The Orphan Boy mine, also known as The Orphan, is a defunct gold and silver mine located some 12,000 feet in elevation along the Continental Divide near the town of Alma in Park County in central Colorado.
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Map of Orphan Boy Mine, Colorado 80424, USA
History of the mine
Discovered in 1861, the Orphan Boy was staked in 1862 and patented in 1870. The now ghost town of Sterling (not to be confused with Sterling in Logan County in northeastern Colorado) was established in 1862 to support the mines of the Mosquito Gulch area, including the Orphan Boy. Sterling soon had thirty houses, two stores, three saloons, four stamp mills to crush the ore, and a blacksmith shop. By 1865, the boom had waned, as the miners were compelled to dig deeper and found less gold to the ton but instead galena, the natural form of lead, which is often laced with silver.
In later years, silver, copper, and zinc were mined too. The Orphan Boy was closed at times because of water in the tunnels, litigation, or changes in management. The town of Sterling was deserted, and in 1880 the miners mostly headed north to a strike in Montana. Fewer than a dozen miners remained behind to work the claims in Mosquito Gulch. In 1881, it was reported that the Orphan Boy and another lode, the War Eagle, had produced $500,000 worth of silver in four years of operations. A new town since discarded, Park City, emerged to replace Sterling.
The Orphan Boy was owned by James Moynahan, a former Union Army veteran from Michigan. In 1903, Sheriff Silas D. Pollock forced a sale for some $21,000 to satisfy debts of the company. Thereafter, Moynahan remained as manager when the Orphan Boy came under the ownership of the Kennebec Mining Company. As early as 1879, the Orphan Boy was already considered aged. The Flume newspaper, based in the county seat of Fairplay, even called it the "old Orphan Boy mine."
Meanwhile, Moynahan was from 1870 to 1873 a county commissioner. In 1876 and in 1882, he was elected to the Colorado State Senate from Park and Fremont counties. On three occasions, he was elected mayor of Alma and worked to incorporate the community.
In retrospect
Some $7 million was taken from the Orphan Boy at a time when the price of gold never exceeded $20 per ounce. In 2013 dollars, the yield was $486 million. In 1907, the bunkhouse at the mine burned to the ground while the men were sleeping, all the men escaped with their lives. In December 2011, another fire of unknown origin destroyed the 20-foot tall ore house. All that remains of the Orphan Boy are a collapsed tool shed and the mine portal.
H. Court Young has written The Orphan Boy: A Love Affair with Mining, a history of the mine and the passion of his father, geologist Herbert T. Young, one of the later owners of the Orphan Boy.