Harvesting Historical Riches

This Is Central City

Originally published in Colorado History NOW, January 2005

By June 1, 1859, several thousand men—and a few women—had assembled in mountain camps along North Clear Creek and its tributaries west of Denver City.  Attracted by John Gregory’s discovery of gold, these prospectors swarmed over every hill, streambed, and ravine, searching for the next great bonanza.  Each legitimate strike attracted a crowd of fortune hunters who staked placer and lode claims before replacing their canvas tents with more permanent log cabins.  Almost overnight, entrepreneurs set up general stores, hotels, and saloons, turning the erstwhile campsites into busy towns.  Some boomtowns had curiously pretentious names, like Mountain City, while others had down-to-earth monikers, such as Russell Gulch.

William N. Byers caught gold fever like all the rest.  And as the founding editor of Denver’s first newspaper, he had a stake in the new mining district’s success.  So, he gathered his reporters and headed for Gregory’s Diggings in search of a story that would ignite the imagination of the world; and sell a few papers in the process.  Arriving on the night of June 1, he set up a tent and built a fire near the confluence of Eureka, Nevada, and Gregory Creeks.  Chatting with district co-founder D. Joseph Casto, Byers looked out upon the clusters of shantytowns stretching as far as he could see and commented on their sometimes-ostentatious names.  According to at least one source, Byers rose from his fireside seat, pointed to his little campsite in the middle of it all, and declared, “This is Central City!”

In the decades following Byers’s proclamation, Central City went through the normal phases of development, stagnation, abandonment, and revival that characterize the history of so many of Colorado’s mining districts.  After the initial excitement of the gold rush wore off, the town blossomed into a real community with ornate Queen Anne homes, sturdy churches, and stately cultural facilities.

The Central City Opera House, designed by prominent Denver architect Robert Roeschlaub, epitomized the town’s cultural coming of age.  The 1878 building features four-foot-thick exterior walls, a 700-seat auditorium, and an elaborately frescoed ceiling.  Like the town itself, the opera house opened with great fanfare, enjoyed early success, fell on hard times, and was revived.  Today, the town’s identity is so entwined with the opera house that people may point to the grand stone edifice and say, just as Byers once did, “This is Central City.”

Charged with preserving just this sort of link between a building and a community, the State Historical Fund has awarded six grants to the nonprofit Central City Opera House Association over the past decade.  As expected, most of the grants supported rehabilitation projects for the opera house itself.  But two of the projects addressed the needs of another building entirely.

In 1999, the association received $152,630 from the SHF to stabilize and partially rehabilitate the 1863 Medical Building.  Currently used by the association for office space, the structure housed Central City’s hospital for nearly a century.  It retains its original façade and avoided conversion into a casino, despite its location in the heart of the city’s gaming district.  In 2003, the association received a $13,800 grant to assess the rest of the building’s condition and to plan for future exterior rehabilitation.  When finished, this project will not only preserve an important building, it will facilitate the association’s mission to serve the 30,000 heritage tourists who attend the opera and visit the city’s National Historic Landmark District annually.

Writing in support of the project, Gilpin County Historical Society president Linda Jones asserted that “the Medical Building is among the most beloved landmarks of early Central City.” Her sentiment reflects the idea that buildings associated with our everyday history are every bit as important as high-style showplaces like the opera house.  Perhaps this unassuming two-story structure is Central City too.

BY BEN FOGELBERG, Editor

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