The Homestead Museum in Cripple Creek, Colorado was once a popular brothel by Kathy Alexander. By the time the town was officially incorporated in 1892, there were already over 5,000 Gold Camp residents. Soon, they settled with the name of the creek.
At first, the two men wanted to call the new town Fremont, but the post office officials rejected the name as there was already one by that name in Colorado. The camp took its name from the creek. The land where the many claims were being staked was owned by Denver real estate men Horance Bennett and Julius Myers and they soon platted 80 acres for a townsite, selling lots to the many miners and their families flooding the area. Tents and cabins began to spring up and a mining district was organized in the fall of 1891. The creek, which flowed through the camp, had already been named by area cowboys because so many cattle were lamed while crossing the rocky stream. Word then spread and men began to stake claims all over a six square mile area surrounding what would soon be the Cripple Creek Gold Camp.
In a drunken stupor, the foolish man sold his mine for $500 cash. By the summer of 1891, Womack struck a very rich vein and hurried to Colorado Springs to celebrate. In December 1890, a man named Bob Womack really did discover gold, but miners were slow to respond, remembering the hoax of six years prior.
