Howes Gulch Mining District

The Howes Gulch Mining District — also called the Empire Mining District — sits near Bellvue in Larimer County, Colorado, within the boundary of Roosevelt National Forest. It's a small, historically modest copper-gold-silver district discovered in 1873, with ore built around chalcopyrite, pyrrhotite, and pyrite — a close match to the DB's chalcopyrite, gold, pyrite, and copper specimen list. Production was never large, but the Empire claim and others in the district were patented (converted to private property) between 1889 and 1900, which matters a lot here: even though the district sits inside a National Forest boundary, the specific mine workings themselves are very likely private inholdings, not open Forest Service ground.

The district sits near Bellvue, northwest of Fort Collins in Larimer County, within the Roosevelt National Forest. UNVERIFIED: specific road access to the historic workings — given the patented-claim status described below, this dossier does not publish turn-by-turn directions to a specific mine dump.

UNVERIFIED at the practical level, pending confirmed legal access. Historic small-scale hard-rock districts like this are typically picked over via old dumps and waste rock, which requires knowing who currently holds the patented claims.

Howes Gulch sits inside the Roosevelt National Forest boundary, but the historic mine claims (the Empire claim among them) were patented between 1889 and 1900, meaning the workings themselves are very likely private property surrounded by, not part of, the National Forest. Treat all specific mine sites here as private until proven otherwise, and don't rely on the National Forest boundary alone as evidence of public access.