The Doctor Jack Pot complex on Gold Hill (top center, above the Mary McKinney Mine).
The Doctor Jack Pot Mine
by Mike Hurtt
The Doctor Jack Pot complex on Gold Hill (top
center, above the Mary McKinney Mine).
Originally two neighbors, the Doctor Mine and the Jack Pot Mine fell into litigation, probably over apex rights to the same ore vein. However, the two companies eventually discovered that prospecting on Gold Hill was more profitable than prospecting in court rooms. The companies settled their difficulties by merging and cross cutting their tunnels to become the Doctor Jack Pot Mine. The new company owned a total of 53 acres on Gold and Raven Hills, just above the town of Anaconda.
When the mine's discovery vein pinched out, the owners went broke trying to find a new one. The property stood abandoned until control passed to Cripple Creek promoter Josiah Winchester around the turn of the century. Winchester scraped up enough money to reopen the mine, hire a few miners and start crosscutting the twelfth level. They had hardly begun before a rich vein of sylvanite was discovered, worth approximately $2 million.
This is sylvanite, a type of gold ore found
in Cripple Creek.
It is difficult for the untrained eye to detect.
According to the book "Cripple Creek Days" by Mabel Barbee Lee, Winchester formed a company to operate the mine, taking a huge block of stock for himself and generously feting out more shares to friends and supporters. With business well in hand and money flowing freely, he moved his family to Denver and began a lavish lifestyle.
While Winchester was on a whirlwind tour of the East Coast, the money men were hard at work. Winchester had signed a bank note to meet the mine's first month of payroll. He pledged his shares as collateral. He apparently forgot about the note until it was past due, but would later claim that he had instructed it to be repaid. Regardless, when he failed to repay the note on time, the bank seized his shares.
Winchester took his bankers and former partner to court, claiming fraud. No proof could be produced that he ever intended to repay the loan. Records mysteriously turned up missing and his key witness disappeared to Mexico. Every court ruled against him, up to and including the Colorado Supreme Court.
Winchester claimed all along that Cripple Creek freight magnate and banking tycoon Bert Carlton was behind his demise. Sure enough, as soon as the litigation ended, the Doctor Jack Pot property was consolidated with other adjoining properties. Among the new officers of the Doctor Jack Pot Mining Company, four names stood out: A.E. (Bert) Carlton, president; Frank Woods, general manager; Harry Woods, secretary; and A.M. Stevenson, director. Stevenson was Winchester's former partner.
Lunchtime at the Doctor Jack Pot. The
train cars were lock box cars for shipping ore.
Many people thought the Woods family of Victor, with their massive mining, banking and real estate empire, controlled the Doctor Jack Pot. When their empire collapsed in the mid-1910s, it clearly emerged that Bert Carlton was the driving force behind the company. The Carlton clan would retain control of the Doctor Jack Pot properties for the next 30-odd years.
The Doctor Jack Pot Mine, like many of the Cripple Creek mines, faced a serious flooding problem. To combat this problem, and allow the mines to be dug to ever greater depths, the mine owners collaborated on the construction of the El Paso Tunnel. When it proved inadequate to the job, Carlton convinced his fellow mine owners to invest in the $500,000 Roosevelt Deep Drainage Tunnel. When the tunnel contractor they hired proved inadequate in his job, Bert Carlton personally took charge of the project. Completed in 1910, the tunnel drained many of the District's leading mines and extended their production for many years. A chief beneficiary of the project was the Doctor Jack Pot Mine.
At the end of the day, the Doctor Jack Pot took its place as one of the Cripple Creek District's greatest mines. Its gold production would eventually top $7 million, placing it in the top 3 percent of all the Cripple Creek producers. Its colorful history guarantees its place as a mining legend.
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