Crow Creek's placer gravel was first worked in 1866, and local say that from then until 1906, at least half a million dollars in loose gold came out of the creek. Looking for the source of the gold led two of the first-year prospectors,John Keating and David Blacker, up into the hills to the district's richest mine, the Keating. Working the free-milling gold with a simple arrastra, the partners made $40,000 to $50,000 during each of the next four years. In 1870, a fifteen-stamp mill was erected, soon joined by four smaller mills. Four other mines were developed.

The lodes were good, but placer gold in Crow Creek, and plenty of water coming down from the mountains to work it, was the area's making. Sluicing and hydraulicking took over. A farmer named Reuben Rader donated land for a townsite, which was named in his honor and laid out with two streets named simply Front and Back. The International Order of Good Templars built a two-story frame lodge.

From the beginning, Radersburg had many families with more women (of the honorable type) than most mining camps of 600 residents. Their homemaking lives couldn't have been easy: during winter, water had to be purchased from a man who hauled it from Crow Creek. The butcher shop stood near the slaughterhouse and livery stable, with mosquito netting the only protection for its wares. The first log school house's dirt roof sifted silt down onto pupils' clothing.

The town supported fourteen saloons during its heyday. Although it had been the seat of Jefferson County, with the required courthouse and jail, Radersbug lost the honor to Boulder in 1883, three years after its population plummeted from 250 to only sixty-nine.

-from the eighth chapter, "Lewis and Clark Range"