Beautiful certificate from the Monte Cristo Mining & Milling Company issued no later than 1889. This historic document has an ornate border around it with a vignette of the Colorado state seal. This item has the signatures of the Company's President, M.M. Pomeroy (Mark "Brick" Pomeroy ) and Secretary, and is over 134 years old.
Certificate Vignette
Mark "Brick" Pomeroy (1833-1896), the President of this company, was born in New York and was raised an orphan. In 1860, at the age of 27, he started his first successful newspaper in Wisconsin. Pomeroy also wrote several philosophical books in the 1870s and became a popular lecturer. In 1879 he sold his newspaper business and moved to Denver, where he started a new newspaper called The Great West. This paper eventually had the largest readership in the Rocky Mountains.
He owned many businesses including several mining companies. He also built one of the largest mansions in Denver. Pomeroy's most successful mining venture was in Monte Cristo Gulch near the top of Hoosier Pass, Summit County, Colorado. The most famous mines in the area were the Monte Cristo, the North Star, the Arctic, and the Ling. His greatest undertaking was to build a five mile long tunnel between Georgetown and the western flank of the Rocky Mountains to Denver; a tunnel that would find rich veins along the way and later serve as a railroad tunnel. It was called the "Atlantic-Pacific Tunnel Co." An estimated $3,000,000 was raised and construction was underway. The giant project started well and one mile of tunnel was completed. Several ore bodies were found. Pomeroy's three story mansion in Denver became the talk of Colorado and contained a theater, art and mineral gallery, lecture hall, and imported furnishings.
The tunnel project eventually came to a halt when technical problems occurred, followed by the Bank panic of 1893. Once Colorado's most popular and wealthiest citizen, Pomeroy was left destitute and forgotten, dying a few years later in 1896. An important western figure who was dubbed "Colorado's Fabulous Failure" [Carl Swift]. History from Holabird and OldCompany.com (old stock certificate research service).
