rocky Mountain News	13,062,409oz	13,062,409oz
6	7 March 1898	Senator Moody's tunnel Rocky Mountain News	No figure given	13,062,409oz
7	11 February 1899	Moody interests at Jasper Monte Vista Journal	2,419oz	13,064,828oz
8	3 January 1901	Miser tunnel Rocky Mountain News	No figure given	13,064,828oz
9	18 April 1903	Alva Adams group Monte Vista Journal	No figure given	13,064,828oz
10	1 March 1913	Miser tunnel Monte Vista Journal	No figure given	13,064,828oz
11	1 March 1913	Jasper to Stunner wagon road Rocky Mountain News	No figure given	13,064,828oz
12	25 March 1913	Guadaloupe and Miser groups Monte Vista Journal	No figure given	13,064,828oz
13	26 April 1913	Mizer Monte Vista Journal	No figure given	13,064,828oz
14	10 May 1913	Alva Adams property at Jasper San Juan Prospector	No figure given	13,064,828oz
15	10 May 1913	Miser patented property Colorado Statesman	Repeat, not added	13,064,828oz
16	24 May 1913	Mizer Monte Vista Journal	No figure given	13,064,828oz
17	13 June 1913	Gilmore La Jara Enterprise, from the Pagosa Springs Sun	No figure given	13,064,828oz
18	25 November 1920	Miser La Jara Gazette, from the Monte Vista Tribune	No figure given	13,064,828oz
19	24 August 1922	Miser Antonito Ledger, from the Monte Vista Tribune	No figure given	13,064,828oz
20	25 May 1929	Marion San Juan Prospector, from the Monte Vista Tribune	No figure given	13,064,828oz

Counted from 19 claims across 10 sources, naming 16 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 reported figures, not of gold produced. It records what was printed. Whether the ore was present, and whether any was recovered, are separate questions the sources do not answer.

These are nominal dollars, not adjusted for inflation. The value at the time and the value today are therefore not directly comparable.

Every claim in the ledger (20)

Ref	Mine and source	Basis	Troy ounces
GL-008	Minneapolis tunnel Colorado Chieftain, from the Alamosa Independent, 1882-01-20 see the clipping It runs over twenty-five dollars in silver, and is very rich in gold. It can be mined and milled for less than seven dollars per ton. Grades per ton, not a quantity. The same column puts Jones mountain strikes at over $100 a ton and the Perry cross-cut at $300 in one streak, all per ton and all unquantified. The company behind it was said to be worth millions and a railroad to Cornwall was promised. It was never built.	Reported Unverified	0 $0.00 in 1882
GL-001	Champion San Luis Valley Graphic, Vol. III, 1887-08-12 see the clipping if it will run $10 per ton it will be a bonanza, as the ore is in immense bodies, and is mined very cheaply No quantity claimed. Ten dollars a ton is the threshold the ore would have to meet for the new mill to pay, stated as a condition, not a yield. Listed for the record and carried at nothing.	Reported Unverified	0 $0.00 in 1887
GL-009	Cornwall mountain veins Weekly Register, 1887-10-14 see the clipping said to contain gold at the rate of $8.00 to $2,000 to the ton, it may be so, if it is, there are millions here The correspondent reports the claim and disbelieves it in the same sentence. He counts seventeen patented mines on Cornwall belonging to Governor Adams, none in operation, and concludes the ore is refractory sulphides needing a smelter rather than a mill. Carried at nothing.	Reported Unverified	0 $0.00 in 1887
GL-010	Little Anna Rocky Mountain News, 1894-04-20 see the clipping there was a vein of fine gold quartz struck by Pearce and Goodhue in their Little Anna claim. The vein is sixteen inches wide and the entire vein brings The figure is lost. The scan is cut off mid sentence after the entire vein brings, and whatever value the News printed is not on the image. Carried at nothing because the number cannot be read, not because none was given.	Reported Unverified	0 $0.00 in 1894
GL-011	Jasper Gold Mining, Milling and Transportation company Rocky Mountain News, 1896-06-12 see the clipping Mr. William Farrish, one of the best known mining experts of the West, estimated that on two groups of the Jasper Gold Mining, Milling and Transportation company's claims, there are 30,000,000 tons of ore in sight. These great bodies of ore average, without sorting, between $9 and $13 per ton 30,000,000 tons at the $9 low end of the paper's own range is $270,000,000, which at the statutory $20.67 an ounce is the figure entered. The $13 upper end would give 18.9 million ounces. This is ore standing in the ground as estimated by one expert for a company then erecting a test mill, not gold recovered, and it is several times Colorado's entire recorded gold production. It is here because it was printed. Read the rest of the ledger against it.	Estimated Unverified	13,062,409 $269,999,994 in 1896
GL-012	Senator Moody's tunnel Rocky Mountain News, 1898-03-07 see the clipping Recent assays show pay mineral running well in gold values. Running well in gold values is not a figure. This is the start of the effort the Monte Vista Journal looks back on a year later in GL-002.	Reported Unverified	0 $0.00 in 1898
GL-002	Moody interests at Jasper Monte Vista Journal, 1899-02-11 see the clipping some day Jasper would bring him $50,000, but that he had decided he would wait until some new process for handling the ore should be discovered $50,000 at the statutory $20.67 an ounce. Frank Moody's own expectation of his property, recalled by the paper eight or ten years after he said it, and never a report of gold recovered. The same clipping records that every mill built at Jasper to that date had failed.	Reported Unverified	2,419 $50,000 in 1899
GL-013	Miser tunnel Rocky Mountain News, 1901-01-03 see the clipping Both properties can show good ore in their several workings. The earliest mention of the Miser tunnel by name in the collection. Worked that year by the Rio Grande-Nebraska Mining company. No figure given.	Reported Unverified	0 $0.00 in 1901
GL-014	Alva Adams group Monte Vista Journal, 1903-04-18 see the clipping A tunnel 3,000 feet will be run into the mountain sufficient size to develope the seventeen patented properties of the Alva Adams group A proposed tunnel length, not a quantity of ore. The same seventeen patented properties the Weekly Register found idle on Cornwall sixteen years earlier.	Reported Unverified	0 $0.00 in 1903
GL-003	Miser tunnel Monte Vista Journal, 1913-03-01 see the clipping Some of the richest pockets of gold ore ever found in the state have been taken from the Miser tunnel. A superlative with no figure behind it, published while the property was being leased to Cripple Creek people. Carried at nothing.	Reported Unverified	0 $0.00 in 1913
GL-015	Jasper to Stunner wagon road Rocky Mountain News, 1913-03-01 see the clipping In less than five minutes $10,000 was raised to finance the rebuilding of the wagon road between Jasper and the new mining camp of Stunner. The only figure in the collection that is certainly real money, and it is not gold. Three hundred citizens of Monte Vista subscribed it for a road. Carried at nothing because it says nothing about ore, but it measures how much the 1913 boom was believed.	Reported Documented	0 $0.00 in 1913
GL-016	Guadaloupe and Miser groups Monte Vista Journal, 1913-03-25 see the clipping A force of men will be put to work the first of next week by the lessees on the Guadaloupe and Miser groups at Jasper. A column of short notices with no figures anywhere in it. Earl Kennedy, named here leaving for the camps with a load of supplies, is one of the lessees credited with the Miser strike six weeks later.	Reported Unverified	0 $0.00 in 1913
GL-004	Mizer Monte Vista Journal, 1913-04-26 see the clipping Recently the cross-cut tunnel has been cleaned out and some very rich gold ore was uncovered this week. Same property as GL-003, spelled Mizer in this issue and Miser in the one seven weeks earlier. No quantity or value given.	Reported Unverified	0 $0.00 in 1913
GL-005	Alva Adams property at Jasper San Juan Prospector, 1913-05-10 see the clipping The ore assays $32,618 a ton in gold and $86.72 in Silver. The largest figure in the collection and it cannot be totalled. $32,618 a ton is a grade, not a quantity, and no tonnage was published. At $20.67 an ounce it implies about 1,578 ounces to the ton. The same article says the rich ore comes from a comparatively narrow streak in the vein, and only that it is said the greater part of the vein is pay.	Reported Unverified	0 $0.00 in 1913
GL-017	Miser patented property Colorado Statesman, 1913-05-10 see the clipping The vein is 12 to 15 feet wide and averages $1,488 a ton. There is a rich streak 1 1/2 inches wide in this vein, which the assays made by Charles Foster, of the leasing company, show to be worth $32,532 a ton. Repeats GL-005, not counted again. The same strike as GL-005, printed the same day by a different paper, and the two do not agree. The Prospector said $32,618 a ton, this says $32,532. More usefully, this one says the rich streak is an inch and a half wide and that the vein as a whole averages $1,488 a ton, which is about a twenty second of the headline figure. Both are grades per ton with no tonnage, so neither can be totalled.	Reported Unverified	0 $0.00 in 1913
GL-006	Mizer Monte Vista Journal, 1913-05-24 see the clipping the rich vein discovered in the Mizer tunnel at Jasper has widened out and shows better as development work continues Development progress rather than a claim of gold. The same issue reports the Gilmore tunnel at 180 feet depth and daily auto stages running to Jasper from Monte Vista.	Reported Reported	0 $0.00 in 1913
GL-018	Gilmore La Jara Enterprise, from the Pagosa Springs Sun, 1913-06-13 see the clipping The vein as cut in the 380-foot tunnel on the Gilmore property is 15 feet 8 inches between the walls. Reported rich but no definate information concerning exact values can be obtained. A measured vein and an explicit refusal to put a value on it, which makes this the most careful reporting in the collection. The Gilmore tunnel was 180 feet three weeks earlier, so it advanced 200 feet in that time. Spelling of definate is the original's.	Reported Reported	0 $0.00 in 1913
GL-019	Miser La Jara Gazette, from the Monte Vista Tribune, 1920-11-25 see the clipping This company has been at work on the old Miser property on Cornwall mountain for the past year blocking out ore bodies, cleaning up the old workings and placing the mine in shape for active operations in the spring. A year of development with no tonnage or grade published at the end of it. The Jasper Mining and Extraction Co. of Denver, Norman Ballantine president.	Reported Unverified	0 $0.00 in 1920
GL-020	Miser Antonito Ledger, from the Monte Vista Tribune, 1922-08-24 see the clipping This ore has been refined in Denver in large quantities with results that have proved beyond a shadow of doubt, that the smelter will be a success. The closest the collection comes to a production record and still not one. Large quantities is not a tonnage, and no assay, mill return or settlement is quoted. Had a figure been attached to this sentence it would have been the only production basis entry in the ledger.	Reported Unverified	0 $0.00 in 1922
GL-007	Marion San Juan Prospector, from the Monte Vista Tribune, 1929-05-25 see the clipping There is an unlimited amount of ore in the Marion mine, one of the company's holdings. Unlimited is not a figure. The Jasper Mining Company was blocking out ore for a pilot mill to get an average assay of the entire vein, which is the test that would have produced a real number. No result was ever published here.	Reported Unverified	0 $0.00 in 1929

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

Clippings wanted

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.

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