Tin Cup’s history begins very early in 1861. A prospecting party that consisted of Jim Taylor and two companions was camped on the Taylor River. One of the men brought back to camp some promising looking gravel in a tin cup which suggested the idea of a name for the region. They did a little placering; but in the next years the Civil War curtailed mining activities throughout Colorado. Nothing much happened in the region until the late 1870’s when strikes were made on the Gold Cup, the Tin Cup, the Anna Dedricka and the Jimmy Mack. Immediately there was a rush to the area, and in 1879 the town of Virginia City was surveyed and platted. [Illustration: Unknown, 1906; D.P.L.] TIN CUP’S TOWN HALL LOOKS CHURCHLY During Tin Cup’s revival a Town Hall was erected in 1906 and used for a variety of community affairs. The Town Hall was renovated and re-painted in 1950 by the Civic Association. Tin Cup had no church. [Illustration: Bryant McFadden, 1960] Frank Hall, one of Colorado’s most eminent historians, says in Volume IV of his comprehensive work that the surface ores were high grade silver, ranging from 114 to 600 ounces of silver per ton, and that all had admixtures of gold. In addition there were some excellent placers and gold lodes. In 1880 the Gold Cup mine sold for $300,000, and the town was firmly on its way. By 1881 when George Crofutt wrote his _Grip-Sack Guide of Colorado_ he reported that Virginia City had changed its name to Tin Cup to conform with the name of the region. He added that Tin Cup was a prosperous mining town of six hundred population with twelve stores, several hostels and one smelter. (He omitted the more flagrant business emporiums.) He stressed that game was very abundant and gave the fare for the daily line of sleighs running to St. Elmo. The Colorado Business directory puts the population figure for 1881 at five hundred, a hundred less than Crofutt. It is interesting to note on this matter of population that present-day writers have a habit of enlarging the figures enormously, especially so-called historians of ghost towns who generally add a zero to any number they encounter. If Colorado’s hundreds of mining camps had as many people living in them as is claimed by post-World War II writers, the state would have been as populous then as it is now. But it was not. Tin Cup, despite the fact that it has had enormous publicity through Pete Smythe’s radio and TV show of the same name and through the building of an amusement park west of Denver called East Tin Cup, must be seen in the same light. It was just another mining town, although colorful in its own way, and by the late 1880’s was very much in decline.