By Duane Vandenbusche The date was July 14, 1878, and Nicholas Creede was tired. The veteran miner from Indiana had been prospecting for two months in the South Arkansas River country and had found nothing. Then, about five miles east of a high pass, he hit a promising strike and named it Monarch. The discovery of the Monarch Mine led to a mining frenzy as hundreds of miners flocked in during the Spring of 1879. Creede left the South Arkansas area early, and a decade later found great silver deposits near the head of the Rio Grande River. The great ...
