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The Snow-Shoe Itinerant

Text from John Dyer's biography Snow-Shoe Itinerant

I went back to Breckenridge, which shortly experienced a characteristic mining boom. A report was spread that about Breckenridge were immense bodies of gold quartz and carbonates, three feet deep. People of all classes came across the range, and, of course, the inevitable dance-house, with degraded women, fiddles, bugles, and many sorts of music, came tool There was a general hubbub from dark to daylight. The weary could hardly rest. Claims were staked out everywhere, and the prospector thought nothing of shoveling five feet of snow to start a shaft. Saloons, grocery-stores, carpenter-shops, and every kind of business sprang up, including stamp-mills and smelters.

The preacher thought it time to secure a lot for a church. He canvassed all the town; but none had a lot to give. One was offered away out, but was refused. Giving a back-lot for a church had played out with me. In the fall I bought a lot and a cabin. It was about one hundred and fifty feet deep by fifty wide. the town Company undertook to change the survey and take about tow-thirds of it from me under pretense that the county had a claim on it. They even under-took to fence it up: but when they began, I began too. I hired men to put in posts; but as soon as I turned my back they came to my men, within forty feet of my house, and told them they would send an officer and arrest them. My hands quit.

After dinner I went to digging post-holes myself. The Town Company's representative came with two witnesses and warned me to stop work. I never laid down my pick, but told him I was a man, and a law abiding man at that, and his were as good witnesses as I wanted; and I warned him before them to keep off my lot and to leave. By this time the witnesses stated, and he followed. He was the company's commissioner, and was very good when he found he could not bulldoze me. I gave half my lot to the trustees to build a church on.

We carried a subscription paper till I got enough to start on; and went to the saw-mills, got all the lumber I could, and we went to work and put up a house twenty-five by fifty feet, posts sixteen feet high, and enclosed it. I nailed the first shingle, and did more work on it than any other men.

Continued