The Griffith Family & The Founding of Georgetown
by Liston E. Leyendecker
© 2001 by the University Press of Colorado
106 pages
Price: 17.50

The Griffith Family and the Founding of Georgetown describes four years (1859-1863) in the lives of the Griffiths and how they attempted to tame an isolated wilderness and harvest its mineral riches. A decade before Georgetown came to be known as Colorado's "Silver Queen," George E. Griffith struck gold along South Clear Creek, prompting his family to establish a gold mining settlement there that never yielded the expected bonanza. But by the time they left in 1863 they had lain a legal and civic foundation that paved the way for Colorado's first major silver center.

No strangers to frontier conditions, the family used their expertise as miners, surveyors, land speculators, and lawyers to erect claims, stake their claims, and survey and lay plans for a new town. From these experiences they prepared a set of laws-included as an appendix in this book-that covered nearly every aspect of contemporary mining. While the Griffiths eventually left the settlement because of low gold production and sibling conflict, their legacy lives on in Georgetown's name (after George E. Griffith) and in the early laws they established, many of which still figure in the town's life today. This book will appeal not only to Western historians, but also to anyone interested in Colorado's gold rush and its mining and legal past.