The Early Days

Bands of American Indians camped along Coal Creek, as evidenced by numerous tepee rings still visible on the flat land east of Plainview Road. Early settlers making their way to the nearest school in Eldorado Canyon reported seeing Indians perched on hillsides, quietly watching them pass by.

Coal Creek and Black Hawk Wagon Company

In 1866 the canyon served as a supply route to the mines in Gilpin County. The Coal Creek and Black Hawk Wagon Company was a toll road that ran from base of the canyon to Twin Spruce Road and on to the mining towns around Central City, Black Hawk, and Nevadaville. Teamsters hauling supplies in wagons pulled by oxen or mules paid a 60-cent toll at the Coal Creek toll gate and another toll upon arrival at the foot of Dory Hill in Black Hawk.

Coal Creek Canyon Road

In 1883, Jefferson County Commissioners surveyed the road up Coal Creek Canyon and agreed to maintain it. When the creek flooded and washed out the road in 1894, the county responded by paying residents $1.75 a day to rebuild the road at a higher elevation than the creek bed. Residents continued to maintain the road using a plow pulled by a team of horses. Two lines of boulders pushed in place by the plow can be seen on the northwest corner of Highways 72 and 93.

The Homesteaders

The Homestead Act was enacted in 1862 and land in 160-acre parcels was available to settlers. The 1870 federal census showed 57 Coal Creek Canyon residents, including men, women and children. Occupations were listed as teamster, farmer, sawmill worker, or laborer.

Charles Anderson was granted the first homestead patent in Coal Creek Canyon in 1873. His son John farmed on the land where Coal Creek K-8 is now.

Two families, the Wilsons and the Boyles, homesteaded at the mouth of the canyon about the same time. Charles and Louisa Caspar Wilson's daughter Frances married the Boyle's son Jack. The Wilson-Boyle ranch is the green and white ranch just east of the train trestle, although when it was built, the house was closer to Highway 93. The house was relocated to its present site on the hill. The toll gate for the road to Black Hawk was just across Highway 72 from the Wilson-Boyle ranch, and Johnny Boyle remembers finding ox shoes and other artifacts there when he was a boy living at the ranch. The original Wilson-Boyle ranchland was divided when the Boyles sold it. The buyer, Howard Lacy of Jefferson Center Associates, came very close to building an 18,000-acre development there but the land was rescued partly through the efforts of The Environmental Group (TEG) and is now open space. Charles Church McKay now owns the western portion where the Wilson-Boyle ranch house is.

August Brumm and his wife Gertrude left their families and his work on the Erie Canal to seek a new life in the Colorado mining towns. They passed through Coal Creek in 1874 via a temporary wagon road that started at Plainview, crossed Blue Mountain valley and Ralston Creek to Nevadaville (near Central City) where he set up a blacksmith shop, "August Brumm, Wagonmaker, Horseshoer & General Blacksmith." They rested their horses and mules in the valley and loved the area so much that they later homesteaded there. The Brumms' son Gus and their nephew Leavitt Booth continued to purchase land in the canyon and eventually developed the Blue Mountain subdivision and Crescent Park. The Booth families still live in the canyon.

Early homesteader Jimmy O'Brien built a three-room cabin around 1876 that was the first structure in the Blue Mountain valley. He hand dug a 20-foot well that still produces water at a rate that astounds geologists today as water is generally scarce in the area.

Bruce Edwards homesteaded in Plainview in 1890. The family donated land for the Ranson/Edwards Homestead Ranch open space. The Ranson family, descendents of the Edwards, continues to live in Plainview.

Between 1900 and 1920, Harry Jackson homesteaded the area that included what is today 30410 Highway 72; this location has been known in recent years as the Copperdale Ranch and Ladybug Bee's. The site originally served as a stagecoach stop and an inn and had a veranda used for socializing and dancing. This stage stop was a canyon gathering place and square dances were held there until it burned down in the 1940s.  Local residents built a replacement structure using materials from the defunct Kansas Cabins.

William Seeley homesteaded southeast of present-day Chapel in the Hills church, land that included a broad meadow with a stunning view of Mt. Thorodin. Seeley reportedly was a member of the outlaw James Gang before bringing his family to the canyon. The Seeley family continued to live outside the law and when the county had a policy of paying local residents to extinguish fires that broke out, there were suspicions that the Seeleys set some fires in order to collect the money. In 1918, Seeley's son Louis was convicted of killing Fred Bill, postmaster and storekeeper at the Crescent Landing train station. There is a rumor of a cave with bullets embedded in the walls somewhere on the old Seeley homestead.

James W. Long homesteaded land next to the Seeleys. The ruins of the Long homestead are part of the Thunderbird Ranch, just southeast of Chapel in the Hills. In 1926, Arthur "A. G." Seaver bought the Long homestead, and soon after, the Seeley homestead. His first land was purchased for $3.04 per acre; by 1939 the price was up to $4.23 per acre. He continued to purchase land and became one of the largest landowners in the canyon. A. G. donated the land for Chapel in the Hills church and Fire Station No. 1. Years later, when their son Jack and his wife Ruth wanted the family ranch to be preserved, their adult children made this happen. They put it under a conservation easement, which prohibits development. The family retains some acreage for their personal use and Seaver family members continue to live at the Thunderbird Ranch. Jack Seaver's sister, Jeanne Seaver Asel, donated 127 acres above Chapel in the Hills to Jeffco Open Space. Canyonites today owe the undeveloped and pristine views in this area to the Seaver family.

Other homesteader names were Bengson, Loomis, Nilson, Eckhardt, Fidlar, and Rand. No doubt there were many more during this era.

The homestead families ranched, farmed, and cut timber for the mines, railroad ties, fences, and buildings. There were several sawmills along the creek. Gus Brumm, son of the homesteaders August and Gertrude Brumm, had a sawmill near present day 27589 Highway 72.