THE COLORADO MAGAZINE

The State Historical Society of Colorado

THE COLORADO MAGAZINE

Published Quarterly by

Vol. XXXIX

Denver, Colorado, October, 1962

Number 4

Gold Boats on The Swan

The Story of Ben Stanley Revett, Gold Dredger

By Belle Turnbull*

At the time that the material for use in writing about Revett was first examined, a number of papers were kept for reference. Of other papers, notes were made and the papers returned to Mrs. Melissa Hayden. At the time, since the objective was to use the notes for background in a story, notes were made sometimes without much attention to dates and sources, though they were kept in chronological order by year, only.

For color and background the author is deeply indebted to the following, not one of whom is still living in 1962: George Robinson, dredgemaster, and later County Treasurer of Summit County and Mayor of Breckenridge; Mrs. Melissa Hayden, widow of Revett's secretary, and herself Clerk of the District Court for many years; and George Robert Johnson, mining engineer, who permitted my presence on a gold dredge against the wishes of his swing shift crew, to whom a woman on board was anathema. Mr. Johnson's explanations of the operation of a gold dredge were lucid and helpful, even to a woman author.

Thanks are also due to Gordon Goodridge, who dug in the Summit County records for data on placer grounds.-Author.

In the history of deep mining for gold in Colorado, Ben

Stanley Revett ranks as First Gold Dredger. Not only was he

the first to carry through the financing, the building, and the

management of the first dredge in Colorado to dig for gold; his

resourcefulness and bulldog tenacity drove him on, year after

year, to finish what he had begun: to find the best possible

method of driving to bedrock and to bring up the gold. And

against every obstacle that gold dredging in the high Rockies

presents to those who attempt it, that was what he did. The gold was there, all right. To quote from F. L. Ransome's

definitive work on the geology of the Breckenridge District:

"Virtually every gulch in the ... District leading down from

auriferous deposits has yielded gold.... On the Swan and the

French creeks thickness of gold-bearing gravel is hardly over 50 feet to bedrock."1

It was a long road that Revett traveled from its beginning

in Asia to its end in Colorado. He was born in 1858 in Calcutta, where his father was a chaplain in the British Army in India.2

*Copyright, 19G2, by Belle Turnbull. *Be ll e Turnbul1 , th ou gh a n ati\?e of J fa milton , New York, and a g r ad uate of Y assar Co llege, lon g ago adopted Colo r ado as h e r home stat e. Sh e r etire d earl y fr om teaching Engli ' h in the Co lo r ado Spr in gs Hi g h Sch oo l a nd in 1940 in o,'ed to Breckenrirlg-e, Col orado, a sn1all minin g town in the hig?h Hocki es . S ince then three boolrn by h er ha,?e been publis lie ................
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