The Creede historical mining district was discovered by Nicolas Creede, who in 1889 yelled "Holy Moses" upon finding the now famous Holy Moses Vein on East Willow Creek. This, along with the Amethyst Vein (the richest in US history) on West Willow and the Bulldog Vein in Windy Gulch, makes up the silver ore bodies of the Creede Mining District.

Overnight a town of 10,000 people sprang up. By 1890, a million dollars worth of silver was being shipped out every month. Creede was the pinnacle of 1890's boom towns and drew such famous (or infamous) American figures as Bat Masterson, Bob Ford (the man who killed Jessie James and who was murdered in his own Saloon west of Main street in Creede), Frank James (Jessie’s brother), Soapy Smith (who was later shot dead in a gunfight at Skagway Alaska), Poker Alice Tubbs, Calamity Jane, and many more.  On and off for nearly 90 years, depending on the price of silver, mining continued. But things finally ground to a halt in 1986 with the closure of the Homestake mine.

Now the glory days of silver mining are probably gone forever and the last sound of hammer on steel within the King Solomon, Holy Moses, Happy Thought, Commodore, and many other mines that tapped the riches of the Amethyst & Solomon-Holy Moses veins, has faded into the twilight of history.

Still, to the sensitive mind, this tapping of hammers, the jingle of money, the vaporous smell of cheap whiskey spilled on tables in tent saloons, the sound of player pianos and the laugh of dancing girls, the passion and drive to get rich, or at least be a part of the action, to be a part of history (that everyone sensed must soon pass away) can still be felt as a ghostly apparition in the half light of late evening on the streets of Creede.

Although the population rises to nearly 10,000 during the summer months, there are now less than 900 year-round residents in all of Mineral County.  Most of this enduring population consists of a people with a perspective as unique and valuable as the history and geography itself. This breed arose because of the toughness of mining activity and its accompanying atmosphere of passion and abandon. Even when mining shut down and high paying jobs were gone, many people chose to stay and adapt to the less favorable economic conditions because of their love for the country and the place they call home. These people seem to personify an ethic common to the American West known as "rugged individualism" and personify this, probably to a greater extent than others, because they choose to live in the high cold country at the top of the Rocky Mountains, and this creates a psychology all its own.