Empire: Colorado's First Silver Strike
Near Idaho Springs, Colorado
Empire began as a gold camp in the Clear Creek drainage during the Pikes Peak gold rush. Its post office opened in eighteen sixty-one as Empire City, and the name was shortened to Empire in eighteen sixty-six. The town sat in a narrow canyon below the Continental Divide and never got large. Silver came later, in eighteen sixty-four, and the boom that followed made Georgetown, just a few miles up the road, one of the wealthiest mining towns in the West.
