Caribou

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A prospector named Conger discovered placer gold downstream from Caribou in 1861. He eventually followed the gold up Coon Trail Creek, and discovered the first silver vein in what later became the Caribou district.

Caribou was established about 1870 to house miners from the Caribou silver mine. The town had one church, three saloons, a brewery, and its own newspaper, the Caribou Post. The Caribou mine was sold for $3 million in 1871 to Dutch investors, but the new owners found that the best ore had already been removed. The mine struggled until 1876, when controversial Colorado entrepreneurs Jerome B. Chaffee and David Moffat bought the mine, incorporated it, and sold shares in New York. A fire burned down the town in 1879. In 1893 the decline in the price of silver at the end of the Colorado Silver Boom further depressed the town, and by the 1920s, Caribou was home to fewer than 100 people.