Tom's Baby: The Largest Gold Ever Found in Colorado
Near Breckenridge, Colorado
On Farncomb Hill, in the mining ground just northeast of town, a prospector named Tom Groves made a discovery in July of eighteen eighty-seven that has never been topped in this state. Working the Gold Flake Mine with his partner Harry Lytton, Groves pulled from the rock a single massive specimen of nearly pure gold. It weighed about thirteen and a half pounds, roughly one hundred fifty-six troy ounces of gold.
The story goes that Groves was so overcome that he wrapped the lump in a blanket and cradled it like an infant as he carried it down to town, which is how it earned its odd and tender name, Tom's Baby. Then something strange happened. After the specimen was shipped off to Denver, it simply vanished from the record for decades.
No one knew where it had gone. Decades later, the story goes, a determined local historian tracked it down in a bank vault. Today Tom's Baby is on public display at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
It is widely described as the largest gold specimen ever recovered in Colorado.
