A flash in the pan heralds the rush of prospectors.
Hot on their heels are strumpets and saloon keepers.
They’re followed close by cutthroats and gun throwers, gamblers and shop owners.
Gold in the high San Juan Mountains calls together a cast of characters to Animas Forks, the biggest town west of the Mississippi (at 11,000 feet).
In the 1870s, with the signing of the treaty with the Utes, the gold and silver fields of Colorado Territory open to prospectors looking to strike their fortunes.
With them come all the derelicts of society that every boomtown mining camp will attract: any person willing to sink low enough to fleece the prospectors of what little wealth they can dig out of the rock or pan out of the river.
There’s Judge Spivey, the miner’s court judge who is the law of the camp; Colonel Wall Brandt, the saloon owner whose only concern is whether he is bilking the prospectors of their earnings; Albert Hutchinson, the newspaperman who has no newspaper, and Bell Rogers, the tomboy gunslinger who’s as tough as any man in the camp and willing outdrink them all.
If you love Westerns with six-guns and whiskey shots, whores and outlaw ruffians, where you can’t always tell the good guys by the color of their hats, then come along with us to Animas Forks, and plan to stay a spell.
But pack your shooting irons, and get your cabin squared before the first snow, because the only thing as cold as the winters is the nerve of the back-shooters.
Meet Your Cast of Characters
Judge B. F. Spivey
Judge Spivey is the rare prospector who has made a fortune panning and digging for gold.
When he comes to the headwaters of the Animas River in the high San Juan Mountains, Judge Spivey has found the place where he wants to live out his days. A prospector by choice, he sits as the judge of the miners’ court by necessity. But The Three Forks of the Animas is his camp. He owns it, and he runs it. And he’s not afraid to sentence a man to hang to keep it.
Kurt Fulton
An enforcer for mine owners, Fulton exists to bust high graders and strikers and anyone else who threatens the interests of the owners.
His cheerful smile disguises a lethal efficiency in getting his job done. Brutality, intimidation, and murder are the tools of his trade, and the prospectors in the camp all know his reputation.
Adam Barton
A carpenter who carries two guns, Adam Barton is a veteran of the Civil War.
He fought with John Wilder’s Lightning Brigade, a mounted infantry of Indiana volunteers. Barton wanders because the memories do not leave him alone. But he’s looking to settle down and make something of himself so he can marry the woman he loves. Is a frontier boomtown in the high San Juan Mountains the kind of place to start a family?
Louise Callahan
A sheriff’s niece, Lou Callahan comes to Animas Forks to join the man she loves.
But she’s not prepared for a camp where the population is almost entirely men, and the man she loves has returned to a profession that he swore he would give up.
Is she too good for Animas Forks, or is she exactly the kind of woman who can tame a gold rush boomtown?
Jimmy Langdale
An Arkansas boy wandering in search of a place to light, Jimmy Langdale partners up with Adam Barton when they meet on the trail to Animas Forks.
A born entertainer who’s never met a stranger. Jimmy is as much at home in rowdy saloons as he is swinging a hammer in Barton’s carpentry shop. And when he needs to join up with the posse, he can wield a rifle.
Colonel Wallace Brandt
Wall Brandt cares about one thing: Bilking prospectors of their gold.
He doesn’t care whether it’s at the whiskey bar, the faro table, or with the whores in the back room. So long as the gold dust is spent in the Colonel’s Respite & Variety Theater, Wall Brandt’s a happy man.
You’ve heard of loose morals? Well, Wall Brandt has no morals.
Cutter Vance
A backstabber and a cutthroat, Cutter Vance is Wall Brandt’s man.
If he has to beat a whore to keep her in line or shoot a man who accuses Wall Brandt of running a cheating saloon, Cutter Vance is the heavy that every crook wants on his side.
And he gladly goes wherever Wall Brandt sends him, even if he has to ride with the posse.
Champ Driscoll
A mysterious man with a vendetta, Champ Driscoll rides into the Animas Forks camp at the beginning of spring in 1874.
His arrival heralds a new day for the camp, but a new day doesn’t necessarily mean a good day.
Bell Rogers
Part cardsharp, part sharpshooter, part drunk, and all tomboy, Bell Rogers is a hard-drinking, wise-cracking woman on the run.
She’s fleeing trouble from the past and looking to hide out in Animas Forks. But in a mining camp not always friendly to women, she finds herself in the uncomfortable role of champion to the downtrodden.
Albert Hutchinson
Following in his father’s footsteps, Albert Hutchinson is a newspaperman.
He comes to Animas Forks to start a camp newspaper, but when his printing press doesn’t arrive, he becomes the butt of an ongoing joke.
Nevertheless, Hutch wants to keep the camp informed, so he leaves handwritten announcements tacked to a board outside his office while he waits for his press to show up.
Take a walk along the thoroughfare
As we come into camp up the Silverton Road …
Here on your left is the livery stable run by Wella Bidgood, and the Silverton to Lake City stagecoach stops here on its twice-weekly run.
The livery stable sits just behind the imposing edifice of The Colonel’s Respite & Variety Theater. Up on the balcony, Wall Brandt and Cutter Vance watch the thoroughfare, calling to prospectors to come in and try their luck at the faro tables or in the back rooms with one of the girls.
There on the right is Captain Steve Worth’s store that also serves as the camp mail office. Before coming to the Three Forks of the Animas, Worth secured an appointment as the camp’s postmaster.
Watch the mudhole there in the middle of the thoroughfare.
Now on your left is Len Keller’s store that he runs with his brother and sons.
Behind Keller’s store is the boarding house where prospectors seek solid walls to protect them from the winter winds. They find walls that leak air.
And on your right is the newspaper office. The empty space there inside the office is where Albert Hutchinson’s press is supposed to be, but in lieu of a newspaper Hutch posts handwritten notices on the board that hangs outside his office.
If you follow that alley along Hutch’s store, you’ll come to Madam Dumont’s brothel. The women are higher class than what you might find down at the Colonel’s Respite, but it’ll cost you more.
And on the other side of the alley is the Lapping Waters Saloon. Good for a drink or a friendly game of poker, the Lapping Waters is Judge Spivey’s place. And when the camp marshal makes an arrest, the tables are cleared to the side and Judge Spivey holds court with the stump at the back and a barrel as his judicial bench.
On the left is Edward Collette’s Hotel at the Three Forks, as fine a hotel as you’ll find in the country (at 11,000 feet). The restaurant attached to the side is where the camp’s prospectors and businessmen mingle for breakfast every morning, and it’s standing room only as the meals are prepared by a woman’s hand.
And there on the northwestern edge of town is the carpentry shop where Adam Barton hangs his gunbelt on a peg by the door.
Just ahead we can see the formation of the Animas River, just a trickle of a stream, and all along its banks are tents and cabins, the homes of men who seek to pan from its bed all the gold they can find.
Now somewhere along here we’ll have to find space to build a church.
Please take just a moment now to turn and look back along the thoroughfare, because you won’t want to miss that view of the big Niagara Peak standing tall and strong to the south of the camp. That chill wind in your face means winter won’t be long now.
So chink up your cabin walls before the snows come and stay a spell with us at the Three Forks of the Animas.
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