Perry Eberhart in his wonderful 1969 book titled, ‘Colorado Ghost Town and Mining Camps’ described the town of Carson thus…

                “The town sat directly on the Continental Divide, with water falling on one side

            of town heading toward the Lake Fork of the Pacific Drainage and water on the other

            side of town flowing into the Lost Trail Creek of the Rio Grande system, headed

            toward the Atlantic Basin. With such a snowbound location, the town didn’t last long.”

Well, in the grand scheme of things as it pertains to Colorado’s past mining industry, Carson did last about 30 years, bucking the trend of “flash-in-the-pan” towns and against the odds of high altitude and weather. Carson lasted from 1881 to 1912.

John Cristopher Carson first discovered some promising float samples in 1876 in what is now called Wager Gulch. Resting on his promising discovery, Carson traveled to Leadville for about a year before returning to Wager Gulch in 1881 whereby, he laid out several claims on both sides of the Continental Divide (now Carson Pass- 12,420’). His most successful claim was the Bonanza King Mine. Wager Gulch by the way, was named after an overseer/manager, Wager, who was partly responsible for putting in a road from Lake City up the unnamed gulch that now bears his name. This didn’t happen until 1887. Travel to Carson before then, was undertaken by mule and by toboggan in the winter.

Since there was no reliable road or thoroughfare to Carson prior to 1887, mining and exploration as one would expect, was a slow undertaking. However, as word eventually got out about Carson’s claims, regardless of access and logistics, it nevertheless attracted the attention of other prospectors. From 1882-1883, no less than 154 claims with staked. While silver was the primary ore, other metals such as: copper, gold, zinc, iron and zinc were also mined. Some of the area’s more successful mines included the St. Jacob, the Bachelor, Kit Carson, Maid of Carson, Iron Mask and Chandler. In fact, the St. Jacob produced more than one million dollars (in 1880’s currency) in ore during its tenure. One year alone saw almost $190,000 in ore extracted from the St. Jacob. The Bachelor Mine was in a very close second in terms of wealth; so much so, that miners started to refer to Carson as Bachelor Cabins for the sheer number of miners working the mine.