Nicholas Creede discovered a bonanza silver lode in Saguache County called the Amethyst Lode in 1889. Almost overnight the area teemed with 10,000 miners who established mining camps such as Amethyst, Weaver, Willow, North or Upper Creede, Bachelor, Sunnyside and Gintown (or Jimtown). Creede absorbed some of these towns and eventually became the county seat of Mineral County which was formed out of Saguache County in 1893. A poet and newspaper editor, Cy Warman, wrote this poem about Creede:

Here's a land where all are equal--
Of high or lowly birth--
A land where men make millions,
Dug from the dreary earth.
Here the meek and mild-eyed burros
On mineral mountains feed.
It's day all day in the daytime,
And there is no night in Creede.

The plat below shows the proposed city of Creede just before it was incorporated in 1892.