Flash-in-the-Pan Creede

 

(Wild West) The story of Creede, Colorado, like that of many other Western boomtowns, is equal parts fact and fiction.
It is known that on August 26, 1889, experienced miners Nicholas C. Creede and George L. Smith emerged from their tent and hiked up a Rocky Mountain gorge to do what they’d been doing for decades—seek their fortune. About midday, with a shadowed, narrow view of tall evergreens dotting the gray canyon’s steep walls, they stopped for lunch beside East Willow Creek, where mountain trout plied the cool, swift water. Legend has it Creede, who’d been pecking at the rocks with his geologist’s hammer, suddenly stopped, squinted at the glistening chips in his hand and exclaimed to Smith, “Holy Moses!” So, the story goes, went the birth of the Holy Moses Mine and the town of Creede. Continued