Frank Hall’s “State of Colorado,” Vol. IV, page 150, date 1895, has this to say about this mining camp:
“Schofield was surveyed and platted August 24, 1879, by J. Evans for a company composed of Daniel Haines, S. H. Baker, B. F. Schofield (for whom it was named), H. G. Ferris, Wm. Agee, E. D. Baker, A. H. Slossen, and G. Edwards. It is located on Rock Creek (now called Crystal River) between Elko Basin and Crystal City, eight miles northwest of Gothic, and some 40 miles west of Gunnison. It never was a camp of much importance, though a central station for a number of prospectors.”
General Grant is supposed to have ridden into Schofield on a white mule when he was campaigning for the U. S. presidency. Some of the prospectors tried to sell him some mining claims; being unsuccessful in that, they attempted to get him into a poker game and lose a claim to him so they could boast, “The President of the United States owns mining property in Schofield.” But they weren’t proficient enough in “stacking the cards” to deal him a winning hand. Wishing to show him the grandeur of the canyon they took him where he could look down into the Devil’s Punch Bowls and told him it was called the “SOB Canyon.” He agreed it was appropriately named but suggested a name that would be even harder to beat, “The Schultz Canyon.” Schultz being his political opponent at the time.
Schofield flourished for 12 or 14 years, then they decided the cost of transportation was far more than the mineral mined warranted, so in 1886 practically the entire town was moved down the valley four miles and Crystal City was started. Schofield became truly a “ghost town.”
It has always been easier to enter Schofield from Crested Butte than from Crystal, but now with the opening of a jeep road between Schofield and Crystal City all that has been changed and today a new Schofield is in the making. This time it is to be a 40-acre tract of modern buildings containing a 24-housing unit, a motel, and a store. None of the over-night constructed mining shacks this time, but modern log cabins built to withstand the elements at this nearly 10,000 foot elevation.
Leaving Schofield, the Crystal River goes through some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. It runs down a ravine 50 feet below the road, over boulders, through crevices, always in a hurry, it plunges over a ledge into the Little Devils Punch Bowl, then it cascades over another ledge making an impressive waterfall as it drops into the Big Devils Punch Bowl many feet below, where it seethes and swirls trying to find a way out to go on down the canyon.