The Prospector, and The Silver Queen

Fifty years and one ago, near Fort Wayne, Indiana, Nicholas C. Creede, the story of whose eventful life I shall attempt to tell you, first saw the light of day. When but four ye...

Death came to the Creede family when young Creede was but eight years old. A few years later the youth found a step-father in the family, and they were never very good friends....

Creede’s arrival at the Pawnee Indian Reservations on the Loop fork of the Platte River marked an era in his eventful life. He began at this place a period of seven years’ India...

“I can’t read long, my love,” said the gallant scout. “I have just learned that there is trouble out West and I must away to the front. That beardless telegrapher, Dick, has bee...

Had N. C. Creede remained a poor prospector all his days, these pages would never have been printed. That is a cold, hard statement; but it is true. Shortly after the fickle God...

During the summer of ’68, a large party of Pawnee Indians, men and squaws, left the reservation on the Loop fork for a buffalo hunt in the country lying between the Platte and R...

One of the most daring acts in the history of this daring man was committed in Western Nebraska in 1866. From boyhood days, he had been noted as a hunter, and during the years w...

In the early springtime, at that time of the year when all the world grows glad; when the green grass springs from the cold, brown earth; when new flowers bloom on the graves of...

During the month of May, 1865, the scouts were given permission to go with the Pawnees on their annual buffalo hunt. The Pawnees were greatly pleased, for where there are buffal...

N. C. Creede, the Prince of Prospectors and new-made millionaire, is one of the gentlest men I have ever met, notwithstanding most of his life has been spent in scenes not condu...

Mr. Creede’s success is due largely to his lasting love for the mountains, which was love at first sight. It was in 1862 that the scouts were ordered to Dakota; and it was then...

The life of a prospector is one fraught with hardships and privations and, in locations infested by Indians, often one of peril. But in his search for the precious metals, the h...

The winter of 1871-2 was spent at Del Norte, and in the following spring Creede, with a party of prospectors, went to Elizabethtown, New Mexico. This town was a new one, but was...

Forest fires started by the Indians, carelessly or out of pure deviltry, had swept the hills to the east of the divide in Chaffee County, and sufficient time had elapsed to allo...

Leaving Monarch, the prospector journeyed through Poncha Pass, over into the San Luis Valley, and began to climb the hills behind the Sangre de Christo range. On a little stream...

An old prospecting partner of Mr. Creede’s told the following story to the writer, after the discovery of the Amethyst, which lifted the discoverer into prominence, gave him fam...

In 1886 at Monarch, George L. Smith, Charles H. Abbott and N. C. Creede formed a company for prospecting purposes. Smith and Abbott were to furnish the funds, while Creede did t...

Shortly after the abandonment of the claim on Spring Creek, and the withdrawal of Senator Abbott from the company, Smith and Creede went over to the head of West Willow. They be...

Here’s a land where all are equal, Of high and lowly birth; A land where men make millions Dug from the dreary earth. Here the meek and mild-eyed burros On mineral mountains fee...

Away in the hills, far above the bluebells, where the day dawned early and the sunlight lingered when the day was done, the lone prospector had his home. At times he would have...

About this time, President Moffat and the General Manager got into an entanglement with the directory and both resigned. Mr. George Coppell, chairman of the board, came out from...

To one who has lived almost alone and unknown for a half hundred years, the change from obscurity to notoriety and fame is swift and novel. Mr. Creede realized that he was attra...