Tomboy

The claim that sold to the Rothschilds

Today we're talking about Tomboy, the ghost town on the Telluride side of Imogene Pass. It started with one claim. Otis Thomas staked the Tomboy Mine in Savage Basin in 1886, according to a 2013 Town of Telluride survey, or in 1880, according to other sources. The settlement was first called Savage Basin Camp, and eventually it took the mine's name. Some say the mine was named after Thomas's nickname. I could not find a solid source for that, so it goes in the maybe pile.

The mine started producing gold ore in quantity in 1894. In 1897 Thomas sold it to the Rothschilds of London for a reported $2 million. One history says the Rothschild family set up its mining company in 1896, so the date wobbles a little. The price does not.

Tennis courts at 11,500 feet

The company town had cabins, a boardinghouse, a school, tennis courts, a YMCA and a bowling alley. A daily stagecoach carried passengers and mail. The camp's club ran those free dance buses from Telluride. Scandinavian miners went snowshoeing for fun in the early 1900s. Tennis is hard enough at sea level. Up here, one long rally would leave most of us sitting on the baseline asking for oxygen.

Keeping all of that warm took serious coal. In T. A. Rickard's 1903 account, the camp burned 40 tons a month in summer and 200 tons a month in winter. Blacksmith coal came up by pack train at $8 a ton, and half of that was just the cost of hauling it. That is a school field trip where the bus costs as much as the museum.

The manager who bought the mine next door

Around 1902, the old mine was, in Rickard's words, "evidently exhausted." Manager John Herron got options on the neighboring ground and bought the Argentine mine for the company. Rickard, who edited the Engineering and Mining Journal, put it plainly:

Mr. Herron bought the Argentine for his company and thereby put the Tomboy on its feet again.T. A. Rickard, Across the San Juan Mountains, 1903

The company gave Herron a $10,000 bonus. He is the coach who watches his team lose all season, signs the best player from across the street, and starts winning. In the year Rickard reported, the company treated 85,726 tons of ore at an average yield of $9.98 a ton, against a cost of $5.85 a ton. A new mill went up at nearly 12,000 feet, fed by a 1.75-mile pipeline from Lake Ptarmigan. Rickard came down from Imogene Pass at dusk and saw it:

All the way down one passes mines and mills ; of the latter, the new Tomboy mill in Savage basin loomed conspicuous through the dusk.T. A. Rickard, Across the San Juan Mountains, 1903

Armed pickets in the mine yard

The good years had a hard edge. In September 1903, Telluride mill workers went on strike for an 8-hour day. When the mine's mill tried to reopen with non-union workers, the Western Federation of Miners posted pickets armed with pistols and rifles around the mine yard. Deputies arrested five pickets on November 21 and six more on November 24. That same strike is why a stone guard post called Fort Peabody went up on the ridge above Imogene Pass a few months later.

The bride who named her book after a mine

Harriet Fish Backus came from the San Francisco Bay area to Tomboy as a young bride. She followed her husband George, an assayer (the person who tests ore to see how much metal is in it). Sources disagree on whether she got there in 1906 or 1908. Decades later she wrote a memoir, Tomboy Bride, first published in 1969. The title refers to the mine, and the Telluride Historical Museum has picked it for its book club.

The mine kept going for a while. Zinc was milled here from 1908 to 1914. The mine closed in 1928 (some say 1927), though work in the mine tunnel went on until 1978. Telluride Mines leased the old workings in 1938, and when Idarado bought out Telluride Mines in the 1950s, the old claims were folded into Idarado's holdings. Estimates of the camp's peak population run from about 900 to some 2,000, so grade that number on a curve.

Visiting Tomboy today

Tomboy sits on the Imogene Pass road, which out of Telluride is called the Tomboy Road. It is about 2 miles east of Telluride and roughly 3,000 feet above it. The road began as a mule trail and was widened for ore wagons, partly by blasting the cliff face, and you can still see old black-powder drill marks in the rock. Halfway up is a rock tunnel locals call the "social tunnel."

At the top you will find some standing buildings, a lot of collapsed ones, and mill remains. The townsite is private land, and some of the old claims still belong to Idarado, which does cleanup work there. Look all you want from the road. A camp that kept tennis courts and a dance club going at 11,500 feet earned that much respect.