Couldn’t touch something without it turning to gold, but made him very unhappy
By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.comWealth and power can be a burr under the saddle to someone that is not used to taking that seat. At the end of his life, Cripple Creek’s first, and greatest, millionaire Winfield Scott Stratton, couldn’t touch something without it turning to gold or money. It made him very unhappy.
“This wealth came to a man who had spent most of his life working
as a carpenter for $3 a day,” wrote historian Kenneth Jessen in a recent
newspaper article in Loveland Reporter Herald. The Independence Mine
contributed the bulk of Stratton’s wealth.
“At today’s gold prices, the Independence yielded over $2
billion and when Stratton sold the mine, he received nearly a quarter of a
billion dollars,” noted Jesson.
But that is not the interesting part. The perennial ‘nice guy’ who never
forgot where he came from, ended up giving most of it away. His fortune, born on the Fourth of
July, was pretty much spent and/or handed out as gifts by the carpenter-turned-miner
at the Christmas of his life.
“On July 4, 1891, Stratton was prospecting on the side of
Battle Mountain. Based on geology, he reasoned rich ore could be found there,”
says Jesson. “As he searched for gold, Stratton could hear shots fired into the
air as miners began their celebration of the Fourth of July. That day, Stratton
found and staked out the Washington and the Independence claims.
That claim, and other subsequent moves, made him
tremendously wealthy. “He would eventually own one-fifth of the mining land in
Cripple Creek and Victor,” writes historian Tom Stockman.
“He was extremely generous, he bought bicycles for the local
washer women to use on their rounds, and when Cripple Creek burned in an
all-to-common fire, he helped the town rebuild in brick.”
Just a few on the list of Stratton’s other benefactors:
• To “Crazy Bob” Womack, discoverer but not the heir to
Cripple Creek riches, Stratton wrote a check for $5,000 as consolation.
• He donated land for the Colorado Springs City Hall, Post
Office, a major park and the El Paso County Court House (which now is the
Pioneer Museum).
• He greatly expanded the trolley streetcar system in
Colorado Springs.
• When he died, he left his money with directions to found a
home for itinerant children and the elderly.
• According to
the National Mining Hall of Fame, “most memorable of the needy visitors to his
door was H.A.W. Tabor, Leadville’s mining king. He was a beaten man, whose fortune had collapsed with the
end of silver coinage. Stratton gave him $15,000 and saw he was named
Postmaster of Denver.
• Rescued the Brown Palace in Denver from the brink of
bankruptcy by paying off the noteworthy hotel's delinquent bills.
• Gave a gift of $25,000 to the Colorado School of Mines to
finish the “Hall of Metallurgy,” which now bears his name.
• Each Christmas, he had coal delivered to poor families in
the mining towns he was familiar with.
According to Tom Stockman, “Disdaining the common practice
of building a mansion, Stratton lived in one of the houses he had previously
built as a carpenter. His many charitable acts actually drew public
disapproval. He eventually attracted so many false applicants for aid that he
withdrew from society, becoming a heavy-drinking eccentric recluse.”
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Photo information: W.S. Stratton’s residence on Battle Mountain, with
Independence Mine at the rear. Western History/Genealogy Department, Denver Public Library.
