History: Monmouth Consolidated Gold Mining Company, Gilpin County, Colorado (1876)

Image of Quartz Hill and Nevadaville, Colorado in the Denver Public Library Digital Collections. The Monmouth and Fagan-Kansas mines appear towards the right side of the image.

The 29 Apr 1876 edition of The Matawan Journal has this interesting piece to add to my recent post about the old Fagan homestead.

"The Monmouth Democrat this week has an editorial notice of the Monmouth Gold Mine, in Colorado, owned by a stock company. Mr James Fagan, to whom reference is made in the article, is a son of George H (not James) Fagan of our town. One-half the stock is owned by citizens of Matawan and vicinity, and the other half by Mr James Fagan, by whom the mine is operated. But this is only one of Mr Fagan's enterprises. He has several other shafts, more valuable even than the Monmouth alone, and has also formed a partnership with a gentleman named Metcalf, and under the firm of Metcalf & Fagan these gentlemen have established a Bureau of Mines and Mining in the new building corner of Broadway and Fulton St, NY."

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The Monmouth-Kansas Mine was located in Nevada Gulch, Nevadaville, Gilpin County, Colorado in 1880. The area had been so rich in gold since 1859 that the county was known in Colorado as "Old Reliable." The Monmouth Company hit a dry spell in 1878-79 and the Kansas Consolidated Mining Company purchased their Monmouth and Fagan properties in the spring of 1880 , according to Colorado, Its Gold and Silver Mines: Farms and Stock Ranges and Health and Pleasure Resorts (1880), by Frank Fosset.

See a map of the Fagan and Monmouth-Kansas Mine, in Colorado (1875-1885), at the Portal to Texas History.

The Burroughs (Quartz Hill), Camp Grove (Quartz Hill), Fagan-Gunnell (Gunnell Hill), Monmouth-Kansas (Quartz Hill) and Monmouth-Kansas Mill (Nevada Gulch) mines were all operated by the Monmouth Consolidated Gold Mining Company, New York, according to the Colorado Directory of Mines (1879).

The Monmouth operations are mentioned in The Engineering and Mining Journal, no 25, 23 Mar 1878.

There are numerous references to Fagan and Medcalfe (sic) and their gold mines in Colorado: A Historical, Descriptive and Statistical Work on the Rocky Mountain Gold and Silver Mining Region (1878), by Frank Fosset.