A series where we take a #lookback at the stories and history of our community, brought to you by Mick Pryor, Financial Advisor with Edward Jones.
Ernest Hornecker, a 21-year-old would-be gold seeker from Missouri, arrived in Miner’s Delight on August 10, 1869 with his brother Mart and Jim Laird. He recalls his first night there as being memorable:
“The first night we spent in Miner’s Delight stands out in my mind very clearly. We had stopped our wagon in front of Jack Holbrook’s house, and turned the oxen out to graze. We were sleeping under our wagons, as we did not have any tents for shelter.
There was a man living there, named Jack Spaulding. He had a cabin up the gulch near the spring. He was a drinking man, and whenever he got drunk was always looking for somebody to kill. He carried a butcher knife in his boot. I do not know what the trouble was but he had some real or fancied grievances against Jack Holbrook and on this particular night he was in a quarrelsome mood, and was trying to find Holbrook. He had gone up to his cabin and was cursing and making a loud fuss around the house.
Holbrook got tired of it, and after a while he opened the door, stepped outside with his Winchester gun and fired four or five shots. The bullets passed right over our wagon, as it stood on slightly lower ground. We thought we had gotten into a pretty rough and wild place, and laid very still under the wagon, feeling that was the safest place for us to be.
Spaulding continued to get drunk and was always looking for Holbrook and threatening to kill him. This went on till sometime the next summer. I think (because they had moved the quartz mill up to Miner’s Delight.) One evening he had been making threats again, and insisting that he was going to kill Holbrook, and had gotten a gun for the purpose. Jack took his gun and went out toward Miner’s Delight Mine looking for him, and there they met. Jack asked him if he was “heeled,” an early day expression meaning “are you ready to fight?” The result of that meeting was that Jack Holbrook shot and killed Spaulding.
Holbrook immediately went and gave himself up, but there was nothing done with him or about it, as there were plenty of witnesses to testify, and who knew, that his life had been threatened many times, and there were plenty who were just as well satisfied that Spaulding, or “Buckskin Jack”, as he was known, was gone. He usually wore buckskin clothes, so had gained the name of “Buckskin Jack”. He was buried in the little cemetery on the hill above the gulch, South of Miner’s Delight.
In 1929, when I last visited the old mining camp of Miner’s Delight with my daughter Mary Overcash and my niece, Ruth Abbott, we found Old Jack Holbrook cabin still standing. There was the cabin down at the end of the row. There was the cabin where “Doc” Curry had once had his saloon. There was the old hall, or pool room, the largest building in the community, still standing, though I doubt if it has survived until now.” (1937)
Sioux and Arapahoe Indians started raiding mining camps in 1869 and several miners and settlers were killed over the next few years in sporadic raids. Ernest recalled one night when several of them were staying in their cabin in Yankee Gulch. They heard scratching on the door and nearly opened it, then for some reason decided not to.
It was well they didn’t. Their closest neighbor, a man known only as Anderson, was found the next morning 150 paces from their cabin, shot and scalped. In 1873, Mike Heenan, a freighter from Miner’s Delight was caught in a raid on Beaver Creek and also killed. His widow, Margaret Heenan, with several young children and one on the way, opened a boarding house and started a small herd of cattle – thereby becoming one of Wyoming’s first cattle women. She later married Peter Dickinson, a clerk in the store at Miner’s Delight. They moved to Lander and Dickinson became one of the three co-founders of the town in 1884 and a wealthy cattleman.
The mines never proved to be overly rich. From July, 1868 to July, 1869, only $60- 70,000 was produced at Miner’s Delight Mill. All three towns died down and miners either moved down to the new town in Wind River Valley or on to richer gold fields. Miner’s Delight mine was re-opened and reworked in 1881, 1907 and during the Depression. The buildings were abandoned and are now owned by the BLM and listed on the National Historic Register.
Author: Liz Farmer
Next up for the Fremont County Museum
December 3, Giving Tuesday https://www.windriverccf.com/donate.html
December 7, 11am at the Dubois Museum, “Christmas Open House”
December 7, 11am at the Dubois Museum, “Kids Corner: DIY Christmas Ornament” Bailey Tire/Pit Stop Children’s Exploration Series
December 7, 2-4pm at the Riverton Museum, “Santa’s Workshop” Bailey Tire/Pit Stop Children’s Exploration Series
December 7, 10-4pm at the Riverton Museum, “Christmas Open House”
December 14, 6-8pm at the Pioneer Museum, “Old Fashioned Christmas” Bailey Tire/Pit Stop Children’s Exploration Series
December 21, 6-8pm at the Riverton Museum, “Ghosts of Christmas Past: Alma Law” Bailey Tire/Pit Stop Children’s Exploration Series
Call the Dubois Museum 1-307-455-2284, the Pioneer Museum 1-307-332-3339 or the Riverton Museum 1-307-856-2665 for detail regarding their programs.
The Dubois Museum, the Pioneer Museum in Lander and the Riverton Museum need your financial support. In the current economic environment, the museums are more reliant than ever on donations from the private sector to continue to provide the quality programs, collections management, exhibits and services that have become their hallmark over the last four years. Please make your tax deductible contribution to be used specifically for the benefit of the museum of your choosing by sending a check to Fremont County Museums 450 N 2nd Rm 320 or taking it directly to the museum you choose to support.