Fast-forward to the 1800s, through the trajectory of cultural change, the rocks of the Hartville Uplift were discovered to contain copper and iron resources. In the early 1900s, up sprung the mining town of Sunrise and just outside of the company-owned town, the rough and tumble town of Hartville, the oldest incorporated town in Wyoming.

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Between 11,500 and 13,000 years, it is considered one of the oldest mining sites in North America. Discovered at the historic Sunrise Iron Mine, near Hartville, red ochre mined by Paleo-Indians was used as a pigment. Similar red ochre has also been recorded at prehistoric burial sites around the world.

Archaeologists and geologists have collaborated to better investigate the source of the chipping material. At the Sunrise Mine they noted a rich deposit of chert, jasper, and quartzite, materials commonly used to create tools and projectile points. The agate material may have resulted from a mass movement of rock, or by water movement along faults in the area

Prolific archaeologist, Dr. George Frison is a world-renowned expert on Clovis points and Paleo-Indian archaeology.

The Clovis Culture

Mining and mineral development form a bridge between the ancient and modern peoples of the Hartville Uplift. Just as Native Americans mined red ocher from the iron deposits and dug thousands of tons of quartzite and chert for tool-making and trade, copper and iron ores provided the major impetus for development of the region by European and American settlers during the 19th century.

The short-lived copper boom between 1880 and 1887 gave start to the founding of Hartville in 1881. With a good water supply at Indian Springs in what is now the town park and 75 miners working at the Glory Hole about one mile east, Hartville quickly became the primary rough-and-tumble mining camp of the area. Just as quickly, the boom went bust as the price of copper dropped, freighting costs (by mule train) were high, and the copper veins played out. By 1887, copper mining had mostly ceased. However, miners began prospecting for other ores and discovered iron ore beneath the copper layer at the Glory Hole. By the late 1890s, vast iron-bearing rocks about eight miles long and three miles wide had been documented, with the most productive areas centered around Hartville and the old copper Glory Hole, now known as the Sunrise Mine. By 1898, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. had leased nearly all the claims in the area and eventually purchased the property in 1904. They invested in building a railroad from the mine through Hartville and south to Guernsey for shipping the ore to the smelter outside of Pueblo, Colorado and built the company town of Sunrise next to the mine.

This proved to be a boon to Hartville, as private business was banned in Sunrise. By 1900, Hartville had nine saloons and two dance halls near completion, with a lodging house under construction. The town was run by the saloon-owners and offered alternative goods and services to the company store in the well-ordered community of Sunrise. The saloon keepers incorporated Hartville in 1901, and it remains the oldest incorporated community in Wyoming. There were some trappings of civilization, including a school that opened in 1901, a graded main street in 1907, streetlights, public garbage collection and a privately owned telephone service in 1910 to 1912, and a new jail in 1913. However, gambling and prostitution remained the primary sources of income for the community until about 1915. Hartville’s peak population reached 776 in 1900 and included Italian, Greek, Scandinavian, English, Middle Eastern and Japanese emigrants. Soon after, the population began to drop as the Sunrise community grew. The Sunrise Mine eventually closed in 1980, and today only 62 residents are listed on the census. The wood frame and masonry buildings and quiet streets offer only a hint of the wild times here during the early 20th century.

Copper ore was mined in the district from 1880 until 1887, with iron production by Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. (CF&I) beginning at the Sunrise mine in 1898 after a 10-year period of prospecting and exploration.

Frey (1947) described the country rock surrounding the iron ore as schist and an impure, hematite- and limonite-stained flint and interpreted the iron ore to be a replacement of the schist. Lenticular bodies of red iron ore are enclosed by schist, immediately above the uppermost limestone of the older Precambrian rocks; a thin layer of iron-stained, siliceous schist separates the iron ore from the limestone. Frey (1947) described two varieties of iron ore: fine-grained, red, generally schistose, and soft, referred to as “paint ore” or ochre, and fine-grained, dark bluish-gray, hard, compact ore with a smooth fracture, referred to as “blue ore,” which is the more valuable of the two. The “paint ore” has a deep red hue, is somewhat greasy to the touch, and leaves a rusty, metallic stain on contact. The ochre contains 57 percent Fe2O3, while the “blue ore,” is a dense, bluish-black hematite with a rusty surface that yields about 89 percent Fe203.

Upon their arrival in the late 19th century, settlers in the Hartville area found a landscape pocked with pits, craters, trenches, and tunnels and littered with reject material. The massive nature of the excavations led to the assumption that Spanish conquistadors prospecting for gold were responsible, hence the name “Spanish Diggings”. The area attracted the attention of the Bureau of American Ethnology, the Field Museum of Chicago, and later the National Geographic Society and University of Wyoming. Scientists who visited the area quickly debunked the Spanish myth and realized that the extensive excavations were the result of stone quarrying by Native Americans, in search of high quality toolstone.

Artifacts made from Spanish Diggings quartzites and cherts have been found across Wyoming and throughout the Northwestern Plains. Native Americans quarried materials in the Hartville Uplift during Paleo-Indian times (ca 12,000 years ago) and continued mining until the Historic Period. Large ceremonial bifaces made of Mississippian age cherts, possibly from the Spanish Diggings, have been found in Hopewell burial mounds as far away as LaCrosse, Wisconsin. This find points to the important role the Spanish Diggings quarries played in the economic and social aspects of Native American cultures for thousands of years.

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