Manhattan: Poudre Canyon's ghost town

By Kenneth Jessen
Correspondent

The once busy town of Manhattan, located approximately 45 miles west of Fort Collins, has vanished. Only a lush meadow, a few grave markers and some bits of wood and glass are all that mark the site.

The story of Manhattan began in 1886, when a number of prominent Fort Collins citizens put together an organization to systematically search for precious metals in the hills west of town. The group hired three experienced prospectors. In September, these men reported finding gold ore on the divide between Seven Mile and Elkhorn creeks. The prospectors boasted that gold could be panned from almost any piece of crushed rock. This immediately caused a gold rush, and in the process, over 300 claims were filed.

Prospectors started a town and gave it the unlikely name of Manhattan. It had a hotel, stores a post office and even a newspaper called the Manhattan Prospector. This frontier newspaper lasted less than a year.

The saloon, the Ace of Clubs, was located at the corner of the town's two main streets, Chestnut and Manhattan. The Ace of Clubs had a central two-story portion with three shed-like structures attached to its sides. Even for a Colorado mining town, the structure had an odd and unique appearance.

Population estimates for Manhattan vary considerably, with some placing it at well over 1,000. A more realistic figure for Manhattan's population is 100 to 200. Photographs show that the town did have more than 40 structures.

In a mine explosion at the Black Hawk tunnel in 1892, two Manhattan miners were killed. A cemetery was established, and they were buried north of the present day road through the town site. It is possible that others who died in Manhattan were also buried in the cemetery. Even as recently as 1970, the cemetery was used for burials. A local character named "Rattlesnake Jack" Brinkhoff let his family know that he too wanted to be buried there, and when he died, his remains joined the others.

Manhattan had a one-room schoolhouse. At first, the school year lasted only four months, but was later expanded to six months. The school included eight grades. On cold days, the younger children got first choice in seating near the stove. After the population of Manhattan began to decline, the school building was moved to Elkhorn.

A number of companies sold stock in the mines at Manhattan. Among these was the French Creek Mining & Milling Co. Another was the Robertson Gold Mining Co. with a Fort Collins druggist A. W. Scott as its president. The Missouri Mining & Milling Co. had three mines in the area. Prominent Fort Collins residents Abner Loomis and Frank Stover ran the Democratic Mining Co.

In 1888, Fort Collins businessmen financed construction of a mill, and it was built on Seven Mile Creek. It never operated properly and was eventually dismantled. The Zimmerman brothers built a five-stamp mill and reduction works at a placed called Poudre City along the Poudre River about 3 miles above Rustic. This mill crushed a lot of ore, and the concentrate was shipped to St. Louis for refining. The results were so poor, the mill was abandoned.

In 1890, Fort Collins butcher shop owner Benjamin Burnett proudly displayed ore from the district. Burnett owned the general store in Manhattan and was involved with the mining towns of Teller City and Lulu City.

Some of the mining properties had imaginative names such as the Laugh-a-Lot, the Bacon, the Bullfrog, Wedding Bells, Honeymoon, the Joker, Evening Star and Tidal Wave.

F.C. Goodell was born in Manhattan and tells of a trip that he took when he was 12 years old. He drove one of two wagons loaded with ore from Manhattan to Denver to be milled. The mine's owner drove the other wagon. When the owner received payment for the gold content, he figured he had been working his mine for a dollar a day.

As late as 1898, mines in the area were being patented, but Manhattan was all but abandoned. The post office was closed and moved to Elkhorn. Some of the buildings were moved to other locations. Those cabins that remained were burned by the Forest Service during the 1930s.

At this point, it might be well to include some comments by Ansel Watrous in his "History of Larimer County" on mining in this region. He said that although thousands of dollars and many years were spent prospecting in the hills of Larimer County, the returns in dollars and cents bear no comparison to the cost. Watrous points out that almost every square foot of the mountains from the southern to the northern boundaries of the county, from the foothills to the summit of the Medicine Bow Range have been explored looking for precious metals. As of 1911 when his book was published, not a single profitable mine had ever been opened and worked.