All Local, All The Time
All Local, All The Time
Pocket Change
While some wildlife were hunted or trapped for food or pelts, predatory animals were often shot by farmers for protection of their livestock. Here, Niwot's Frank Burke has successfully eliminated at least one threat to his chickens.
The desire for a little spending money is universal among today's adolescents, and youngsters growing up in the nineteenth century were no exception. Wildlife was abundant in Boulder County. Rabbits, coyotes, skunks, and muskrats were plentiful along Boulder and St. Vrain creeks. While their parents hunted deer and elk to augment food supplies, young boys set traps for small animals and shot waterfowl to send to market.
Alonzo Allen and Walter Emery often hunted together on Lake Park in Longmont. The area attracted large flocks of ducks and wild geese - easy prey for two boys armed with muzzle-loading shotguns. Sometimes they sold their game to buyers from Denver, but more often it was sent to the mining camps west of Boulder. The boys received fifteen cents for each cottontail rabbit, while jackrabbits were worth a quarter, and large mallards brought fifty cents. Little by little, those coins added up to substantial spending money.
As a youth in the 1860s, Ernest Pease worked three or four traps near his home east of Boulder. He often caught muskrats on cold wintry days by resetting the traps each morning and evening. Sometimes they were still alive when he walked his trap line, but usually they were frozen stiff.
In the early 1900s, Evan Gould trapped muskrats in the lakes and irrigation ditches around Niwot. He carefully skinned them and paid an extra fifteen cents for insurance before shipping the pelts to a fur company in Denver. As he explained, the proper skinning technique was essential. "You had to be awful careful not to make a hole in `em," he said, "because they were just about ruined then."
There was no guarantee that only muskrats would be lured into his traps, however. "We got a skunk one morning," Evan chuckled, "and we went on to school thinking we had the skunk all (washed) off us. But we didn't, so they set us clear off in a corner where we wouldn't bother anybody."
During World War II, the U.S. Army began purchasing muskrat pelts to line aviator helmets. As their market price sky-rocketed to almost five dollars, more and more trappers gathered along the creek banks. And this time, they weren't just youngsters.
Today, geese and ducks still abound on local lakes and streams. But with the loss of suitable wildlife habitat in eastern Boulder County, other species of game birds have declined. Permits are now required for trapping, and young boys have found other ways to earn a little spending money.
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