By
Silvia Pettem |
PUBLISHED: March 11, 2016 at 2:24 pm | UPDATED: May 6, 2019 at 4:28 pm
Man’s disappearance remains unsolved mystery – Boulder Daily Camera
On April 23, 1916, John W. Gates walked out of his Coffman Street home in Longmont and never returned.
Left behind that fateful Easter Sunday was his wife, Delphia, and their three young children. Did the 33-year-old husband and father suffer an accidental death, was he murdered or did he simply walk away?
There were no leads, his paper trail turned cold, and his body has never been found.
The only known existing document to shed any light on the case is a claim Delphia filed under the Mother’s Compensation Act. Long before modern social services existed, the Colorado General Assembly had established this safety net that allowed individual counties to distribute funds to women who were “unable to properly care for their children.”
In her application, Delphia stated that her husband had left home “for no reason known to applicant who does not know of his where-a-bouts now and has had no word from him since leaving.”
She added that, before his disappearance, he had been “a good provider, a good husband, and a kind father” and that she feared he had met with an accident.
According to census records, Gates, an Iowa native, had moved to Colorado before 1900, when he was listed as a farm laborer. He and Delphia married in 1903 and settled in Longmont. In 1910, Gates’ occupation was listed as “teamster in transfer.” Family legend says that he delivered supplies to miners in the mountains in western Boulder County.
Also passed down through the family were stories of a mining partnership held by Gates and one of his brothers-in-law. A grandson grew up hearing that Gates might have been murdered by another brother-in-law who later served time in prison for other crimes.
In 1916, while World War I escalated in Europe, Boulder County (known at the time as the tungsten capital of the world) kept America’s allies supplied with tungsten, a metallic element used as a hardening agent in steel. One- and two-man mining operations were common, and safety concerns were minimal.
Mining claim-ownership records don’t list Gates or his brothers-in-law, but informal leases on the mines were common at the time. Perhaps Gates fell (or was pushed) down a shaft or become buried in a rock fall without any word reaching Delphia.
Another scenario could be that his remains were one of several unknown skeletons discovered in the mountains years later. One is of a skull found in 1938 at the base of a 35-foot cliff, in Big Thompson Canyon, in neighboring Larimer County.
One more supposition can be thrown into the mix. The day after Gates went missing was the first day of jury selection in the murder trial of William H. Dickens. Five months earlier, the prominent pioneer had been shot through the window of his home, less than one block from the Gates’ residence.
Dickens’ son was found guilty of his father’s murder but was acquitted a few years later on appeal. Meanwhile, an unknown suspect was thought to have gotten away. Dickens’ murder remains unsolved to this day. Perhaps if Gates had stayed in town, he could have provided key information.
