  Map Capitol City is unique for two reasons—the odd spelling of its name and the sad ruin of one man’s dream to have his town the capital of Colorado. He was George S. Lee, a mill and smelter operator. Frank Fossett wrote in 1880 in his Colorado that Capitol City was located at the junction of the two forks of Henson Creek, nine miles west of Lake City, in a park most of which was embraced by the Lee townsite patent. The park was surrounded by rugged, towering San Juan peaks, rich in silver, lead and iron ores. Two smelters were in operation at each end of town. Fossett added: “Right here ... where one would least expect to find it is the most elegantly furnished house in Southern Colorado. The handsome brick residence of George S. Lee and lady, distinguished for their hospitality, is a landmark of this locality.” George Lee suffered from the same disease that characterized so many of the pioneers—a compound of boundless optimism and grandiose ambition. He pictured his remote town as the capital of the state and his home as the governor’s mansion. Perhaps it was an idea spoken in jest; perhaps it was his sincere dream. Folklore leans to the latter version—but he never campaigned for his idea nor introduced any bill into the legislature. The name of his town is equally confusing. After Lake City was started in 1874 and platted in 1875, prospectors streamed up Henson Creek, and a town was built at its forks. The newspapers of 1876 and ’77 referred to the town as Capital City, and the Colorado Business Directory for the late 1870’s used interchangeably the two spellings of Capital and Capitol. Yet in 1961 the Postmaster General’s office in Why is this petition eleven years late? Poor Capitol City—the whole situation seems as confused as George Lee’s dream! And who was it did not know that “capitol” is a building, not a town? According to the historians, Jean and Don Griswold, Capitol City had two prosperous periods when mining and smelting were booming—a silver boom in the mid-1880’s and a gold boom around the turn of the century. Two factors prevented Capitol City from attaining any major growth. Early litigation discouraged and slowed up the first business activity of the late 1870’s and early 1880’s, and later the gold deposits of the 1900’s were not very large. The population of around three hundred in 1880 became discouraged and drifted away. In 1885 there were but one hundred people residing there, and in 1900 there was the same number again. In 1960 there were not many remaining signs of human habitation in Capitol City. Above the junction of North Henson Creek with Henson Creek there were some log cabins in what used to be the upper end of town. On the townsite proper there was only the derelict mansion which was being destroyed from every angle. Henson Creek had altered its course and was eating away the embankment on which the Lee house stood while at the same time human hands were carting away souvenirs. At the lower end of town only the foundations could be seen of the smelter on which George Lee had based his great dream..... Continuing up Henson Creek in the direction that the stagecoach used to travel from Lake City to Ouray, the visitor will come to the ruins of Rose’s Cabin. Henson Creek was named for Henry Henson who prospected the valley in 1871 prior to the Brunot Treaty of 1873 which took the land away from the Utes. Rose’s Cabin was named for Corydon Rose who built it in 1874. It was a hotel and bar with outlying stables and shed and served as a welcome stage stop on the hard ride over Engineer Pass, the most spectacular pass in Colorado, the road now altered to another ridge to make a popular jeep ride.... Returning to Lake City the visitor will pass the Ute and Ulay mine. At one time this was such a large operation that a town grew up around its workings. The mill is disused and defunct, and the dam which supplied its water power is broken. But the superintendent’s house is occupied by a caretaker who guards the property summer and winter. From “Colorado” by Frank Fossett, 1880; D.P.L.
D.K.P., 1960 The Ute-Ulay is now part of the holdings of the powerful Newmont Mining Company which also owns the Idarado Mining Company of Ouray and Telluride and the Resurrection Mining Company of Leadville. There is always the off chance that the price of metals will rise, and, should this be the case, many a Colorado mining property would throw off its ghostly pall and throb again with activity.... From Lake City a number of ghost towns can be seen but the most exciting one requires a jeep. This is Carson which during the years of its history was also known as Carson Camp and Carson City. Since Carson City’s population during the score or so years of its existence from the 1880’s to the early 1900’s was at no time more than fifty and generally around twenty, one is inevitably reminded by Bayard Taylor’s words: “I only wish that the vulgar snobbish custom of attaching ‘city’ to every place of more than three houses, could be stopped. From Illinois to California it has become a general nuisance, telling only of swagger and want of taste and not of growth.” Bayard Taylor wrote these words in 1866. The “city” that called forth his ire was Gate City, or Golden Gate City, a string of four or five cabins, at the mouth of Tucker Creek on the stagecoach road to Central City. He included these words the next year in his book Colorado: A Summer Trip, and I first quoted the passage in my 1943 Master’s Thesis about Central City for the University of Denver. In 1960 when I was re-visiting many ghost towns, I thought of Bayard Taylor’s wish frequently and smiled because Taylor never attained his wish. The vogue of adding “city” to the name of any little hamlet continued unabated through the whole nineteenth century and even into the twentieth. Carson, or Carson City, deserved its appendage more than some at the time of its naming and particularly deserves it today. Of all the towns in our 1960 selection it gave the greatest feeling of being a ghost town. Its buildings have been preserved by the cold and by the fortunate fact that it is in an unusual spot which is not subject to snowslides. This aspect is very rare in the San Juans where thundering snow is man’s greatest enemy. J. E. Carson discovered a mine in 1881 on top of the continental divide some sixteen miles southwest of Lake City on the headwaters of Wager Creek. He staked claims on both sides of the divide, the claims on the south side being at the head of Lost Trail Creek which flows south into the Rio Grande River. With the arrival of other prospectors the Carson Mining district was organized, and in 1882 a camp started. The Griswolds in their Colorado’s Century of Cities have remarked that Carson was thrown like a cavalry saddle across the continental divide The construction of both segments of Carson is very good—all the buildings are nicely shingled and show care in their carpentry. But the Atlantic slope, or higher, section of Carson is in much greater disrepair and will not survive very long. In the ’80’s Carson mined silver, and after the Panic of 1893 the camp mined gold. But the problem of transportation to a town which lay at various levels from 11,500 feet to 12,360 was almost insoluble. Its ore was gold, ruby silver and copper, running sometimes as high as $2,000 a ton. Despite the richness of the ore the deposits ran in pockets, occasionally as high as $40,000 in a pocket of only forty feet depth. But when a pocket was stoped out, then the ore was completely gone. Among the best mines were the Maid of Carson, Big Injun, Saint Jacob, Dunderberg and Lost Trail. And today Carson, although it is unique in its preservation, is a place where riches are indeed a lost trail! D.K.P., 1960
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