Existing comment:
Pioneers, Prospectors, and Paleontologists:
Newcomers searching for farms, gold, or fossils traveled to this land. In the late 1800s, the town of Florissant was crowded with dreamers. Pioneers came in search of homesteads, prospectors stopped on their way to Colorado's gold-mining camps, and paleontologists followed the allure of tales about the area's extraordinary fossils.
Prospectors on their way to the 1890s gold rush at Cripple Creek brought their supplies to Florissant by railroad, and joined lines of wagons on the Florissant valley road -- the only route to the mines until 1894. |