The Cañon City Payroll Note

The silver workings along Grape Creek, seven miles above Cañon City, were not large by the standards of the San Juan camps to the west — no stamp mill, no company town, no rail spur. What the operation had was a reliable vein, a consistent crew of eleven men, and a superintendent named Elias Burt who had managed the site for three years without incident. The payroll arrived from Cañon City by wagon on the last Friday of each month, brought up the creek road by Burt himself and a driver named Ott. In September of 1889, the amount was four thousand two hundred dollars in silver coin, bagged and locked in a strongbox beneath the wagon seat. They had made the same run without trouble for thirty-seven months.

On the morning of the September run, before Burt had left for town, the day-shift foreman came to his office and set a tobacco tin on the desk. He had found it at first light, placed upright at the mouth of the main shaft. There was no footprint, no wagon track, no disturbance to the tailings pile that ran along the north side of the entrance. The tin had simply appeared there in the night. Inside it, folded once, was a piece of brown paper. The note was written in block capitals, with a steady hand and no apparent agitation. It read:

Burt rode to Cañon City and consulted with the Fremont County Sheriff, a man named Holloway. Holloway read the note twice and said that in his experience, men who specified coin and named a location had usually watched the operation for some time. He asked whether Burt had noticed anyone in the past several weeks who had no apparent business in the area. Burt thought for a long while and said no. Holloway said he could post a man at the crossing, but that the note had advised against it, and that he would not be responsible for what happened to the men at the workings if something went wrong. After two hours of deliberation, Burt authorized the payment.

The money was sealed in the same strongbox and left in the hollow of a downed cottonwood at the creek's first crossing on Thursday evening. Burt and Ott drove back up to the workings and did not return to the log until five in the morning. The box was there. It was empty and had been relocked. The key for that lock was in Burt's coat pocket, where it had been all night. He never publicly explained how the box had been relocked. When asked, he said he must have been mistaken about its condition when he found it, and that it had been open. Holloway put that statement in the record without comment.

Three workers were brought in for questioning over the following weeks. All three were released. The phrase “friends underground” was interpreted in two different ways by two different investigators — one took it to mean confederates working inside the mine; the other believed it was a threat of a different and less specific kind. Nothing came of either interpretation. No second demand was made. The mine continued its operations through the following winter without incident.

Elias Burt resigned his position in February of 1890. He gave no reason in writing. He took employment with a dry goods concern in Pueblo and was not involved in mining work again as far as the records show. The Grape Creek workings were sold to a Denver investment group in 1892 and closed within a year when the vein gave out. The hollow cottonwood at the first crossing is no longer standing. The $4,200 was never traced.