"They poured whiskey on the place where the shot hit me."

Today there's just a scrubby gulch with a dirt road running up from Leadville, but in the late 19th century you would have seen Stumptown here.

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Like many of the little mining camps that popped up on the prospect of instant riches back in the good old boom days, Stumptown was a rather rambunctious place to live. Do a quick search for "Stumptown" on ColoradoHistoricNewspapers.org and you'll find stories with such telling headlines as these:

STUMPTOWN SALOON ROBBED, MASKED MEN GET BIG ROLL.

LIVELY ROW IN STUMPTOWN, ONE MAN STABBED.

RIOT AT STUMPTOWN ALL OVER A BILL.

MURDERED AT STUMPTOWN.

Above Stumptown: This photo looks down into South Evans Gulch in the general direction of robberies, rows, stabbings, riots, and murders past. You can see the approach to Mosquito Pass in the background at the top.

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I found one story particularly interesting — MERRY DANCE ENDS IN ROW. It's obvious that the reporter had a lot of fun with this one:

Two men were shot at Stumptown at a dance held Monday night.

… There was a celebration at Stumptown in honor of the birthday of George Washington, but the father of his country ought not to be held responsible for it. There is a cosmopolitan population at Stumptown, composed of Austrians, Findlanders, Irish, Germans and people of half a dozen other nationalities. They are all patriotic citizens and the trouble Monday night is said to have arisen out of the endeavor of each nationality to out do the others in paying libatious tribute to the memory of Washington.

… About midnight there were signs of trouble, although the origin is somewhat clouded in the rather incoherent explanations given to the officers who went to Stumptown last evening to investigate.

Felix Devlin who was the most serious hurt gave perhaps the best account of the trouble in which he was injured. …

“Oi wint to th’ dure,” said he between groans at the hospital, “an’ just as Oi wint out another felly who had been t’ run out before, comes around th’ corner. He had a shot gun, he did, an’ he blazed away regardless. Oi don’t think he mint to shoot me, but Oi got it.

“They tuk me inside an’ tuke me coat off an’ me vest an’ hung thim on the’ wa-all an’ thin they poured whiskey on the place where the’ shot hit me. ’Twud ‘av felt better in me t’roat, but Oi guess they cuddent hit me mouth.”

Still above Stumptown, now looking up toward Ball Mountain and East Ball Mountain, and feeling glad to have better healthcare options for gunshot wounds.

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Incidentally, this same Stumptown of cosmopolitan patriots was briefly home to Margaret Tobin Brown and James Joseph Brown, who got hitched in Leadville in 1886.

Unlike most people who passed through Stumptown, these two managed to survive all the robberies, rows, stabbings, riots, and murders, and they ended up rich and famous.

J.J., through a bit of luck and a lot of clever engineering, helped the Ibex Mining Company strike crazy wild gold in the Little Jonny Mine right about the time the price of silver (and pretty much the entire U.S. economy) tanked in the Panic of 1893. The company made J.J. a 1/8 owner and, as a direct result, the Browns became insanely wealthy.

Margaret, through some funny quirk of fate, turned into a legend later in life for not dying when the Titanic went down in 1912, and also for her role in helping rescue survivors and organizing relief efforts after boarding the Carpathia. They called her the Unsinkable.

Many years later, her story inspired a musical called The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

"’Twud ‘av felt better in me t’roat, but Oi guess they cuddent hit me mouth."

Ahh, now THOSE were the good old days!

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