Audio Excerpt

Created in November of 1859, General George E. Spencer chose to name the town after John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, aka the 14th Vice President of the United States. He did this in hopes of flattering the U.S. government into giving the town… a post office.

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You know, a post office… that place we take for granted and largely avoid having to go to. General Spencer wanted one for his town so badly that he named the whole town after the guy that could make it happen.

But then, things went south -- after the Civil War broke out in 1861, the then former Vice President Breckinridge sided with the Confederates, sending Spencer’s pro-union Breckinridge into uproar. Its citizens demanded that the town’s name be changed.

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And it was changed… but barely. They changed the first ‘i’ in the name to an ‘e’ and it’s pronounced exactly the same. Those rebels! I guess activism wasn’t quite what it is today. Beyond the circumstances of its name, Breckenridge was founded to serve gold miners working deposits along the Blue River, during the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush of 1859. At that time, a certain

method of gold mining was employed, yielding literal buckets of gold -- can you guess what this method was: Was it…

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A - Moose Dodging, B - Hydraulicking, C - Pan Scouting?

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In order to dislodge rock material and shift sediment, high-pressure jets of water were used by miners to blast their way to the fortune and fame -- this method is called Hydraulicking, or Hydraulic mining.

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Who said moose dodging? What would that even look like?! Don’t get me wrong, if the men from our history could figure out a way to use a moose to do their dirty work, they would have!