Bob Womack
American
1844 – 1909
Bob Womack was the Colorado cowboy-prospector whose 1890 discovery of gold ore in a cow pasture at Cripple Creek launched the last great Colorado gold rush. The district produced hundreds of millions in gold, but Womack sold his claim early and died poor.
Biography
Robert Miller Womack was born on August 13, 1844, in Kentucky and came west with his family in 1861, in the wake of the Pike's Peak rush. He worked cattle on the high pastures southwest of Pikes Peak, and for nearly two decades he prospected the volcanic ground of the Cripple Creek valley, convinced it held gold despite the ridicule of neighbors and the lingering memory of the nearby Mount Pisgah salting hoax, which had made investors deeply suspicious of the district.
On October 20, 1890, Womack found the rich ore of his El Paso lode claim in Poverty Gulch, and assays finally proved him right. The rush that followed was the last great gold excitement in Colorado: by 1900 the Cripple Creek district supported tens of thousands of people and had become one of the most productive gold camps on earth, ultimately yielding on the order of half a billion dollars in gold and minting more than thirty millionaires.
Womack was not among them. He sold his interest early, for a few hundred dollars—by one oft-told account, $500 and a case of whiskey—and never profited from the bonanza he had found. He spent his later years in Colorado Springs, suffered declining health, and died penniless on August 10, 1909; he is buried in Evergreen Cemetery there. Colorado remembers him as the classic hard-luck discoverer, the man who found the 'world's greatest gold camp' and gave it away.