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CHAPTER 3

DIVING FOR GOLD

Clear Creek sat silent and ice-packed just south of Interstate 70 on a cold January morning. The popular stream sees thousands of rafters, anglers, and tourists during the summer, but it was now motionless and clogged with a frosty blue and white winter strata. It’s an ice that chokes and strangles the river into stillness at least four months out of the year in the mountains of Colorado.

Even farther from the interstate sits a frontage road that winds along the canyon. Rusted and faded buildings from the area’s long-dead mining industry follow the road and litter the river’s banks on both sides. Beneath a steep, yellow mine-tailings dump south of Clear Creek squats an ancient shack overlooking the river.

It’s impossible to know how old the building is—suffice to say that it’s received attention at least once a decade. After the local stone and mortar walls went up, someone installed rough metal sheeting to its front and on the roof. And sometime in the last several years Ken Reid added a wooden sign that reads “Man Cave” above the shack’s door. The door is held shut with a massive rusty chain.

Reid is a big man, fifty-three-years-old with a giant black beard, perfect teeth, and a cowboy hat faded to where its color is potentially brownish. He talks in a voice so low, listeners often have to strain to reach its depths. He’s quick to share an earthshaking laugh, a bit of advice, or a hard-won lesson—and his blue eyes sparkle perpetually with gold fever. Ken Reid looks like he stepped out of a hundred-year-old sepia-toned photograph of the Old West.

“The Cave,” as he calls it, looks out over a large portion of his mineral claim along Clear Creek. He said it’s a spot that has earned him quite a bit of money over the years. A port-a-potty leans against one wall and behind it sits a generator, which he tugged on several times. It choked and rumbled to life, sending electricity to a handful of random lights dangling from the ceiling that flickered on and illuminated the building’s dark interior. Inside there’s a cast-iron stove in one corner that he periodically stoked with wood. The heat was just enough to scare off the worst of the cold, which creeps up from the river and slides down the mountain to meet at the metal shack. Outside it was twenty degrees, but inside it was almost warm, smelling of burning wood, generator exhaust, and cigarette smoke.

Around the room lay broken computer parts for rare mineral salvage, mining equipment, an assortment of chemicals, a beaten, brown leather chair—and a plastic tub resting on two upended buckets. Ken Reid is a full-time, professional gold prospector and one of the last to still earn a living from working the cold water and dirt of Clear Creek.

During the warmer months, he climbs into a well-worn wet suit and dives beneath the river’s famously strong currents—currents that, during the summer, often take several lives a year in rafting and other river-related accidents.

The stream collects water from melting snow as far back as the Continental Divide. Most of the year it is bitter cold and strong enough in places to pull a full-grown man off his feet.

It’s under that water where Reid sucks dirt and stone into the hose of his underwater dredge. Like a powerful vacuum cleaner, it pulls in rocks and other material, sorts through it, and returns the unwanted portion back to the stream. It is in the stuff left behind in his dredge that Reid finds the gold.

When winter comes blowing down Clear Creek, Reid packs up his equipment and brings his operation back indoors to the Cave. There he pans through some of the finer dirt he collected over the summer. The material rested in large tubs on the floor, located throughout the room. In that dirt was hidden the finest gold dust.

Reid said he tries to get into the water to go diving with his dredge as soon as he can but doesn’t dive in water during the winter—at least not anymore. Years ago he discovered a way to inject hot water into his wet suit so that he could go into the frozen waters, under the ice, and continue to operate his equipment. And for the first two days he said it was well worth his time.

“The third day I got out of the water, after about three and a half hours underwater, and a cold front had blown in,” Reid said, feeding more wood to the fire. “It was eighteen degrees outside and I had a wet suit flash freeze to my body. I was in trouble.”

Ken Reid is full of stories like this. Stories that elicit his conspiratorial laughter, as if you were there with him that unfortunate day, looking in horror at the amalgamation of flesh and wet suit. It turns out in this case, thankfully, he wasn’t far from a building with a fireplace and was able to free himself from the frozen suit. It was a mistake he would never make again.

So during the winter he now spends his time panning through the dirt and rock he collected over the warmer months. He poured water into the tub resting on the two buckets and filled a faded green gold pan with dirt and started panning.

No time wasted, Ken Reid is always prospecting. No fleck of the yellow metal is too small to evade his scrutinizing gaze. And he finds it regularly. He says he bought the Cave with the gold he found out in front of it. Looking for gold is what he’s done most of his life. And one day he plans to find the mother lode.

Squirrely

Reid said he has prospected for gold for forty-five years but admits he was less than successful during his early attempts. He grew up in Denver and was seven years old when his parents gave him a gold pan to keep him busy while they went fishing in the Rockies.

“I was always out fishing with the family, being out by the river and thinking, Hey, gold was found in this river and we’re fishing next to it. Why can’t we find gold today?” But he was searching for treasure long before then. Arrowheads, antique bottles—as a young kid he was always looking for something. Then he found gold and everything changed.

As a teenager he had a dream that he could go up into the mountains and make money simply by looking for gold. Reid bought an old van and drove up on the weekends and continued searching for the elusive metal.

“A little bit here and there, most of it was fool’s gold, a lot of mica,” Reid said. “Everything that sparkled was gold. The learning curve was very hard, until you can find somebody to take you under their wing and really show you what you’re doing.”

Reid went to prospecting stores located near a mall, long ago demolished, called Cinderella City. By talking to a few of the old-timers hanging out in the shops, he said he honed his obsession and gained the skills necessary to make it a reality. He was eighteen years old before he found anything substantial. When it happened he was near the City of Golden just west of Denver. That day he said he found enough gold to get him hooked for life. After that it was an evolution. His thought process turned from simply panning for gold to dredging for it.

To dredge for gold is to use a machine that removes sand and gravel from a streambed. The non-gold material is then sorted out and washed away. Reid now relies on suction dredging, which requires him to be in a wet suit at the bottom of a stream using a hose to pull in the gold-rich rock and dirt.

“How can I move more gravel material? It’s a game of volume,” Reid said. “I’m beyond the hobby stage. It is more of an obsession and, yes, I do make money at it.” He said his passion for finding gold has taken him all over the United States. During his best year he found $62,000 in gold in ninety days.

“I’ve paid for two pieces of property in gold dust and made my land payments in gold that I mined off the property,” he said with a degree of professional pride. Finding gold is hard; finding enough gold to make a living is near impossible. Reid is by all accounts very good at looking for gold and is obviously, and more importantly, good at retrieving it.

One year he came across a stretch of Clear Creek, not far from where George Jackson originally discovered gold on that snowy bank so many years before, which helped to bring about the gold rush. It’s the best place for finding gold that he’s ever seen, and he’s been working that area for the past twenty-five years.

Despite Clear Creek County’s history of a gold rush and eighty years of organized mining, Reid believes only 3 to 10 percent of the gold has ever been removed.

“We’re sitting on billions of dollars’ worth of value here.”

But it is hard to imagine where that gold would be, or even if it were possible to remove. Today the majority of the county’s nine thousand residents are nestled along a razor-thin valley bookended by the mountains and Interstate 70. Space and tourism are the most important commodities in the county. There’s literally no room for new mining operations or, failing that, the essential governmental willingness—especially when tourism dollars glitter ever more brightly than gold.

Those interested in mining or prospecting have to do so along the footsteps and in the ruins of those who have come before. Clear Creek travels sixty-six miles from the Continental Divide to the Great Plains, where it eventually merges with the South Platte. It’s along this stretch Reid discovered gold. Like any self-respecting prospector he got a claim, which gives him the right to legally remove the gold from the area, while forbidding all others. Because finding successful pockets of gold has historically been difficult, especially now after nearly one hundred years of mining, Reid said he occasionally finds unfriendly competition.

Every year someone will come down to his portion of the stream and tell him they heard gold was found there. His response is to the point: “‘Yeah, but I own the property, I’m the one who found the gold—and I don’t want you on that property.’ And I have to ask them to leave, sometimes on a daily basis.”

He said that over the years people have become “squirrely” about the issue or even hostile. It has gotten bad enough that he sometimes brings his handgun with him.

“I’ve had some [prospecting] neighbors that were next door that were less than cordial,” he said, “and I wouldn’t go to my property without a gun.”

Gold Fever

Ken Reid said he knows people whom he can trust implicitly with his money. People who will starve before thinking of spending even one dollar of his cash and breaking his trust.

“But they’ll fistfight their brother over a flake of gold—and I’ve seen them do it,” Reid said. “Gold fever is a real thing. People see gold and it just boggles their mind to the point where they think that the gold is more valuable than the cash. I’m not going to fistfight you over a flake of gold—but I’m not going to let you take a flake of gold from me either.”

Between tools and land, Reid has put $100,000 over the years into looking for the yellow metal. “Run away, do not catch gold fever; it will make you obsessed,” he said. “I have spent every bit of gold that I have ever found on acquiring more equipment to go after more gold.”

About twenty-five miles away from Ken Reid’s Man Cave in the town of Golden, Colorado, gold-panning veteran Bill Chapman leaned against the counter of the prospecting supply business Gold-n-Detectors. Chapman said, with all seriousness, that gold fever is a real condition. One that he’s seen in himself and others.

“I have been in the ‘hobby’ over forty years—and I still have dreams about finding gold and about prospecting,” Chapman said. For him, gold fever can be summed up in one word: “lust.”

“It is the thrill of the hunt and the thrill of the find,” Chapman explained. “And if I get a little gold—that is all well and good.” Chapman said going out and finding the precious metal, for almost no money, is a challenge that many are happy to try their hand at.

“But then it gets in your system, it gets in your blood,” Chapman said. “And gold fever is a real thing, it is absolutely genuine, and we have seen it amongst our customers.” Chapman noted it hits people the worst who go out and are successful at looking for gold the first time.

“There’s a lure behind gold that attracts people to it.”

Gold Dust Dreams

Back at the Man Cave, Ken Reid was sitting on an overturned white bucket and panning through gravel and dirt with that old green-colored gold pan. Green is used because it’s thought that the color of gold stands out more starkly against it.

“Every time I find a piece of gold, I’m the first human being to ever put that into the world market,” Reid said. “It’s just the allure of how beautiful it is, every piece of gold is different.” With a plastic snuffer bottle Reid sucked up the small gold flecks he regularly discovers.

He rarely scores an actual gold nugget and most of the gold he collects is in gold dust. He said oftentimes a nugget, however, is worth more than its weight in gold because of its uniqueness.

“When you find a nice specimen, every one is unique, every one is different, and no two nuggets are the same,” Reid said.

It’s not unusual to find Reid walking the streets of Idaho Springs during the summer and digging into his deep pockets to pull out a nugget to show off in the bright mountain light.

“Everybody is looking for that big piece of gold; you’re more likely to find a five-carat diamond in the Earth’s crust than you are a one-ounce gold nugget.” With a dreamy look he recalled the story of how he once found a nugget that was shaped exactly like a horse’s head. For years it replaced the knight on his chess table.

“I never did find the entire chess set.”

Reid said he doesn’t have any difficulty finding people willing to take gold instead of cash.

“I’ve paid for land with gold, I’ve paid for mining equipment in gold, I’ve paid for cars in gold,” Reid said. Another time he found a piece of wire gold shaped like a spinal column. He traded it to a chiropractor for work on his ailing back. Being hunched over a stream with a gold pan is physically difficult work. Reid said he is able find relief from his aches and pains diving under the stream for hours at a time to look for gold.

“It is still a lot of work digging underwater but I have the buoyancy of the water and it really helps the joints, the back, when I’m laid out in the stream,” Reid explained.

“Rock Wrestling”

Under the fast-moving brown water Reid does what he calls “rock wrestling,” or digging up and moving boulders to get his dredge’s hose under them. He’s dove as deep as thirty feet, trying to get at where the gold might be hiding. “I am diving in hypothermic swift water at altitude; these are all dangerous things.”

It’s not always gold that Reid finds under the water. Over the years he’s discovered railroad spikes, railroad tracks, old shovels, broken glass, and other relics from the area’s mining history.

“The top five to six feet of the river is man-made trash,” Reid said. “Clear Creek is literally filled in over the last 150 years of mining up here with man-made debris. Once you get below that six-foot level you’re down to a level where man hasn’t been.”

History states that some hard rock mines were built under Clear Creek, but Reid said he isn’t worried about coming across an old shaft and being sucked into one. He said any shaft that has already come that close to the river is likely already filled in with water, and added he occasionally comes across placer mine shafts in the river that once were located beside it. One in particular he knew was in his area and spent three years looking for with an old photograph.

“I have a 1902 USGS report showing that shaft is sixty feet deep. I want to dive that shaft,” Reid said. Because he is considered a prospector, Reid is allowed to remove seventy tons of material a year without a mining permit from the state of Colorado.

“I don’t count how many tons of gravel that I remove—but the year I find seventy tons of gold I’ll get a permit,” he said, shaking the Man Cave with his laughter.

Reid has supplemented his income with gold prospecting but this year he plans to make his entire living looking for and finding gold. Formerly the operator of an antique and pawn store in Idaho Springs, his business wasn’t making a profit and he had to close its doors.

“I’m going to dedicate this entire year, this is what I’m going to do,” Reid said. “I’m working a part-time job to get through the winter, but come springtime I’m going digging.”

Reid said that if he ever does come across a lot of gold, he would spend the money traveling the world and looking for more gold until he was broke again.

“This is no get-rich-quick scheme.” But for now, while the winter winds still tugged at the outside of his Man Cave and the drifts of snow collected outside the building, he’ll spend his time panning through buckets of dirt for more gold dust. Gold dust is what Reid finds the most of, adding that 90 percent of his gold weight is found in dust and little flakes.

“You’ll find pounds of that gold dust before you find a nugget,” he said. “But nuggets take a premium. You can get four or five times on a very characteristic piece of nugget gold.”

Removing and collecting such small pieces of gold requires tremendous patience. It’s a difficult pastime and he said people often don’t, or can’t, keep at it.

“A lot of people don’t last at it because it is so tedious,” he explained. “They want to run out and get all the big pieces of gold and think they’re going to go off skipping to the bank and get rich, rich, rich.”

He admitted some have stumbled across a big piece of gold or two—but often it’s the small stuff that provides a decent and regular payout. “Why would you want to throw away gold when it is here for the taking?”

He uses a dredge for most of his major gold operation during the summer, but he’s not ashamed to go back to using a gold pan.

“It all starts with a pan. I don’t care where you’re prospecting at—you’re not going to go in with a million-dollar track hoe and dig up gravel and say, ‘OK, there’s the gold,’” Reid said. “For anybody who’s prospecting, 90 percent of the people are using the pan.”

The idea is a beginner starts off with an affordable gold pan costing maybe $12 and then moves up in equipment as they find more gold.

“I started with a pan when I was a little kid and every year I just progressively added on,” Reid said, pointing to the various corners of the Man Cave. “Here we’ve got a screen over here, we’ve got a power crusher there, we’ve got a kiln there, we’ve got a magnetic separator there, we’ve got a vented hood for our assessor lab stuffed over here. There’s a shaker table and a power screener outside.”

But watching Reid use a gold pan is like watching someone who has mastered their craft. His technique is fast and efficient. The way he used the water to pull the rock and dirt from the pan is second nature. Soon all that was left behind was the fine, heavier magnetic material and gold.

It didn’t take him long before ultrabright flecks of gold started appearing amid the fine black sand consisting largely of iron and magnetite. He took a large magnet and moved it around inside the pan, pulling the black material out. Before long only a small line of yellow dust remained. He sucked up the gold dust and started again with another scoop of gravel. He submerged the pan in water, shook it, and let a wavelike motion of water remove the dirt.

He reached in with his massive fingers and removed the stones, tossing them aside. “Just like any trade, anybody can go out and buy a saw and a hammer and call themselves a carpenter, but it takes years and years of work to become a master carpenter.”

Reid said it is the same with gold panning. Again he reduced the rock and dirt to black sand in which several small flakes of yellow gold peered up at him through the dim and smoky light. “I find gold every day I look for it.”

Despite years of gold mining and prospecting, he stated all the gold hasn’t been removed from Clear Creek. Rather, erosion helps to replenish it every year.

“The gravel bed is always moving. If you actually look at the gravel bed, it is a flowing mass; it’s moving at glacial speed,” Reid said.

Helping Hand

Reid said he’s happy to share the stream with the summer recreational users. He added many times the rafting guides will see where he is in the water and try to steer around him. And in return he’s already in the water if someone falls out of a boat. He’s been in the right place and at the right time to help drag people from the stream.

“I’ve had people puking water on me if they’ve been in the water long enough. I’ve had people airlifted out of this valley that I’ve helped extricate out of this water. One day I took four people out.”

Rafters are not the only people using the county’s waterways. Reid said once the economy starts to suffer, people begin to look at the hills again and dream of gold.

“You get the rich investor who thinks he’s going to invest in a mine and he’s going to become richer. Then you’ve got the guy who can’t barely afford a sluice box, pan, or gas to get here. He comes out and he’s starving to death on the side of the river. If he stays off the goddamn bar stool and works hard—he can make good wages over the summer.”

People down on their luck have gone to Colorado’s streams looking for a second chance before Colorado was admitted to the Union in 1876 as the thirty-eighth state. During the 1930s a public works program was created in Denver to pair seasoned miners and prospectors with people who lost their jobs to the Great Depression. The program was profitable and gold panners claimed $1 per day from the South Platte River, which Clear Creek feeds into. It’s thought that the stream’s placer gold deposits weren’t cleaned out during the gold rush but by people trying to make a living during those lean years.

According to Reid, every year people come to him and ask where to go to find gold, and what it is they need to do to get it.

“There’s very few people who stick with it. This is the real gold fever—when you sit here and spend years chasing it.”

When Reid is working beneath the river, a six-hour day often feels double that.

“If you don’t like digging ditches at the surface, you’re not going to like it underwater much better,” he said. “If you look at your real successful treasure hunters, if you look at your real successful miners—they’re the people with perseverance.”

The Life Style

Over the years of rock wrestling and diving under the freezing waters Reid said he has “good days” and “really good days.”

“I’ve had days where it’s just been nothing but a fight all day long. Plug ups and rock jams, cave-ins, but you gotta do it,” Reid said. “But just like any job you have your good days and your bad days too. Good days in this job you can get rich fast.”

Admitting to spending every ounce of gold on trying to find more gold, Reid isn’t wealthy yet. He’s also not getting any younger and the work doesn’t get any easier, but he said he continues to descend into the water every year and put his safety at risk because it still gives him an adrenaline rush.

“You always want more and that’s the fever of it. Kind of like the successful businessman who wants to keep making more money. You just never know. Come springtime when I fire up that dredge and get back in that water and punch another hole—it could be the year that I don’t have to do it no more.”

He likes working outside and looking for gold, and not being stuck at a desk and working a nine-to-five job. Reid said he has lived a lifestyle his father and uncles once dreamed of around their summer vacation campfires.

“I’ve done well. I probably haven’t been the most productive person in American society, but I’ve chased my dreams.”

And he’s not alone.