Angry sow bear, her cubs, 'accidental' hanging, and gold digging partner fallout

Just another lost Colorado gold mine

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Drunken benders by bingeing partners and angry bear killings are not that far out of place in most lost gold stories. And so it is with the tale of the Lost Mine of the Cache la Poudre. Most ore prospects in that area have often been described as 'modest' at best, but the story of the lost mine is as rich in betrayal and needless violence as any told.

"Hans the Dutchman and Mike the Irishman were bosom buddies who came in 1860 to the military fort of Fort Collins, then the middle of the wilderness that was Kansas Territory. Loaded with gold, they stayed just long enough for a good spree, then vanished across the wide gray prairie in the direction of the Shining mountains, shadowy purple against the western sky," wrote Caroline Bancroft in a booklet "Colorado's Lost Gold Mines and Buried Treasure, (1961).  The story was first told to her by her by her pioneer grandfather George Jarvis Bancroft (and Rocky Mountain News readers) in 1914.

"Had this happened but once, the soldiers at the fort would have paid little attention. but it happened again and again. Always the two buddies arrived loaded with gold, had themselves a spree, sobered up and disappeared. No matter how drunk they were, they never revealed where they came from, nor where they went. The curious soldiers, awed by all the gold, tried their best to find out," wrote the younger Bancroft, Caroline.

A group soldiers became so curious of the source of their recurring spree wealth, that the decided to hire a Indian scout to follow them. The scout, however, lost their trail in a snow storm and was only able to say for sure that went straight up the Cache la Poudre River. 

Soon after, the Dutchman and Irishman came back and bought a donkey so they could pack in bigger supplies and pack out more gold. On successive trips, the donkey was not robust enough so they traded for  an ox. But even the ox became over-burden as their prospects grew heavier each trip back to civilization of the fort with ox load of gold.

Then the two miners surprised all when they returned wearily on foot, carrying their gold on their backs and bemoaning the death of their ox which had been killed in front of their cabin.

"That time they drank more than usual, began to quarrel, and suddenly the Irishman landed a blow on Han's head that killed him," writes Bancroft. "Now the soldiers exulted, they would find out about the mine. They seized Mike and they told him they would hang hime unless he told them where the mine was."

But Mike the Irishman was reportedly defiant. He set his jaw and only more determined when they place a rope around his neck and slung it over a cottonwood tree. In the process, though the soldiers reportedly didn't mean to kill him, he expired anyway, taking with him his location of the mine. With both miners dead, the location was likely lost forever.

Other prospectors continued to look however. Billy Meline, was working mostly at sawmill in Fort Collins in 1899, when small boy became lost in mountains upriver from Fort Collins which prompted an huge search by abled-bodied men in town. Despite that, the boy soon rode into town telling the story of a cabin he found, complete with food, firewood, and bleached bones of an Ox and flecks of gold on table inside. Billy Meline, who had hopes of becoming the richest man in Nebraska (from where he came) had joined the search for the boy, and was intrigued by the story of the cabin.

Meline set forth immediately to find the location, and along with a slightly addled eighty-year-old prospector Amos, and rough instructions from the boy who had been lost, stumbled into the lost camp of Hans and Mike in short order.

"A faint trail led them from the cabin, and suddenly there was the black mouth of a tunnel in the side of the mountain. The old man yelled with excitement and rushed in, without even waiting to light his candle," reported both Bancrofts,  "He came rushing out just as fast — and after him, a big brown bear and her two cubs."

Caroline Bancroft wrote "The old prospector went berserk. Even though the bear ambled off into the underbrush with her cubs, Amos grabbed the gun from his belt and pointed it at Billy."

"I've go to kill you — leave something for them to eat while I get away!" he shouted, and even as his taking withered finger reached for the trigger Billy lunged and caught the oldster by the knees. The bullet went into the air harmlessly, and the shot echoing and re-echoing the quiet open forest."

Bancroft says, "It took all Billy's strength to get the wild old maniac to town. In doing it,  he sprained his ankle, which made it impossible to go back to the lost mine for several weeks. But he wasn't worried — he remembered where it was: on the north slope of Black Mountain, near the top, in the heavy timber. It would not be hard to locate again."

"He looked and he looked — for years," Bancroft says. "He never found it. He got to believing it all had been a dream, a crazy dream, with a crazy old man prospector, and the cabin only a ghost cabin. Sometime he thought he heard Hans the Dutchman and Mike the Irishman chucking in their shadowy beards."