However, the rest of the group was forming their own suspicions as well. Upon seeing the knife, he began to doubt Packer’s abandonment story, though he didn’t share his doubts with anyone. On the way to Saguache, one of the men noticed that Alferd Packer was carrying a skinning knife, one he knew had belonged to a man named Frank Miller who had been one of the men Packer had been traveling with. Some of the other men who had made it to the Agency offered to take Packer up to Saguache, where he could buy supplies after he expressed a desire to return to his home in Pennsylvania. He also claimed to be broke, offering to sell the rifle he was carrying for a meager $10. Unwilling to wait for him, he said they left him. He said that he had gotten his feet wet one night and had subsequently frozen, making him slower than the others. When asked about his men on that April night after his solo arrival at camp, Alferd Packer claimed they had abandoned him. The guide was the last person to see the six men alive. Riled by the men’s dismissal of him, Packer formed his own group, convincing five men to follow him into the dangerous winter wilderness.ĭenver Post Archives/Getty Images A map of the route taken by Alferd Packer and his companions.Ī guide offered to take them as far as he could, but he had to turn back once the terrain got too rough for the horses. Three men snuck away from the camp, threatening Packer’s life when he attempted to follow them. Unfortunately, several of the prospectors were restless and unable to wait for the spring, anxious to get to their next camp. He even offered up space at his camp for the men to stay until the winter was over. Ouray warned the prospectors that they should hold off on continuing on their trek until spring, as the winter weather hit the mountains hard and makes traveling through the passes dangerous. On their way, they encountered Chief Ouray, a Native American chief whose tribe was known for showing kindness to the white prospectors who traveled through his lands. Six months prior to his arrival at the Los Pinos Indian Agency, Packer and a team of twenty other prospectors left Provo, Utah for Breckenridge, Colo., where the gold was plentiful and the prospecting good. The last person to see them together had left them all alive and well, but it seemed that by the time Packer arrived at his destination, something sinister had happened.Īs it turned out, Alferd Packer had killed and eaten them, claiming he had to in order to survive. The five-man group with whom Packer had been traveling through the mountains were nowhere to be found.

On April 16, 1874, prospector Alferd Packer arrived at the Los Pinos Indian Agency in Gunnison, Colorado, broke, freezing, and most notably – alone. Alferd Packer in his military uniform, while serving before becoming a prospector.

Alferd packer