The USGS files these as the Crystal Peak Topaz Prospects, in Teller County at about 2,743 metres, and the commodity list is a fair description of what draws people: gemstone, semiprecious gemstone, and tin.
The record is blunt about what was being dug and why. These are pegmatite deposits, and the comment in the file says they were mined for their gem-quality topaz, smoky and amazonite, with cassiterite reported only as a minor occurrence in the pegmatites. Discovery and first production are both logged as 1865, and the area is described as having intermittent mineral production ever since.
The rest of the material list reads like a pegmatite that ended rich in volatiles: columbite, fluorite and alabandite alongside the ordinary granite minerals, microcline, orthoclase, albite, quartz, biotite and muscovite, with kaolin and goethite from later breakdown.
The ore body is recorded as reaching the surface with a mapped area of about a hectare, which is a reminder that this is a scatter of prospects across a hillside and not a single working.
That trio, topaz with smoky and amazonite out of the same pegmatite, is the combination that made the Pikes Peak batholith a name among mineral collectors.
A warning that applies to the whole district: this is a patchwork of private claims, public land and long-standing collecting areas, and the boundaries are not obvious on the ground. The USGS record tells you a prospect exists at a coordinate. It does not tell you who owns it, and finding that out is your job before you arrive with a shovel.
Topaz, amazonite, smoky quartz
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
