With the assumed temporary halt in gold production, mine owners,

used down-time to upgrade the mine facility.  

These changes also greatly enhanced the tour.

 

The Anderson brothers (now local unemployed miners) along

with Mine Supper Franklin Ferguson were contracted to:


  1. Bullet            Erect a new steel gallows (head) frame,

  2. Bullet            Construct a new hoist house

  3. Bullet            Replace the existing mine hoist.

  4. Bullet            The ore-skip was replaced with a man- skip.  

  5. Bullet            The “miners dry”  was converted

  6.             into the present-day gift shop.

  7. Bullet            New mining displays were constructed  

  8.             on both the 7th and 10th levels.

  9. Bullet            Needed lighting was added.


 

During this era, visitors were lowered to the 7th level for a portion of the tour, and then continued touring on the 1,000 foot level.   While being a very good tour, things became far to hectic having to wait for the man-skip on both levels.


Franklin Ferguson left the Mollie Kathleen Mine in the early 1970’s.

Mollie Kathleen  Tour History

America’s longest continually operated gold mine tour.

General Admission

Adults             $15

Ch 3-12            $10

2-under          Free


Mollie Kathleen

Gold Mine

P. O. Box 339

Cripple Creek, CO

80813   USA

 

719 689 2466

1 888 291 5689 9101

(must use 9101 pin #)

molliegold@rmi.net

From the early beginnings of the Mollie Kathleen Mine, many passersby would often wander in, pleading to tour the underground mine.


Visitors without hesitation rode an open ore skip.  With no side or head protection, they traveled the depth of the 1,000 foot mine shaft to and from mine workings.


Miners would take turns guiding complete strangers underground, by candle light, to witness fellow workers extracting gold ore.


Once the word got around that people off the street could descend the shaft and tour 1,000 feet underground, demand rapidly grew to the point that tours became disruptive to mining operations.

Descending a mine shaft 1,000 feet in an open ore bucket.

New mining methods evolved the mine tour

With the introduction of air drills, mining activities became less tedious and more interesting.  With more noise and increased production, visitors witnessed more aggressive mining activitys.


With increased public persistence a decision was made to conduct tours on the 700 foot level.  This allowed miners to drill rounds and load explosives on the 1,000’ level during the day.  At night  explosives  were loaded, rounds were shot, ore was mucked, trammed and hoisted to the surface .


Disruption of mining by touring visitors soon forced a decision to completely separate touring and mining activities.   Tours were to be conducted by day  and all mining activities would continue at night.


Gold production halted


Mining continued from the mid 40’s until 1961 when the Carlton Mill closed.   With no way to process ore  the Mollie, along with all other working mines of the Cripple Creek  District, were given little choice other than to halt gold production.


Mine tours at this time were doing quite well.  Rather than closing down the mine completely, a decision was made to continue tours.  Tour revenues were used to maintain the mine in safe operable mining condition.  The conclusion being, if the Carlton Mill were to reopen the mine would again be ready to  produce gold .  

Photo of the Mollie Kathleen (left) in the 1950’s shows the original wood timber gallows frame constructed in the 1890’s

 

Steel gallows head frame (below) was placed in 1964

1964 -  FRANKLIN FERGUSON (right)

GEAN LEAF (miner/guide) (center)

GOLD DISCOVERY IN A COLORADO TOUR MINE

Tom Brouckaw’s Nightly News told the world of a gold discovery in The Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine!

With government movement to free-up gold onto the open market, mine owners financed underground exploration during the mid 1970’s.  Low-n-behold - - - they struck GOLD!  Blasting in just 6 feet from previous workings, Cripple Creek miners Nick Cox, Steve Robb, and Lawence Myers, uncovered a new ore body assaying 1.5 troy ounces of gold to-the-ton.  That very ore body is still held in reserves and viewed by todays visitors!  

  

Though the new discovery created much excitement, there was still no practical option for processing the ore.  However, all was not lost, exploration caused  the connection of earlier underground crosscut tunnels and drifts.

With these changes came a layout for the tour.

  

The new 1,000 foot underground layout provided a natural solution to congestion of the two level tour, thus, a new tour lasting 30 minutes was developed for the 10th level.  Now multiple tour groups could be spaced throughout the tour area at one time.  

 

Several new displays were placed throughout the tour area, however, due to lack of available replacement part the mine’s compressors were no longer fired-up and underground mine equipment no longer demonstrated. The new operation was very well accepted by the public, and attendance continued to grow.

With new mine operators came big improvements.  A tour that would combine

all mining phases of the Mollie Kathleen’s evolving past.


Over 15 years in the making this new tour included:



  1. Bullet       Placement of a second nine man-skip elevator that was suspended below the existing man-skip.  

  2. Bullet       A new 150 hp drive motor replaced the original 75 hp unit to accommodate increased  load demand.

  3. Bullet        The main mine hoist bearings were re-babitted

  4. Bullet        Restoration of a rare 1890’s steam hoist for use underground on the 10th level winz.

  5. Bullet        Built for the Mollie Kathleen Mine in 1951, the Last Tram-Air-Locomotive manufactured in Cripple Creek was          

           retrieved from the mine and restored to working condition giving visitors, for the first time, an underground train ride!

  1. Bullet         Miners blasted a 250 foot crosscut tunnel allowing easy access to the massive Queen Bess Stope. 

           (Early day Stope-rat miners drilled and blasted this massive meandering ore body  upwards 600 feet.)

  1. Bullet        An underground  vault was constructed to house an extensive mineral display of gold ore specimens from the

          Cripple Creek Mining District.

  1. Bullet        Restoration of  air compressors allowed underground demonstrations of air powered mining equipment.


By 2004, this one hour tour covered nearly five times the distance of past tours.

1988 Brought new mine operators

Coming Soon


Today the Mollie Kathleen Mine continues to grow. 


Construction is under way on:


  1. Bullet     Gold Panning

  2. Bullet     Restaurant

  3. Bullet     Saw Mill

  4. Bullet     Black Smith Shop

Early-day mine tours were by candle light

The Story of Mollie

  & Her Famous Gold Mine

(Click Here)