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CHAPTER 5

CHASING A BULLET

The days when men looked for their fortunes in the cold streams of Colorado’s mountains have faded like an old photograph but never fully died away. In 2011 with the price of gold reaching almost $2,000 an ounce, a staggering amount, the interest in searching for the rare metal reached new heights. Modern prospectors are breathing new life into mining organizations such as the Gold Prospectors of the Rockies and the colorfully named Colorado Chapter of the International Order of Ragged Ass Miners.

The steady stream of fortune hunters visiting a store located two and a half blocks north of Clear Creek in the City of Golden is also a good indication of the metal’s ever-powerful lure.

The moderately sized shop is stuffed full of books, equipment, tools, and other items needed in the quest for gold. It is also the only store in the state that still caters solely to modern-day prospectors. Bill Chapman started Gold-n-Detectors in 1995 after he retired from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. Several years ago, he sold the business to Louise Smyth, but he still shows up most days to answer phones, talk to prospectors, and tell stories as rich as the veins mined 150 years ago. Chapman wore a black vest and enthusiastically sipped from a giant plastic coffee mug—the kind you might find in a convenience store on a road trip through Kansas. The cup looked like it could hold enough caffeine to drop a rhino.

Veteran gold prospector Bill Chapman still offers advice at Gold-n-Detectors in the town of Golden. (Photo by Chancey Bush)

Grandfatherly and with the air of a retired law enforcement officer, Chapman is happy to give advice to would-be prospectors. However, he only gives it once, and if someone doesn’t follow it, he won’t give it again. When he said this, it didn’t sound so much like a threat as it did a promise—a promise he has clearly kept more than once. Over the past twenty years, Chapman has watched interest in gold prospecting grow. It has gotten to the point where he sees hundreds of new prosecutors open the front door to the prospecting shop every year. It is also well-known in the prospecting community that Gold-n-Detectors buys gold. Not the kind found on old watches or in the many necklaces of Mr. T—Chapman’s store buys gold dug from the earth.