During the brutal winter of 1848, John Fremont led an expedition in search of a plausible railroad route cutting through the central Rockies to California. In the La Garita Mountains, the group suddenly found themselves snowbound; 100 of their mules froze to death in a single night. To survive, the expedition cut timber and built a huge bonfire, subsisting on mule meat, and rumor has it—each other. The expedition of 36 men was whittled down to a few survivors rescued by Kit Carson.
Creede’s boom lasted until 1893, when the Silver Panic hit all of the silver mining towns in Colorado. The price of silver plummeted and most of the silver mines were closed. Creede never became a ghost town, although the boom was over and its population declined. After 1900, Creede stayed alive by relying increasingly on lead and zinc in the ores. Total production through 1966 was 58 million troy ounces (870 metric tons) of, 150 thousand ounces (4.7 metric tons) of, 112 thousand of, 34 thousand metric tons of zinc, and 2 million metric tons of copper.
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