This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/XY.2ADE/393.1.2.1.2 Message Board Post: Lois, I just remembered another parallel between Boulder County, Colorado and Australia. My great grandfather, Anderson Lafayette Mason, and his wife, Nancy Eleanor Foster, moved with their young son, my grandfather Charles Lewis Mason, to a new mining camp in Boulder County named Balarat. Despite the loss of one of the "l's" Balarat was named for the gold strikes in Ballarat, Victoria in the 1850s. My great grandfather discovered the principal mine in the Balarat district, the Smuggler, in 1875. Of course, the family never made any real money mining at Balarat or elsewhere in Boulder County, despite more than eighty years of trying. Best wishes, Rollie Schafer