Camp Bird Mine: The Gold That Built a Mansion in Washington

In eighteen ninety-six, an Irish immigrant named Thomas Walsh was prospecting in the Imogene Basin above Ouray when he found an ore body that most miners had written off. He bought up the claims, developed them into the Camp Bird Mine, and began pulling out five thousand dollars a day in gold ore at a time when most San Juan mines were shuttering after the silver crash.

Over the next few years Camp Bird became a major gold producer in Colorado. Walsh sold it in nineteen oh two for five point two million dollars, a sum that made him one of the wealthiest men in America. He used that fortune to build the Walsh mansion in Washington, D.C., and to support medical research and public libraries. The mine continued producing for decades under various owners. Walsh is remembered in Ouray for the gold, and his daughter Evalyn Walsh McLean later wrote about the mine in her autobiography. The mine sits in the San Juan Mountains between Ouray and Telluride. From eighteen ninety-six to nineteen ninety it produced about one and a half million troy ounces of gold and four million troy ounces of silver. Walsh died in nineteen oh nine. Evalyn's autobiography was titled Father Struck It Rich, and she is also the woman who later bought the Hope Diamond.