Montrose - Daily Press

What better way to experience an encounter with ghosts than to visit the mining sites of the San Juan Mountains where one can feel and almost see spirits of the past hovering around. The former mining town of Tomboy on Imogene Pass remains one of the best ghost towns to explore, despite being ravaged by time.

Founded in 1880 by Otis C. Thomas, the Tomboy Mine was given Thomas’ nickname. Imogene Pass, which connects Ouray and Telluride, was built that same year. The second highest mountain pass road in the United States, it was named for Imogene Richardson, wife of one of the partners with Thomas Walsh in the famed Camp Bird Mine.

Due to its remote location, the Tomboy didn’t show much activity until after the silver crash in 1893 when the search for gold intensified. When prospectors struck gold at the Tomboy, the region of Savage Basin became a bustling, never-ending beehive of activity. At its peak there were over 900 people living and working there, summer and winter, at an altitude of 11,500 feet. The Rothchilds of London bought the mine in 1897 for $2,000,000.

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In her book “Tomboy Bride”, Harriet Fish Backus describes daily life, trials and tribulations in the Tomboy mining camp. It’s always been one of my favorite books, but after finally making the trip over Imogene with my grandson a few weeks ago, seeing the ghost town and walking through it, life there became very real to me. What an amazing feat for the miners, prospectors, road builders, freighters and families who lived there!

Another amazing thing to me is Fort Peabody, which sits on top of Imogene Pass, right on the shoulder of Telluride Peak at an altitude of 13,365 feet. It was built by the Colorado National Guard Troop A, First Squadron Cavalry  in 1904, right on the Ouray/San Miguel county line in order to prevent members of the Western Federation of Miners from entering San Miguel County as well as to keep men who had been deported as “undesirable citizens” from returning home via Imogene Pass. This was the height of the statewide labor wars and the fort was named after Colorado Governor, J. Peabody.

The sentry post consisted of a small wooden sleeping hut surrounded by five-foot thick stone walls, warmed by a tiny recessed stove. A US flag flew from a 20 foot pole, said to be visible all the way from Telluride, and a stone foxhole-like sniper nest where a sentry sat with a rifle pointed to the road. During the early months of 1904, there was even a Colt rapid-fire machine gun mounted in the sniper nest. The post was manned by two or three soldiers armed with rifles, bayonets and their own sidearms. Martial law was revoked June 15, 1904. Fort Peabody was abandoned as a sentry post in 1908 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, with local Jon Horn of Alpine Archaeological Consultants surveying and mapping the site.

Hugo Selig of Montrose who became District Attorney in January, 1905, wrote in his book, “Early Recollections”, “The strike of the Western Federation of Miners in 1904-05 was an exciting period in the history of Montrose. Montrose was a sort of hub for the mining regions and its jails, county and city, were used as a sort of detention place for prisoners, especially those carried on the train from Telluride, who were arrested as agitators and detained in jail until the regular trains going east and west took them on to the prairies of Kansas or the desert of Utah, where they were dumped out to make their way the best they could.”

This explains the “undesirable citizens” mentioned above.

Around noon, when the Telluride train arrived and Sheriff Taylor and his deputies took charge of the prisoners, many locals gathered in sympathy of the miners and often disturbances broke out. After all, the miners were justly demanding $3 per day for eight hours of work, plus better housing conditions. They were working ten hours a day for $2.50 and living in very uncomfortable quarters.

After several locals were trampled and injured, the Telluride train stopped at the “Y” where the men were transferred to the regular trains without being brought into town.

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