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The Start of Summit County: Copper Mountain and Frisco
excerpted from the book "SUMMIT - A Gold Rush History of Summit County, Colorado" by Mary Ellen Gilliland

Copper Mountain's Yesteryears: A busy 1880s log cabin community humming at the mountain's base ... two narrow gauge railways chugging into town . . . loggers and sawmills buzzing in every gulch . . . and Judge Wheeler, a respected Colorado 1859er, driving almost every early-day enterprise.

Wheeler, an 1880's town located in the Ten Mile Canyon at the base of Copper Mountain has blossomed today into a ski resort community - Copper Mountain. One hundred and twenty-five years ago, Judge John S. Wheeler's hay fields spread across the valley and provided grazing for his cattle. The Wheeler Trail, a hiking path which climbs the Ten Mile Range and crosses over alpine tundra to South Park, began as Wheeler's old stock trail. Life at Copper Mountain's base was tranquil.

Suddenly, everything changed. Miners discovered silver in the upper Ten Mile Canyon. At Kokomo, builders excavating basements struck huge seams of silver. At Robinson, two grubstaked miners located a stash of silver that caused a town as big as Leadville to erupt. Judge John Wheeler's sleepy ranch sprouted cabins and burst into being as a town.

Wheeler pioneered a much-needed sawmill for Wheeler Flats in 1878 to supply timber to newly-bustling Ten Mile mine camps and to furnish ties for a coming railroad. More and more buildings rose up at Wheeler Junction. Half a dozen sawmills, saloons, a billiard hall, blacksmith shop, wagon shop and a notary office appeared. A post office was granted in April, 1880. Lodgings, including a hotel with real china dishes instead of tin plates, and Judge Wheeler's general store served a peak population of 225 lively local residents and more in outlying camps. The Summit County Journal described Wheeler as ". . the wildest spot in the county."

The Man Behind the Town

John S. Wheeler, born near Boston in 1834, ranks as an 1859er and Colorado pioneer. He arrived in Denver City on May 12, 1859 in the raw boom town's earliest days. He turned not to mining but to ranching in 1860 Weld County. He emerged almost immediately as a leader. Wheeler entered politics, became a judge, earned a spot in the first Colorado Territorial Legislature and served on the Colorado State Constitutional Convention. He gained influential friends, including powerful Rocky Mountain News founder William Byers and first Territorial governor William Gilpin.

Wheeler built the Ten Mile Canyon's first sawmill in the flash-in-the-pan town of Carbonateville in 1878. Called Finnegan, Wheeler & Company, the sawmill supplied sawn boards for mushrooming McNulty Gulch mines.

Carbonateville boomed briefly, from 1878-1881 then abruptly died. The sawmill burned. But Wheeler moved the salvageable sawmill machinery to his town of Wheeler, which he founded in 1879. The Judge had purchased two placer claims at the junction of Ten Mile and West Ten Mile Creeks from John H. Follett on August 16, 1879 for $740. The 320-acre parcel, intended for a hay ranch, would provide a sweet home for Wheeler's wife, Amelia and their children.

Silver Seamed the Ten Mile Canyon

The versatile judge not only ranched, started towns and launched sawmills, he also dove into mining. Wheeler's mining venture, the Reconstruction in silver-seamed Graviline Gulch just south of Copper Mountain, led some well-known silver mines there, including the Storm King, the Osage, the Mona and the unhappily-named Hard Luck. The High Line stagecoach stopped at Graviline, named for a pioneer miner, until the Denver & Rio Grande narrow gauge railway arrived in 1881. A second narrow gauge, the Denver, South Park & Pacific came just behind the caboose of the first in 1883.

Henry Recen, the Swedish immigrant and Ten Mile Canyon pioneer who built the first cabin in Frisco in 1873, built a bench at the mouth of Graviline Gulch where he would sit in his later years and watch the two narrow gauge railways, with their shiny black locomotives, their individual whistles and their salvo of steam.

Sawmills also sprouted in the wooded mountains near Wheeler. Twenty-nine sawmills hewed logs from the canyon's timbered slopes into boards, beams for mines and rail ties. Smoke puffed from their steam engines up through the trees and their racket echoed against mountain walls. According to Ten Mile Canyon historian Penny Lewis, all this logging activity attracted Swedes, traditionally skilled loggers, and these immigrants became the majority population in the Wheeler area. Two Swedish loggers built the Ollie Lind cabin in the late 1880s. Swedish newspapers covered logs inside and an original wood stove remained in two cabins preserved at Copper Mountain.

Sawmills eventually logged out the mountains around Copper and those around Frisco until the slopes were bald. A second growth of lodgepole pine reforested the hills over time. Sawmill camps, including boardinghouses, remain in ruins in gulches around old Wheeler, once a buzzing and boisterous town. Wheeler suffered a disastrous fire in 1882 which destroyed much of the town, a blow the town struggled to overcome.

Big Snow Winter
During Summit County's Big Snow Winter, 1898-99, slides and drifts 20 to 30 feet buried the wagon road near Wheeler. Snowstorms had already forced a railroad shutdown which lasted 79 days. Supplies, including the miners' favorite, whiskey, ran out. Travel all but ceased. However, the New York Times reported on February 13: "Two prospectors on snowshoes arrived in Leadville today from Wheeler. It took them four days to make the trip." Snow remained in the canyon through July the summer after the Big Snow.

Wheeler eventually melted out but the town had begun a slow demise and ended up being dismantled. Later, Wheeler's frisky little townsite returned to its origins as a ranch, owned for many years by the Beeler family. When ski pioneer Chuck Lewis started Copper Mountain ski area, his consortium bought the old Wheeler site from the Beelers.


Mary Ellen Gilliland is the author of "SUMMIT, A Gold Rush History of Summit County, Colorado, 25th Anniversary Edition." The book, first published in 1980 will appear in a greatly expanded version, with 12 new chapters, 250 new photographs and extras such as Field Guides to History. Included will be a detailed history of Copper Mountain ski area from its inception around 1970 to the present day. Gilliland is also author of "The New Summit Hiker," "Rascals, Scoundrels and No Goods" and other local books.