Buckskin Joe and Leavick are the principal trips here although Como and Mudsill are circled on the map because of photos (over). Buckskin Joe was a famous placer camp discovered in August, 1859, by eight prospectors led by Joseph Higganbottom. Since he was a mountaineer who habitually wore clothes of tanned deer skin, his nickname was “Buckskin Joe.” The diggings were named after him.

The town flourished under this name and Lauret for most of the 1860’s, having in 1861 a population of five or six hundred including twenty or thirty women. At least half the residents made their living from saloons, hotels, gambling dens and variety halls which caused Buckskin Joe to be described in the Rocky Mountain News as South Park’s “liveliest little burg.” By 1874 its population had dropped to fifty, and several years later it was dead. Its creation of the Silverheels legend makes it unique, and people say her cabin still stands in the trees across the creek....

Leavick is unique because it existed sixteen years as a settlement without a name. From 1880 to 1896 there was a group of miners, sometimes as high as two hundred, living in the shadow of Horseshoe Mountain (see photos) close to the Last Chance and Hilltop mines and their mill. The settlement had two saloons, stores, a house of ill repute, and no name.

Finally when the narrow gauge railroad arrived in 1896, the town was named after Felix Leavick, prominent mining man of Leadville and Denver, who owned properties in the Mosquito Range. Leavick had a sporadic life until 1910 with occasional fake bursts after that. Today most of its buildings have been moved to South Park City, a tourist town on the edge of Fairplay.