Daniel Chessman Oaks
Table of Contents
Early Life
Daniel C. Oakes was born on April 23, 1825, in Carthage, Maine, the son of Jonas Oakes, a surveyor, and Zabrina Bradbury Oakes. The family moved frequently during his childhood—first to Galion, Ohio, where his mother died, then to LaGrange, Indiana, and eventually to DeWitt, Iowa, where young Daniel resumed his schooling and his father returned to surveying work. After his father remarried and settled in Glenwood, Iowa, Daniel maintained strong ties to DeWitt, where he began working in retail and purchased his first property—a corner lot on Main Street.
Westward Ambitions and the Gold Rush
Drawn by opportunity, Oakes took surveying and masonry work in Plattville, Iowa, near his father’s new home, where he recognized the commercial potential of the area’s railroad and river access. Following his father’s death in 1847, Oakes returned to DeWitt to raise capital for development in Plattville—plans that were interrupted by news of the California Gold Rush. In early 1849, Oakes and his friend Abram Walrod formed the Sacramento Mining Company with backing from Iowa investors and set out for California.
The journey west took them along the Platte River through Nebraska and Wyoming, around the Great Salt Lake, and into California’s Feather River country, where they worked placer mines for nine months. Their return journey proved disastrous: a paddlewheel steamer broke down in the Pacific, leaving the men adrift for ten days before they reached land. Oakes eventually returned home with roughly $4,500 in gold and property sales—a sum worth over a million dollars today.
Marriage and Pacific City
In 1853, Oakes married Olive Martin, and the couple settled in Pacific City, in Mills County, Iowa, where Oakes began surveying, platting, and developing the town with backing from investors including Dr. William Street. The town grew rapidly, but within five years capital ran short, prompting Oakes to look toward newly discovered gold deposits in Kansas Territory.
Kansas Territory and the “Pike’s Peak Hoax”
In 1858, Oakes led an outfitted party—including Abram Walrod, Henry Graham, George Pancoast, and Charles Miles—to the gold fields, where they encountered William Green Russell and his group of Georgia prospectors who had made the original strike. Recognizing the greater opportunity in timber to supply the growing population, Oakes partnered with Luke Tierney, contributing a section called A Guide to the Route to Tierney’s book on the South Platte gold discoveries. Published back in Pacific City, the guide became widely distributed—and widely blamed when many prospectors found less gold than expected. Returning to the territory with a steam sawmill, Oakes and Dr. Street encountered furious former miners and even came across a mock grave marker denouncing Oakes as the author of a “Pike’s Peak Hoax.” The two men kept their identities secret and pressed on.
Building Colorado: Sawmills and Denver
Oakes and Street established their sawmill operation first at Riley’s Gulch (later renamed Oakville in his honor), and after losing that mill to flooding, rebuilt at Huntsville, named for a neighboring rancher, Alexander Hunt. The mill became highly productive, at times producing 12,000 board feet of lumber daily and paying wages well above the norm for the era. Oakes later opened a lumberyard in Denver at 5th and Cherry, supplying much of the lumber used in the city’s early construction. He built a home in Denver near the mill and assisted early Denver leaders William Larimer and Hiram Bennet with surveying and settlement work. During these years, Oakes formed close friendships with frontier figures including Kit Carson and Jim Baker.
Territorial Politics and Public Service
When Colorado became its own territory in 1861, Oakes shifted increasingly into public service. He served as a Colorado Vigilante under Governor Gilpin, helping maintain order, and later assisted in organizing the first Territorial Legislature under Governor John Evans—helping establish the territory’s first seventeen counties, roads, and laws. He counted among his close associates key figures such as Jim Baker, Kit Carson, Larimer, and Bennet, all of whom he credited with shaping the territory’s early direction.
Indian Affairs and the Sand Creek Era
Oakes’s relationships with Native peoples, particularly the Ute Nation, were central to his later life. During the turbulent period surrounding the Sand Creek Massacre, Oakes’s Huntsville settlement built a defensive structure—Fort Lincoln—that sheltered local families for weeks amid rising tensions with the Utes, Kiowas, and Cheyenne. He credited Chief Ouray’s diplomacy with preventing further bloodshed in the region.
In 1865, with the backing of Hiram Bennet, President Andrew Johnson appointed Oakes as an Indian Agent. He worked extensively with the various bands of the Ute Nation—including the Northern Mountain Utes under Chief Jack, the Southern Mountain Utes under Colorow, and others—and played a role in establishing the White River Agency in 1869 and the Middle Park Agency. Alongside Bennet, Alexander Hunt, and General McCook, Oakes helped facilitate diplomatic trips to Washington, D.C., aimed at building trust between the Ute Nation and the federal government. He regarded Chief Ouray as instrumental in securing a peaceful, though difficult, transition for the Ute people to lands in Utah.
Family and Legacy
Oakes and his wife Olive eventually settled permanently in Denver at a home on Curtis Street, though his agency work often kept him away. The couple raised eight children together. Oakes died in early 1887 at his Denver home and is buried at Riverside Cemetery in Denver alongside members of his family.
Remembered as one of Douglas County’s earliest pioneers and the founding figure behind the mining community of Auraria, Oakes left behind a legacy summed up in his own oft-quoted words: “The good are always great, the great not always good.”
The Life and Times of DC Oakes
By Larry Schlupp