Welcome to Black Hawk (West side)

Welcome to Black Hawk (West side). Gregory Street Plaza. , Rogers Tramway , In the 1880s, the Bobtail Mining Company had the largest and most complete ore processing mill in Colorado. Known as a quartz stamp mill, it had 125 stamps that pulverized gold-bearing quartz rock, known as ore, from the Bobtail Mine, located directly across Gregory Street from this sign. , The Bobtail Mill was located down Gregory Street adjacent to North Clear Creek. The cost of hauling ore by wagon from the mine to the mill was relatively high, therefore in late 1880, the mining company’s superintendent Andrew Rogers devised an ore car tramway to reduce these costs. , Leading from the Bobtail tunnel’s portal and crossing Gregory Street, the tramway went behind the buildings paralleling Gregory Street’s north side until it reached a transfer building on Church Street. At the transfer building, ore was dumped down a chute from one set of ore cars to another that would then travel through a tunnel under Church Street and onto the mill. , The Bobtail Mining Company employees used horses to operate the tramway instead of hiring teamsters and their wagons. Within the first year, the cost savings of tramming ore rather than teaming paid for building the tramway. , Today, if you stand at the intersection of Gregory and Selak Streets, adjacent to the Black Hawk City Hall, and look up toward Church Street, you will see the portal that ore cars once traveled through on their way to the mill. , , Colvin Tramway , Two decades later, a new owner of the Bobtail Mine, the Boston and Denver Mining and Milling Company, devised an even more sophisticated tramway. Instead of the tramway paralleling Gregory Street, Clarence K. Colvin, the company’s General Manager, came up with a plan to tunnel 1,100 feet through Bates Hill to tram ore to the mill. , Tunnel work started in late November of 1899 and was completed by late May of 1900, taking only six months to drill and blast through solid rock. , A gasoline-powered locomotive was initially employed to pull ore cars through the tramway tunnel. This technique was not satisfactory, and horses were used instead for a short period until the company acquired an electric locomotive from the Jeffrey Manufacturing Company. Overhead electrified trolley wire was used to power the locomotive to deliver ore from the mine to the mill. , Welcome to the City of Black Hawk, where American patriotism and the indomitable spirit that built the West still reside. Black Hawk is a City where we appreciate and celebrate our history while embracing and promoting our future. , Preservation , “The value in restoring and repurposing the most historic and iconic buildings in the City of Black Hawk goes well beyond preserving the historic edifices themselves and really speaks to the intrinsic value these buildings hold. , We are honoring and preserving the indomitable spirit of the individuals who founded and built Black Hawk, remembering and reflecting on those who came before us, and perhaps, at the same time, tapping into a bit of that indomitable spirit as we continue to make history.” , - Mayor David D. Spellman