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EARLY REGIONAL HISTORY <br />The history of the rolling hills and plains of eastern Boulder <br />County has been largely eclipsed by the drama of the gold and <br />silver mining camps in the mountainous western half. But in some <br />respects it is essential to review that early phase of county <br />history to place Louisville in perspective. <br />It was gold that lured the party of Captain Thomas Aikins <br />to break off from the security of a larger group of prospectors <br />at Fort St. Vrain and head for the mouth of Boulder Canyon in <br />the fall of 1858. Within a few months, the party had discovered <br />the rich placer deposits up the canyon and the camps of Gold Run <br />and Gold Hill were born. What is truly remarkable, and also so <br />characteristic of this early period of mining activity in. the <br />west, was the speed in which towns were developed. Five months <br />after the Aikin party's arrival, the Boulder City Town Company <br />was organized to pan a community in the vicinity of that first <br />encampment at. the base of the mountains. Boulder City's location <br />was ideal as a supply center for the gold fields, and served a <br />function rat 1 ar to that of Denver and Golden for the Clear Creek <br />diggings. <br />Equalling the spirit of the miners who sought quick and easy <br />riches from the placers, a group of speculators in the town company <br />persuaded the organizers to sell lots at exorbitant prices on <br />the two sections of land they envisioned for the town site. The <br />plan soon proved a failure and might actually have hurt Boulder's <br />chances of attracting the business and population which Denver <br />and Golden were receiving. As the historian Amos Bixby, writing <br />in 1880, described the first years, "...for ten years the town <br />(Boulder) hardly held its own, and little of historical interest <br />occurred during this stationary decade...".1 This was due to <br />conditions typical throughout the mining regions of Colorado at <br />this time. The "easy" gold of the placers had quickly played <br />out, resulting in countless unsuccessful miners or "go -backs" <br />heading for homes in the east with dismal stories of hardship <br />and failure. Many turned to agricultural pursuits on the plains <br />and realized greater profits "mining the miners" as suppliers of <br />scarce food products. Many of the original settlers in the Louis- <br />