Mining Presentation

Clean up

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Lesson One

Mining in Leadville

Colorado Gold Rush

Lesson Four

Lesson Two

Lesson Three

Dice Rolls

You’ve made your choice. Let’s see what happens to you!

Form Teams and Elect a Leader

LESSON ONE

Vocabulary

• Metallurgist: A scientist who deals with the nature and uses of metals. • Opportunity cost: The cost or value of what you give up when you choose one thing over another. • Ore: Rocks containing a valuable metal such as gold. • Panning for gold: Using a shallow pan and water to get gold out of a river. • Placer mining: Finding free gold that has been washed into streambeds. • Prospector: A person who searched for gold or valuable minerals. • Shaft: An opening or passage straight down into a mine. • Sledgehammer: A large, heavy hammer with a long handle. • Smelting: To melt rock that contains metal in order to get the metal out.

• Grubstake: Someone lends you money for supplies and gets 50% of what you find. • Hard-rock mining: Digging into the earth to find veins of gold and silver. • Lead: A very heavy and soft metal that has a gray color. • Lode: an amount of a mineral (such as gold or silver) that fills a crack or space in rock.

• Boom: When something valuable like silver draws many people to an area suddenly, and a town grows quickly to serve all the new people. • Bust: When the value of silver drops or the supply runs out, most people suddenly leave an area and the economy collapses. • Centennial: 100th anniversary of something: 100 years after the Declaration of Independence in 1776. • Confluence: The place where two rivers meet. • Drill steel: A long metal spike with a sharp end used to hand drill into solid rock. • Dynamite: A powerful explosive. • Economy: System in which goods and services are bought and sold. • Financial incentive: Something that makes people do something so they can make money

Read Aloud Roles

Roles for Oro City PlayMayor: Miner 1:Miner 2:Blacksmith:Narrator:Shoemaker:Horace Tabor:Will Stevens:Alvinius Woods:

Roles for Gold Rush Comics Farmer:Wife:Miner: Prospector:Newspaper:59er:

Prospector: A person who searched for gold or valuable minerals.The Fifty-Niners were prospectors!

Vocabulary Review

Mining Past and Present

Your Mission

Life Points

How did Mining Change Colorado?

Activate Time Machine

What was downtown Denver like in 1858?

Denver 1859: After gold is discovered

Colorado becomes a territory: It brought so many people and so much money to the area that Colorado became a territory in 1861.

How did mining change Colorado?

1. Choose an ID2. Introduce yourself - your name and where you are from.3. Scorekeeper writes names on score sheet.

Choose an identity

Keeping Score

LESSON TWO

Walking to Oro City, 1860

How dice rolls work

Scorekeepers: Section One

Prospecting in Oro City, 1860

• Boom: When something valuable like silver draws many people to an area suddenly, and a town grows quickly to serve all the new people.

Team leader selects a banker On the ID sheet, see how much money you get – “Money upon arrival.” Bankers write the correct amounts onto the score sheet in the money column.

Money

Opportunity cost: The cost or value of what you give up when you choose one thing over another. Financial incentive: Something that makes people do something so they can make money.

What financial incentive brought so many people to Colorado, and specifically to Oro City?  Why did they come?

Discuss

If you have less than $50, you need someone to lend you money for supplies (pick, pan, and shovel) and food. Let’s say Mary has $100 and John has $10.  Mary can lend John $50 for supplies (grubstake.) Now John owes her 50% of any gold he finds.  If he finds $10,000, he owes Mary $5,000. But if John finds no gold, he owes Mary no money, not even the $50 back.

Need a Grubstake?

What is the opportunity cost of grubstaking someone?

Share Money

People who have $100 or more should get change Example: $100= $50 + $50 Share money so everyone has $50 or more. Each person puts $50 for supplies into the bank.

Did you spend all your money on supplies? Do you think some prospectors risked everything so they could maybe get rich panning for gold? How is this another example of opportunity cost?

Are you broke?

Placer mining: Finding free gold that has been washed into stream beds.  Panning for gold= Placer mining! 

Panning for Gold

How to Pan for Gold

1. Scoop sand and gravel into your pan. 2. Let ice-cold water run over your pan as you gently shake it. 3. The water washes away the sand and gravel.4. Gold is heavy so it falls to the bottom.5. You may have to dig down through up to 12 feet of frozen gravel to get to the gold dust at the bottom of the river.6. At the end, when your pan is mostly empty, gently swirl it and look for a circle of bright gold.7. Repeat for 10 hours while standing in an icy river.

It’s July 1860. You’ve just arrived in Oro City. Many prospectors got here before you. There are only 4 claims left. 

Decision One: Panning for Gold

Available Claims

Choices

A. Choose one of the 4 available claims (on the map). Cost: $1. B. Buy a claim from the friendly miner who is selling it. You got to try it for one day and came up with some nice gold nuggets. He's only asking $200.00. C. There's a great claim that's just sitting there. No one has worked it for almost a week. Why not take that one?

Oro City Play

Add up points

LESSON THREE

Welcome to 1879

Colorado becomes a territory: It brought so many people and so much money to the area that Colorado became a territory in 1861.Environmental damage: forests reduced to ugly fields of foot-high stumps, loss of habitat, animals killed or driven off, streams diverted or turned upside-down in search for gold.Boom and bust cycle creates communities and brings in money but also leaves ghost towns.Mining created many millionaires in Colorado. Some, like Horace Tabor, brought political influence to Colorado.Denver grows: Towns like Denver developed industries like smelting and equipment manufacturing to support mining.New towns: Many of our towns today were created because of mining.Colorado becomes a state: Because of the people, money, and influence, Colorado became a state in 1876.

Ore:Rocks containing a valuable metal such as gold. Miners dug and blasted out ore. Lode: An amount of a mineral that fills a crack or space in rock. Miners looked for lodes in the mines.

It is March 1879, and the town of Leadville, Colorado has sprung up. Thousands of people are flocking to this new boom town to search for the rich deposits of silver and gold. The problem is that all the easy-to-reach placer gold is already gone. To reach the gold and silver deposits, you have to dig deep into solid rock. This requires a lot of men, and a lot of machinery. You have to drill holes in the rock, use dynamite to blow it into small chunks, and carry out the chunks to the surface. Any tunnels you build must be correctly shored up with timbers so they don’t collapse. You also have to run pumps day and night, because most of the gold and silver is below the water table, so those tunnels would flood without the pumps.All this costs a lot of money. Only large companies or people who struck it rich panning for gold can afford to own a mine.

Situation

1. Gather together $50,000 as a team and buy a mine. Choose one of the available claims on the claim poster. You will evenly split any profits you make. 2. Don't have $50,000? You can get a loan from the bank. At the end of section 2, you'll owe the bank your original $50,000 plus $2,500 interest. If you can't repay the $52,500 on time, you'll go bankrupt. 3. If you can’t afford to own a mine, you can work as a miner for $3 a day.

Discuss your options with your group.Decide what you want to do.    Buy a mine with the $50,000 you have as a   group.    Get a loan for $50,000.    Work as a miner and do NOT choose a square on the poster.Tell the teacher what you’ve decided.

In the Mines 1879

Scorekeepers: Section Two

Who is rich and who is bankrupt?

Was the opportunity cost of investing in a mine worth it? Would you take the same risk again? Why or why not? 

LESSON FOUR

Choose ONE activity. You can get up to three points per person:  1 for neatness1 for detail1 for historical accuracy/correct answers. You may choose to do more than one, but you can only earn points for one. Choices:1. Map skills2. Colorado becomes a state in 18763.   How did mining change Colorado?

Earn Points

You are now in 1886

Life in Leadville

Scorekeepers: Section Three

Economy: System in which goods and services are bought and sold. The miners made money, and they used that money to pay for things in the town. The town's economy was based on the mines. 

It is now 1886. You’ve experienced life in the mines, and found out if your claim was worth any money.  Some of the men who made millions in Leadville didn’t work in the mines - they owned shops.  Look at the map of downtown Leadville in the 1880s.  Choose which shop you would like to run. Your entire TEAM makes this choice together. You can pick any shop outlined in green. Only one team can own that shop.

Final Choice

Silver Boom Ends

What do you think happened to the town of Leadville when most of the mines closed?What do you think happened to the miners who used to work in those mines?What does the boom and bust cycle mean for the Colorado economy?

Colorado becomes a territory: It brought so many people and so much money to the area that Colorado became a territory in 1861.Environmental damage: forests reduced to ugly fields of foot-high stumps, loss of habitat, animals killed or driven off, streams diverted or turned upside-down in search for gold.Boom and bust cycle creates communities and brings in money but also leaves ghost towns.Mining created many millionaires in Colorado. Some, like Horace Tabor, brought political influence to Colorado.Denver grows: Towns like Denver developed industries like smelting and equipment manufacturing to support mining.New towns: Many of our towns today were created because of mining.Colorado becomes a state: Because of the people, money, and influence, Colorado became a state in 1876.Polluted air, water, and soil.