Salida

Sometime between the years 1938 to 1940 three men were working on the highway a few miles north of Salida,Colorado. Work shut down for a few days, so they decided to do a little prospecting in the nearby mountains, just to kill time. They stumbled on an abandoned mine which looked as though the owner had either met with violence, or just walked off without ever returning. They wondered what had actually happened. Some badly rusted tools were lying in the excavation. Had Indians killed the mine owner? Maybe some prospector had just made the excavation and failing to locate ore rich enough, had walked off looking for a better vein. Something didn’t add up, so the three workers searched for some kind of clue that might explain why the mine had been abandoned. There were no close graves to indicate the previous miner had died. Each tool was an antique, so whoever left them there, had done so a long time ago. The three men took samples of ore. It looked good to them, however, an assay would soon tell whether it was worth working. For reasons unknown, the samples weren’t sent to the assay office right away and when the returns came back, they proved the ore to be rich in gold. However not being miners and having good jobs which they did not want to lose, the men followed another highway project to another area and soon forgot about the gold. They later told the story but never searched for the mine.