Surviving in Ashcroft Overcoming Isolation

Transportation and communication were the lifeblood of a mining community. For a new camp to survive, it had to overcome isolation as quickly as possible.

Roads were necessary to haul supplies into the camps and valuable ore out to the processing plants. Toll roads, toll bridges and stagelines sprang up immediately. By 1881, the Carson Brothers Stage Line was running on the newly completed road from Ashcroft to Buena Vista with a fare for wagons drawn by two animals set at $2.00. Telegraph lines were also important in order to advertise the success of the mines, attract investors and promote the camp. Ashcroft’s two newspapers, the Journal and the Herald needed the telegraph to get news from the outside world.

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Naturalist Note:

Miners‘ cabins were often visited by weasels, which were welcomed as very effective mousers. Weasels lived solitary lives because their prodigious appetites required large territories free of competing weasels. © Ajax Design | Art Burrows Illustration