Gold Rush Roulette: Byers and Kellom’s Gamble on Frontier Fortune
It’s time for a tale that’ll knock your socks off faster than a mule kick to the britches! William N. Byers and John H. Kellom decided to cash in on the gold fever sweeping the nation and penned the ultimate guide for fortune seekers: “Hand Book To the Gold Fields of Nebraska and Kansas.” They went ahead and included Colorado in their guide, reportedly sight unseen, because why settle for two territories when you can mislead fortune seekers in three?
This thing flew off the shelves faster than a prairie dog with its tail on fire! It was 113 pages of pure, unadulterated frontier wisdom, published by the respectable D.B. Cooke & Company in Chicago, and promised to lead starry-eyed prospectors to riches beyond their wildest dreams – or at least to the general vicinity of where those dreams might be buried. It probably told you everything from how to pan for gold to how to fend off angry bears with nothing but a tin cup and your own inflated sense of manifest destiny.
While details are so far sparse on Kellom, we know that Byers was no armchair gold rush enthusiast. This man had more gold fever than a prospector with a thermometer stuck in a nugget. As a seasoned surveyor and engineer, he tramped across more untamed wilderness than a grizzly with wanderlust. He mapped the lay of the land, charted rivers, and probably stubbed his toe on more rocks than he cared to admit. Our intrepid hero was a bona fide Forty-Niner. So when Byers put pen to paper, he wasn’t just blowing smoke – he was drawing from a well of hard-earned frontier wisdom. Of course, that didn’t stop him from embellishing a tale or two. After all, what’s a little exaggeration between prospectors?
Well, hold onto your pickaxes! Byers was just getting started. He raced off to Colorado faster than you can say “Pike’s Peak or Bust!” But instead of panning for gold like every other sucker, he decided to mine the miners! Armed with a printing press and more chutzpah than common sense, he rolled into Denver to start the Rocky Mountain News. And so, we see how the partnership of Byers and Kellom, forged in the fires of ambition and tempered by the promise of gold, laid the foundation for a new era in the West. Their handbook guided countless souls to fortune (or folly), while Byers’ newspaper would go on to shape the very fabric of Colorado for generations to come.
Byers, William N., and John H. Kellom. Hand Book to the Gold Fields of Nebraska and Kansas: Being a Complete Guide to the Gold Regions of the North and South Platte, and Cherry Creek. Chicago: D.B. Cooke & Company, 1859.
History Colorado. “William Byers.” Accessed February 18, 2025. https://www.historycolorado.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/2017/william_byers.pdf
Denver Public Library Digital Collections. “William N. Byers and Family Papers.” Accessed February 18, 2025. https://archives.denverlibrary.org/repositories/3/resources/8333
Wikipedia. “William Byers.” Accessed February 18, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Byers
Colorado Business Hall of Fame. “William N. Byers.” Accessed February 18, 2025. https://www.coloradobusinesshalloffame.org/william-n-byers.html
Nebraska State Historical Society. “William N. Byers.” Accessed February 18, 2025. https://history.nebraska.gov/publications_section/william-n-byers/
