Volume 16 , Issue 19

NW Okie's Journey

Have you ever heard of Camp Relief at Riverfront Park, Denver, Colorado? By the fall of 1893, a tent city had appeared at Riverfront Park along the South Platte River. Tents were erected to shelter 800 or more persons, and used to large part of the indigent.

[The image on the left shows a Colorado map created in 1894 that shows accurate view of the Colorado mining camps, towns, rivers and mountains. It also shows communities (some ghost towns) that have long since vanished with the prairie winds under the smashing weight of countless winter storms high in the Rockies. A total of 1096 communities were located on this map, more than doubling the number of mining camps and ghost towns.]

The usual number, about 1,000 persons, were fed at Camp Relief. It was reported that several hundred unemployed were on their way from Leadville and Colorado Springs to Denver, because Denver was running soup houses and had Camp Relief that attracted the unemployed workers, miners from all directions>

Denver Depression of 1893

The Denver Depression of 1893 was an economic depression of Denver, Colorado that began in 1893 after the rapid drop in the price of silver and lasted for several years.

Despite the Coinage Act of 1873, Denver, Colorado enjoyed boomtown growth during the late 19th century after the discovery and development of numerous silver mines and the passage of the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890. Almost all economic pursuits in the state were tied in one way or another to the mining industry. Almost every Colorado resident had a vested interest in its success.

In 1893, those in the West lost the battle, as President Grover Cleveland oversaw the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. This brought about the prices of silver to fall, and the prices of silver continued to fall further due to an overabundance of the metal when silver was struck in Leadville and in the San Juan Mountains.

Back in 1893 Denver was already suffering economically due to several successive years of droughts and harsh winters that had hurt the agricultural industry. It was the Agricultural distress, coupled with the withdrawal of foreign investors and the over-expansion of the silver mining industries, that led Denver to experience its first economic depression of 1893.

During this 1893 depression the mining companies dropped their wages due to the overabundance of workers in the area. Employers could easily replace workers unwilling to accept pay cuts. Silver mines began to close due to the continued drop in silver prices, unemployed miners and other workers from the Colorado mountains flooded into Denver in hopes of finding work. As the price of silver dropped, people began to withdraw their money from banks in a panic. Many people in the West lost their life savings. As Denver banks closed, real estate values dropped, smelters stopped working, and the Denver tramways had trouble getting people to ride and pay their fares.

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