For a fee, these sharp-shooters would bag local game—which included elk, sheep, grouse, and bison—to sell to miners. “Professional hunters cost money,” says Dr. Welsh, “but they could deliver.” The hunters proved integral, and in time, increased their fees. Gold wasn’t the only way to make money in the mountains, after all: “Another way to make a fortune in Colorado was to mine the miners,” says Dr. Welsh.
In time, miners sought to flavorize and accessorize this newly accessible meat. Luckily, immigrant communities seeking work in these expanding boom-towns would soon introduce a range of much-needed ingredients and techniques. Previously unseasoned cuts of meat met Mexican salsas, rich with spicy green chilies; Some Chinese folks found work as mining camp cooks, introducing not only ginger, preserved fruits, and relishes, but also a variation of egg foo young that, some historians opine, would later become the Denver Omelet; Formerly enslaved and free Black people also served as cooks, incorporating their own particular brand of culinary know-how in the form of dishes like Son of a Gun Stew, which utilized just about every part of the cow.
According to Welsh, miners also began to follow Indigenous practices, becoming more reliant on what the land could provide. They incorporated foods like chokecherry (used both as a food and a medicine), pemmican (a mixture of fat, dried meat, and berries), and ground plum (a flowering plant) into their blossoming diet. They learned to fish for Rocky Mountain Trout as well, according to Dr. Welsh. The frigid waters of Colorado’s rivers made it a “softer, sweeter fish,” he says.
Pulling from a multicultural bench of dishes and ingredients, Colorado miners were eventually eating flavorful, nourishing meals—food that deserved a good drink to go with it. While miners drank beer and whiskey for the same buzz that some seek today, it was also a key part of their diet. According to Dr. Welsh, beer—then safer to drink than water—provided carbs to sate hunger and power miners through an intensive workday. “German brewers started coming [to Colorado] because they had recipes for hearty beer that didn’t have to be refrigerated.” In 1858, there wasn’t a single dedicated brewery in the Denver area; By 1892, there were 23 breweries peppered throughout the Denver area, one of which being a Rocky Mountain export you may recognize—Coors.