History of Breckenridge

In 1859, as the Gold Rush moved West, an industrious individual by the name of General George E. Spencer, future U.S. Senator, journeyed to Denver with many others in hopes of finding gold. Twenty-nine men and a lone woman departed Denver and eventually descended into the Blue Valley, where they pitched a tent alongside the Blue River. The discovery party erected a small fort and named it "Fort Mary B" in honor of the first woman to cross the range. The boisterous mining camp filled the once-quiet mountain air with the sounds of progress. Wanting a post office, the camp named itself after 15th President James Buchanan's Vice President, John Cabell Breckinridge. Spencer's plan worked and the flattered Vice President arranged for the "town" of BreckINridge to gain a post office on January 18, 1860. A month later the town became part of a newly formed, Colorado Territory.

A few years later, when Abraham Lincoln sat in the Oval Office and Breckinridge represented Kentucky in the Senate, the Civil War fractured the nation. Breckinridge, in opposition to Lincoln's war plan, left the Senate and became a Brigadier General in the Confederate Army. The Town of BreckINridge, a Union-allied Colorado Territory, changed the spelling of its name to the current day BreckENridge.

In the 1860s, Father John Lewis Dyer, an itinerant Methodist minister who embraced mountain life, traveled to Breckenridge. He regularly skiied across the Continental Divide on 12-foot, wooden skis to deliver sacks of gold, mail and the Gospel. He founded a Methodist Church in 1879 which remains active today in its original structure.

Another founder of the town, Naturalist Edwin Carter, came to Colorado during the 1859 Gold Rush. After witnessing the destruction that mining and a growing population wreaked on local wildlife, he changed his goals and embarked on a career as a naturalist. During his lifetime, Carter assembled over 15,000 specimens, many of which launched the Denver Museum of Natural History. The Carter Museum in Breckenridge displays many of these pieces currently.

In 1879, Ford's Chophouse opened in the heart of town. Barney Lancelot Ford, Colorado's first great leader of African American Heritage, became Breckenridge's first black businessman when he opened his restaurant. He owned several businesses in Breckenridge and, at one time, the finest house in Breckenridge, now preserved as the Barney Ford House Museum. Highlights of Ford's life story include his escape from slavery, work on the Underground Railroad in Chicago, far-flung business endeavors and initiating the first adult education program in the state. Immortalized in stained glass in the rotunda dome of the Colorado Capitol, along with Father John Lewis Dyer, Ford earned recognition as one of the state's 16 Founding Fathers.

In 1882, the railroad arrived in Breckenridge. The Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad wound its way across Boreas Pass from Denver to Como and made Breckenridge a main thoroughfare in the Rocky Mountains, especially due to its post office. On Nov. 27, 1898, it began to snow in Breckenridge and continued to fall until Feb. 20, 1899. The railroad could not battle the winds and the 40-foot snow drifts. Snow rose to rooftop levels causing businessmen to dig tunnels across Main Street to provide foot access. Breckenridge remained isolated from the outside world for 79 days.

Any mining town worth mentioning has a tale of the "big strike." On July 23, 1887, Tom Groves discovered the largest gold nuggest ever found in Colorado. He trudged in to town cradling a blanket-wrapped bundle that gained the name, Tom's Baby, and weighed 13.5 pounds. Three days later, he put the nugget on a train to Denver. No one reported its whereabouts for 85 years until, in 1972, the Colorado State Historical Museum investigated gold specimens deposited in 1926 in a Denver bank. They found Tom's Baby, but it had shed over five pounds during its disappearance. Unfounded rumors surrounding the nugget's location between 1887 and 1926 include a display at the Smithsonian, the Peabody Museum, Harvard University and Chicago's Field Museum.

Mining continued to support Breckenridge as the 20th century dawned. The need for soldiers during World War II caused the massive dredge boats that had chewed their way up and down the valley waterways to halt after decades of activity. Then, for more than 20 years, Breckenridge sat quietly, waiting for its next big boom.

That boom arrived and has proved as historically monumental as any other chapter ever written in the annals of Breckenridge. The discovery of "white gold," or snow skiing, put the town on international maps.