​Gilpin Historical Society 

Since you can't come to the history right now, we'll bring some history to you...

Colorado’s first lynching happened in Gregory Gulch on February 29, 1860.  W.W. Atkkins was the victim, but in the gulch he went by the alias Pensl Tuck or Pennsyl-Tuck, supposedly because both Pennsylvania and Kentucky claimed him.  The trouble started when Tuck appeared before a Miner’s Court and threatened everyone involved with it. After the trial adjourned Tuck unsuccessfully attempted to shoot Sheriff Jack Keleher, who returned fire and hit his target.  Tuck was taken to his cabin, where a doctor dressed his wounds and reported that the man would recover.  Rudolph Erdhmann, the doctor attending Tuck, later claimed that Tuck was deeply sorry for his actions, but other reports said that he continued to make threats against four men in Mountain City over the next few days.  Those reports said Dr. Erdhmann felt it was wise to warn the men, but Ehrdmann himself denied the story.  Whatever actually happened, feelings in the camps ran so high against Tuck that as many as 200 men approached his cabin one night and dragged him from his bed.  They forced him outdoors and hanged him from the limb of a nearby yellow pine.  The members of the mob, who had either blackened their faces or covered them with handkerchiefs, immediately scattered.  Tuck’s body, stark and foreboding against the white snow on the ground, was left hanging until the next day.  Some in the district objected to Tuck’s lynching, not because he did not deserve hanging, but because they felt he deserved a fair trial through established means of justice beforehand.  James Thompson, who visited Central City in August of 1872, wrote that a jar in a tobacco shop that he visited supposedly held a piece of three Tuck was hung from. He also wrote that most people agreed Tuck had frozen to death rather than dying from the hanging because they did not want to encourage lynching.