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Several friends, along with one daughter, were competing
in a pack-burro race along nine miles of back roads from
Victor to Cripple Creek on Sunday morning, so that seemed
like a good excuse to visit the world's greatest gold
camp
for the first time since about 1980.
Back then, Cripple Creek was a ramshackle collection of dilapidated buildings. In 1990, Colorado voters amended the state constitution to allow casino-style gambling in three old mining towns -- Black Hawk, Central City and Cripple Creek.
This was supposed to resurrect some of that boom-town aura from the 19th century when gambling halls (along with opium dens and bordellos) had lined the streets of most hard-rock mining camps. It would also finance some historic preservation.
The historic parking lots that now line Warren Avenue were pretty impressive. On the main drag, Bennett Avenue, where we saw a new trend in historic architecture.
In the days of yore, buildings often boasted false fronts -- an impressive two-story facade faced the street, although the building behind it was only one story high. In Cripple Creek, they had two-story facades, with a recessed third story looming in the rear.
Along the street, people stood in front of casinos to advise us and other pedestrians that big pay-offs were more than overdue at their slot machines.
Eventually, we went inside a casino. I had expected some glamour and excitement, along with historic re-creation that might be educational.
For instance, we used to write adult westerns, wherein our characters might played faro, a card game that was popular in the Old West. No matter how many times I read Hoyle's rules, I could never figure out how faro worked, so I have long wanted to watch a game and thereby comprehend the mysteries of coppering and the soda card.
But we found no educational faro layouts in Cripple Creek's historic casinos, and when I asked, nobody knew what I was talking about. I didn't even see any human card games or roulette wheels -- just rows and rows of slot machines and video-poker screens, which must have been quite the attraction a century ago, when flashy computer displays were hardly a part of everyday life.
As for glamor and excitement, think of a really bad 1978 country-and-western bar, tasteless in everything from its bland music to its tacky decor. Then add some slack-jawed people staring at big vacuum tubes. It ranks right up there with watching nails rust.
Granted, all the casinos might not be like this, but after sticking my head into three, I'd seen enough. I was also looking for one of those $5.95 prime rib dinners that have appeared on billboards along U.S. 24, but such meals were hard to find once I was in town.
The Cripple Creek of late 1891 boasted 26 gambling houses, and it has a comparable number today, so that much is historically accurate. That Cripple Creek also had 24 grocery stores, while today it takes some work to find even one, and there were six bookstores in 1891, half a dozen more than I saw in 1999.
We also visited Victor, which is still a ramshackle mountain town unimproved by casinos. Its Lowell Thomas Museum reflects the town's heritage -- Victor was the workers' town and a union stronghold during the labor wars at the turn of the century.
The museum dares to mention the gross violations of the U.S. Constitution by the state militia -- shutting down newspapers, confiscating workers' guns, imprisoning people who had not been to court -- when it was in the pay of the mine owners. It was the only place where I've ever seen any memorabilia from the Western Federation of Miners, a motley collection of anarchists who believed in subversive things like the eight-hour day.
Many exhibits came from the Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mining Co., an immense open-pit gold-mining operation a couple of miles out of town, ripping out the gulch where the fabled Cresson Mine once stood. From what I could gather, professional archeologists go through an area before the big shovels and trucks arrive, and many old headframes and sorting houses still dotted the company property.
It did seem odd that a mining company, presumably dedicated to moving rock at a profit and not much else, appeared to be more serious about historic preservation than did the casinos, which were legalized by Colorado voters after hearing that this would provide the funds for historic preservation.
As for the pack-burro race (the only sport indigenous to Colorado, and thus seldom covered by the major media of this state), it was won by Hal Walter of Westcliffe in just over an hour, with Barb Dolan of Buena Vista taking the women's category -- she's such a strong runner that she sometimes finishes ahead of all the men.
Every racer finished, and all involved seemed to be having a good time, despite being outside those exciting casinos.
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