Clear Creek and the Canyon
Near Idaho Springs, Colorado
The stream rushing alongside the highway is Clear Creek, and it has done more to shape this place than any human ever could. Clear Creek runs about sixty six miles from the Continental Divide near Loveland Pass eastward down to Golden, where it finally emerges from the mountains. Above Idaho Springs it flows through a broad glacial valley, but right around town the valley pinches tight, the gradient steepens, and the water speeds up as it enters the narrow gorge of Clear Creek Canyon.
Over the last several million years, the whole region rose as the tectonic plates shifted, and the faster, steeper creek sliced this deep canyon into rock that is well over a billion years old, among the oldest exposed stone in Colorado. That same rock held the gold. The creek did the first sorting, tumbling flecks of gold out of the veins and concentrating them in gravel bars, which is exactly what George Jackson found.
The canyon has also been the great highway of the mountains. Its walls channeled the wagon roads, then the Colorado Central Railroad, then Highway Six, and finally Interstate Seventy, all threaded through the same tight passage that the creek carved.
