Campion, John F. d1848-1916

John F. Campion was a founding father and first President of the Colorado Museum of Natural History, now the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. His business acumen and generous donation of a world-class gold collection helped get the Museum off to a good start.

John Francis Campion was born in 1848 on Prince Edward Island, Canada. In 1862 the family moved to Sacramento, California, where young John, after a two-year stint in the United States Navy, learned to prospect for gold and silver. At age 20 he found his first significant silver mine in the White Pine area of eastern Nevada. Campion discovered and developed several successful mines in Nevada, where typically rich silver ore was associated with carbonate host rocks. In 1879 he moved to Leadville, Colorado, after hearing of rich silver discoveries in carbonate rocks in that area. After ten years Campion found success and formed the Iron Hill Consolidated Mining Company. In 1890 he bought the Little Jonny Mine, a fair silver mine seemingly about to play out. Campion consolidated the Little Jonny with one of his properties and tunneled through notoriously unstable ground to find a very rich gold deposit. This find set off the "Leadville Gold Belt" rush just as the price of silver was falling drastically in 1893. At Breckenridge, he found rich native gold deposits in his Wapiti Mine, the source of world-class crystal gold specimens that formed the core of his famous mineral collection. Because of Little Jonny and Wapiti, Campion and his investors became immensely wealthy.

...