Fairplay lies in the heart of Southpark, Colorado with huge dredge dumps in its front yard and Mt. Silverheels behind it.
The first gold discovery in the area was made a few miles north of Fairplay on Tarryall Creek in July, 1839 by a party of prospectors who had been disgruntled at the Gregory diggings and decided to push south and west looking for color elsewhere. They left Gregory and worked their way over Kenosha Pass into South Park where they prospected for two days without success. Reaching the bank of a creek in utter exhaustion, one of them stated “Let’s Tarry here”. The creek became known as Tarryall Creek.
By August, prospectors returning to Denver for supplies began to show samples of fine placer gold which they had panned from Tarryall Creek. By fall wagons were rolling over Ute Pass into the northern end of the Park and prospectors were crowded along the banks of the creek. A camp called Tarryall sprang up and in no time all the ground was claimed. Late-comers finding no paying ground available, dubbed the camp Graball, and in disgust moved down the valley to the banks of the South Platte where they found placer diggings and laid out a camp which they called Fairplay.
The sands for five miles along the stream were rich in placer gold and were soon filled with dams, ditches and flumes, although lack of water slowed down mining to some extent. Meanwhile on the Tarryall two camps were flourishing, Tarryall City and Hamilton. Today, nothing but piles of stone mark their sites
The gold at Fairplay was not as easy to find compared to Tarryall. The richest gravel paid from $5.00 to $15.00 per day per man. From 1859 to 1863 the diggings produced gold-bearing quartz but when the sands could no longer be readdily reduced by arrastras or stampmills the boom was over. By 1864 Fairplay was not so much a mining camp as a supply center for the many neighboring camps which sprang up in the vicinity.
In 1871, 800 Chinese were working the banks of the South Platte, and again in 1879 worked the deep rocky gorge and sluiced out gold in appreciable quantities. Just beyond their diggings was Sacramento Gulch, where in the late seventies, the Dusquesne Smelting Company erected a smelter and worked 130 acres of land on the open flat at the mouth of the gulch.
In 1873, rich deposits of silver ore were discovered on Mount Bross and Mount Lincoln and a new rush began. The population of the town swelled to 900. 70 buildings were erected including 10 stores and four restaurants. Real-estate sold for $12 to $14 a front foot on business lots and residence lots were $50 to $150 each. Coaches from Denver rolled in each day with passengers who stayed at the six hotels and paid $10 to $15 per week for board.
On Sunday nights the miners would come to town and the 12 dance and bawdy houses did a lively business. Shootings were so common that they caused little excitement, but if anyone were caught stealing from another man the offender knew it meant death.
One of Fairplay’s more romantic stories is the one about Silverheels, the dancehall girl who some say came to Fairplay and others to the camp of Buckskin Joe. She was beautiful and wore silver slippers and a silver ribbon in her hair. During the winter of 1861-1862 an epidemic of smallpox struck the camp and miners dropped off like flies. The dancehalls closed, the mines shut down, and saloons were deserted. An appeal to Denver for nurses brought only two or three women to the camp to care for the sick. During all this time, Silverheels nursed the men, listened to their dying words and cared fro them as best she could. Silverheels in turn caught the disease but survived. In gratitude for her unselfish service the miners made up a purse of $4,000 to which Senator Wolcott added $1,000. A committee went to her cabin to present the gift but the cabin was empty. Silverheels was never seen again and the money was returned to the donors. The mountain behind Fairplay was named Silverheels in her honor.
Fairplay began as a mining camp and became a supply center for the camps and ranches of South Park and still functions as one. In 1921, after several years spent in testing placer ground, construction was started on the hull of a dredge, and by the following year a four story dredge was digging out and washing 4,000 to 5,000 cubic yards of dirt every 24 hours. Dredging was suspended during a portion of World War II, but in 1945 the South Platte Dredging Company resumed operations, having control of 4,000 acres of ground south of Fairplay.
In 1948, the company reported that 14,000 cubic yards of gravel were being handled a day and that a gold brick was turned out every week. Dredges cutting their way through the rich bars of the South Platte placers have left behind them mountainous piles of tailings.