Nichols estimated that it gets about 100 visitors a day in the summer. After they got it built, they turned it over to the town, which administers it now. With some grants and other coöperation from the town, county, state Division of Wildlife, Denver Water Board, US West, and the Upper South Platte Water Conservancy District, the dredging spoil zone became a fishing hole with some restrooms, paved trails, and picnic tables, connected to town with a bridge and trail. Fairplay didn’t have many recreational facilities, so that looked like the way to go.” “Here we had this old mining site next to town,” he recalled, “and we wondered what we could make of it. He’s the director of tourism and community development for Park County, and he has a background in mined-land reclamation. The dam had been breached for years before Gary Nichols examined it in 1990. This made the water very turbid, to the annoyance of downstream users, and so the dredging company erected a small dam to create a pond so the silt could settle. It became a recreation site a decade ago, although “development” started in 1922, when huge bucket dredges began chewing up miles of the river bed to extract placer gold from the gravel. It’s a small lake, along with trails, picnic tables and fishing sites, along the Middle Fork of the South Platte River. 285, and if you turn off there, more signs will lead you a couple of miles to some sand and water tucked into a big ravine behind Front Street. Sponsored by the Colorado State Library, the regional library systems of Colorado, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.Ĭolorado School of Mines.Recreation – August 2000 – Colorado Central Magazineįairplay is nearly two miles above the tides, so it’s not an obvious spot for a beach - but there’s the FAIRPLAY BEACH sign on U.S. Dredge operations were suspended in 1942 and resumed in 1945, and finally shut down permanently in 1952. The dredge mined up to 15,000 cubic yards of placer gravels per day and could reach to a depth of 105 feet. The stacker then deposited the tailings along the river channel. The dredge had over 100 buckets that fed gravel from the river bottom into the dredge's interior where it was milled. The Fairplay dredge was electrically operated and was the largest dredge in Colorado. The South Platte Dredging Company used it to mine the Fairplay placer along the South Platte River starting in 1941. This dredge boat was built by the Yuba Manufacturing Company and shipped to Fairplay, Colorado in sections. The Mosquito Mountains are in the background. Photograph showing a distant view of the Fairplay dredge, Park County, Colorado. Held in the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum.
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