Nestled in the rugged hills above Crested Butte, Colorado, the Cement Creek Caves have fascinated locals for over 150 years. Few people in the modern day know the caves once served as the secret roost for robbers, who held up unsuspecting prospectors and stashed their gold deep in the rocky caverns.
During the 1860s and 1870s, a mountainous mule route known as Red Mountain Trail connected the diggings of California Gulch near Leadville to Washington Gulch near Crested Butte. The hardy prospectors who traveled the narrow 75-mile route relied on pack animals to haul their supplies, or trooped up and down the rocky inclines on foot with blankets and tools on their backs. All were footsore, weary, hungry for food, and even hungrier for gold.
As Red Mountain Trail descended into the alpine valley of the Elk Mountains, it passed within about half a mile of the Cement Creek Caves. A faint spur trail leading to the caves took off from the route, though it wasn’t frequently used. Once wider wagon roads were cut through the surrounding areas in the early 1880s, Red Mountain Trail fell out of use. Its track was eventually reclaimed by nature.
In the summer of 1882, a party of rock hunters from around Crested Butte accessed the Cement Creek Caves in search of specimens for the National Mining Exposition in Denver. Gunnison County, in which Crested Butte is located, had secured a booth at the exposition to display the diversity of minerals found in its various mining camps and geologic features.
The rock hunters started their specimen search at the eastern entrance to the caves, where the narrow opening required crawling through a small passageway on hands and knees. The passageway opened into a larger chamber, where the party collected specimens of stalagmites, stalactites, and animal skeletons.
The floor of the cavern was covered with what the party described as “three or four feet of animal excrement.” One rock hunter named Pat Daly had brought a long drill used for hard rock prospecting. He guided it through the excrement until it struck the cavern floor. Daly said it should’ve felt solid as rock but instead sounded hollow. Accessing whatever space lay beneath the animal droppings seemed impossible, but the men’s curiosity about other secrets the caves might hold was piqued.
Satisfied that they had fulfilled their mission of collecting specimens for the mineral show, the men returned to their home base in Gunnison. But Pat Daly, the member of the party who had brought the mining drill, was haunted by an unexplained feeling he should have found a way to climb to the upper entrance of the caves and explore further.
When the feeling hadn’t passed after several days, Daly approached a man from the expedition named Mat Hayden about returning to the caves. He had already arranged for a proper setup of ropes, hooks, and other equipment. He just needed a partner to accompany him. Hayden didn’t think twice before saying yes, and early the next morning, the men set out for the caves on horseback.
Once at the caves, Daly and Hayden set up their riggings. Hayden ascended the hillside and entered the opening that had eluded the party of rock hunters days earlier. Moments later, he shook the rope hard and yelled to Daly, “For God’s sake, get in here!”
Daly quickly tied the rock drill he had brought to his belt and let it hang to his side as he worked his way up the rope and into the cave. What he saw inside left him momentarily paralyzed. It was Hayden, standing over a tattered rope ladder made of hide, and the skeletal remains of a man lying slumped atop a pile of moldy animal skins. Water oozed from a crevice in the wall ten feet away.
It was the most horrifying thing Pat Daly had ever seen. The skeleton wasn’t all white the way bones usually were but instead had pieces of shriveled skin attached to it. Strewn about the floor were frying pans, kettles, gold pans, picks, and shovels. Two old cap-and-ball revolvers like those used in the Civil War were on the ground next to the skeleton, along with a couple of rifles.
Hayden and Daly took a moment to process their awe before lighting their torches to explore deeper inside the cave. The walls were slimy from water seeping from a crevice overhead. Beneath their feet, the floor went downward while the roof stayed level until opening into a large void. A draft of chill air led the men to a narrow outlet. Daly tied his drill to the rope and lowered it down six feet until it struck something soft.
The men slid down the rope until their boots contacted a soft bed of animal excrement. By the light of their torches, they followed a current of fresh air that guided them into the same chamber Daly had visited on his previous expedition. Daly located the spot where his drill had dug through the droppings until contacting the rock floor that sounded hollow.
Scraping the droppings aside, the men uncovered a gold pan turned upside down. Beneath the gold pan was a piece of deerskin cut to fit a natural hole in the floor. Stashed in the hole and tied inside several moldy little bags and buckskin belts were 260 ounces of gold dust and nuggets, worth over a million dollars in the modern day.
A set of Troy scales used for weighing gold was also tucked in the hole, along with a number of pieces of United States gold and silver money. Daly and Hayden deduced they had just uncovered a forgotten robbers’ roost.
Based on the kit found in the cave, they believed the robbers had passed themselves off as placer miners to gain the trust of unsuspecting prospectors using the old mule trail connecting Washington Gulch to California Gulch and then robbed them at gunpoint. They likely worked back and forth, between Washington Gulch and California Gulch, hiding their stolen gold and coins in the cave along the way.
Daly and Hayden divided the gold between themselves. Daly kept the scale. They planned to build a hotel near the caves to attract tourists, but were never able to secure ownership of the land from the government. Hikers today can access the caves via a trailhead located along Cement Creek Road south of Crested Butte.
