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They are particularly visible from the north end of town. She remarked that, despite its distance from town, she could hear it “shrieking and clanging.” Those dredging operations left behind extensive gravel piles along the river. When noted ghost town author Muriel Sibell Wolle visited Fairplay in 1942, a dredge was busy two miles away. Post Office shortened the town’s name to one word in 1924. Fair Play became a supply and social center for area mines after placer diggings gave out, and in the 1890s, dredging of the South Platte led to a resurgence of activity that lasted well into the twentieth century. In 1869, Fair Play became South Park City, but the name lasted only five years, when it reverted to its earlier name. The post office opened in that name in the summer of 1861. When they moved on and found placer gold in the South Platte River, the men wanted a counter to the name Grab-all for their new diggings and decided upon Fair Play in rebuke. Sponsored by the Colorado State Library, the regional library systems of Colorado, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.Ĭolorado School of Mines.When prospectors came to the early South Park diggings at Tarryall, a now-vanished mining camp, they found miners there in no mood to share and so nicknamed the place Grab-all. Dredge operations were suspended in 1942 and resumed in 1945, and finally shut down permanently in 1952.

The dredge mined up to 15,000 cubic yards of placer gravels per day and could reach to a depth of 105 feet. The stacker then deposited the tailings along the river channel. The dredge had over 100 buckets that fed gravel from the river bottom into the dredge's interior where it was milled. The Fairplay dredge was electrically operated and was the largest dredge in Colorado. The South Platte Dredging Company used it to mine the Fairplay placer along the South Platte River starting in 1941. This dredge boat was built by the Yuba Manufacturing Company and shipped to Fairplay, Colorado in sections. Slide showing the Fairplay dredge boat, which mined the Fairplay placer, Park County, Colorado. Held in the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum.