Tree removal for a safer, more healthy reflection

If you look at it like Mahatma Gandhi, “What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.” 

In the burn area of the Black Forest Fire, thousands of damaged and dangerous trees, are not only making the forest unsafe for people, but also unhealthy for the forest itself.

"Public health, safety and welfare are El Paso County’s chief priorities. All of these are affected by the free and unconstrained use of public property by El Paso County citizens. Hazard trees with roots, trunks and branches weakened by fire can easily topple, posing a serious safety risk to both people and property,"according to the county's statement about hazard removal on their site.
"The Black Forest Wildfire in June 2013 produced many such trees. The first step in making the public safe is for the County to begin removing trees that pose a hazard to the public. The county cannot remove all hazard trees in the burn area but is responsible for the areas that are owned by the county - the areas people use most. The first priority will be removing unsafe trees that are on and adjacent to county maintained roads and trails."
The site explains how hazard tree removal is funded:
• On July 26, 2013, the President declared the Black Forest Wildfire a national disaster. The county, along with Mountain View Electric Association (MVEA), provided estimated costs of the damages incurred and mitigation of dangerous situations to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The costs included hazard tree removal.
• FEMA will provide reimbursement to the county (and MVEA) for 75 percent of the actual costs incurred. El Paso County will pay for the remaining 25 percent.
United States Forest Service (USFS) and FEMA, along the El Paso County established the following criteria to determine which trees are removed.
If a tree is tall enough to fall onto or into a structure, a county-maintained road, or a county- maintained trail, or if a tree’s diameter is six inches or greater, and measured 4.5 feet above the ground on the uphill side of the tree, the tree will be removed.
The county-contracted crews will also remove a damaged tree if it is within county right-of-way, or within 60 feet of a county-maintained trail.
Dead trees, or those likely to die as defined by all needles and/or leaves are burned off; or the crown volume scorched is greater than 50%; or cambium kill circumference is greater than 50% at the base will be removed.
Ceres Environmental will perform the tree removal services and the county, with the assistance of True North Emergency Management, will oversee the work which began last week and will continue until done.
Hopefully, the work will offer a healthy, less-hazardous reflection of our public county property.

Help us to keep the Pass open

To many, it offers a path from one world to another. It has been for years.

"The pass includes the towns of Cascade, Chipita Park, Green Mountain Falls, Crystola, Woodland Park, and Divide. It skirts the north side of Pikes Peak through the Fountain Creek canyon west of Manitou Springs, and climbs 3,000 feet to its summit in Divide at 9,165 feet," by description of the Ute Pass Historical Society.

Now U.S. Highway 24 snakes its way up the the old Indian trail as a gateway to the mountains, and to slightly different ways, and a slower pace beyond.

The county of origin's name is even derivative. One of the original 17 territorial counties garnered the Spanish designation El Paso, or “the Pass” in 1861 when Territorial Governor William Gilpin asked the new territorial legislature to extend boundaries across the entire territory. In 1899, when Teller County was carved out, a portion of one county's namesake fell into another.

Today, "26,000 vehicles per day travel on this critical U.S. Highway connecting the Front Range to the mountains," according to a recent presentation to Congressman Doug Lamborn created by El Paso County officials.

The presentation notes that the Waldo Canyon Fire, which started June 23, 2012, near Colorado Springs in western El Paso County, killed two people, burned 18,247 acres, destroyed 347 homes, and has required more than $30 million spent on fire recovery and flood mitigation to date. That does not even consider the amount that the Colorado Department of Transportation has spent.

The problem in the Pass, of course, is there is no buffer zones between the canyons and communities and the ancient path is closed anytime the National Weather Service issues a flash flood warning.

El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark calls attention to an unprecedented coordinated regional effort and alphabet soup involved. The players striving to mitigate flood risk include El Paso County, U.S. Forest Service, City of Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs Utilities, City of Manitou Springs, Flying W Ranch, El Pomar Foundation, Coalition for the Upper South Platte (CUSP), Navigators/Glen Eyrie, Rocky Mountain Field Institute (RMFI), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), U.S. Congressional representation, U.S. Weather Service, just to name a few. The recovery group for 2013, spent more than $30 million and needs ongoing funding to continue and maintain completed projects.

As of September 2013, 45 detention basins had been created, 30,560 feet of reshaped channels worked, 2,383 derbis deflectors installed, and 89 hand treatments completed to reduce catastrophic events.

But this is what the collective recovery group has identified as what they need.

• Emergency Watershed Protection Program funds to initiate and complete mitigation projects.
• Funds to restore healthy forests and prevent catastrophic wildfires and damage to watersheds and communities.
• Aid for healthy forests and hazardous fuel reduction.

• Continuation of Good Neighbor Authority and Forest Stewardship Program under the Farm Bill, critical in mitigation projects.

• Fund (Hazard Mitigation Grant Program) needed to purchase private property that is repeatedly flooded to reduce long-term risk and insured losses.

Perhaps, with some success in securing these needs, the path from one world to another can remain open and accessible, as it has been for years.

Oxen team carries woman of history to final rest

"At two o'clock p.m., a funeral procession was formed, in which nearly every man, woman and child of the company united, and the corpse of the deceased lady was conveyed to its last resting place in this desolate but beautiful wilderness." 

__ From The Grave of Sarah Keyes on the Oregon Trail, by William E. Smith, 1936, Kansas Historical Society.

Penny May Burdick, of Larkspur, was carried by Ox cart Saturday, to her final resting place in Spring Valley Cemetery, and laid to rest among other notables in the historically rich, and beautiful grounds known for its Pikes Peak vistas and links to the past. Burdick, 67, died Jan. 30, 2014, after fighting a lifelong illness.
"Penny always loved Douglas County and appreciated her great grandmother's family history of coming to Castle Rock in 1885 from Staffordshire, England. When she was a child, her grandmother, Evelyn, would tell stories about living in the "Rock" as they drove down to visit relatives and that sparked a passion for the history of the area. Her grandmother played piano for barn dances and her Great Uncle Frank Bakewell was the Castle Rock Station Agent for the Santa Fe Railroad for many years," related the memorial program in her honor.
"Penny enjoyed history, children, loved animals, especially horses, and always had some kind of critter needing a home on the ranch. She was involved in many community organizations, serving on the board of directors for Praying Hands Ranch, she was a founding member of the Douglas County Historic Preservation Board, a 4H leader for Cherry Valley AG and was a superintendent for the Douglas County Fair. In addition, she served as President of Cherry Homemakers Home Extension Club and Larkspur Historical Society. At the time of death, she was still actively involved in researching historical properties, doing enactments for adults and children and nominating properties for the local registry. In 2011, the Douglas County Board of County Commissioners recognized Penny for her contributions in documenting Douglas County history."
David and Dandridge, two Oxen owned by Rollie and Paula Johnson, at Three Eagles Ranch, just over the Douglas County line near Monument, carried Penny the several hundred yards from Killin Chapel at Spring Valley Cemetery to the grave site. The cemetery is permanent home to Monument-area historical notables such as Patrick Murphy, Grace Best, John Hodgin, many Noes, and the Gwillim children.
Three Eagles Ranch is one of the few western ranches that raise American Milking Devon Oxen. The breed is now extinct in England and were down to just a handful in the United States until about 30 years ago. Efforts by the American Livestock Breed Conservancy and others have been able to increase the American herd to about 600 animals. The Johnsons, who began demonstrating their Oxen at Penny Burdick's urging, are raising Oxen teams the help of their hired hand of the past ten years, Dulces Granados.

Three legs of the table elevate CUSP

Born of floods, following fires, the organization philosophically and metaphorically, is held up like a three-legged table.
In what some call the double disasters, the Coalition for the Upper South Platte (or CUSP), now serves as a model... statewide, nationally and perhaps internationally.
"We have more fire experience, and we have seen time and time again, that floods follow wildfire, so our main focus was to keep people safe and infrastructure intact when the inevitable flooding strikes the communities around the burn scar,"said Carol Ekarius, CUSP Executive Director last week.
Through the three legs: economic sustainability, community values, and cooperative efforts of the stakeholders; CUSP seeks to protect the water quality and ecological health of the Upper South Platte Watershed.
It all started after the Buffalo Creek Fire and Flood (which did more than $35 million in damage resulted in two deaths) in Jefferson County 1996, when 11 government entities saw the need for a non-profit organization to coordinate volunteer projects according to the principals of the three-legged table or stool.
Now, its 17-member board of directors reads like a who's who, and encompasses stakeholders representing the City of Aurora, Jefferson County, The Wilderness Society, Center of Colorado Conservancy District, Park County, Jefferson Conservancy District, Centennial Water & Sanitation, Douglas County, Upper South Platte Water Conservancy, Denver Water, Trout Unlimited - Cheyenne Mountain Chapter, Teller County, Colorado Springs Utilities, and interested individuals.
The in-and-out budget last year was nearly $3.7 million and allowed for a 25-person staff (19 full-time equivalent) headquartered in the small office in Lake George. For 2014, they are conservatively budgeting $2.5 million, but it will likely grow as driven by need and funding, as last year's did.
Most of their work, of course, is in the 2,600 square miles of the district (area larger than the state of Rhode Island), though increasingly, their expertise is sought out for projects outside of their boundaries.
Because of their experience, similar fire and flood issues in Northern Colorado and elsewhere, has prompted requests for staff to go to other fires in an advisory capacity. East Peak, West Fork complex, Arizona fires, conferences in Washington, have all benefited from that considerable expertise.
When dealing with four major water providers, multiple organizations and four different constituent counties, it might seem impossible to stay out of the crossfire created by emotionally-charged issues of water, property and politics,.
"We are apolitical," but Ekarius says.
"We don't comment, and stay out of contentious issues. By the time the dust settles, advocacy is not our role."
Instead they focus on robust monitoring programs, mapping, organizing volunteer efforts, education, and in her words, "doing no harm," as the result of unintended consequences.
"We work with Mother Nature."
About 6,500 people helped in their volunteer force this past year.
Historic information gathering, evacuation considerations, data recording, and generally trying to understand and function within the given resources optimally, sometimes gets them labeled. Especially when warning of possible impending danger.
"We haven't hit the worse-case scenario yet," says Ekarius, in describing the possible problems in the case of the Waldo Burn Scar area. Though, that area is not in their district, they have been asked to help  and have done extensive work in the last years following the fire.
"It is amazing how fast we go from 'fear mongers' and 'Chicken Little' to 'expert,'" notes CUSP Environmental Education Coordinator Theresa Springer.

"While the life-theatening, post-fire impacts in and around the Waldo Canyon burn scar were the most immediate concern this year, we still found time to do some exciting work in the Upper South Platte Watershed," observed CUSP's most-recent quarterly newsletter.
"Volunteers of all ages worked on projects doing rehab in the Waldo Canyon, Springer, and Haymen burn scars; fuels mitigation; river restoration; and improving water quality."
All efforts, three legs, working with Mother Nature, and holding up the stool or table.

Building flood protection on lessons learned in our past

It is no solace, but floodwaters have raged here before.
When the Coalition for the Upper South Platte (CUSP) and El Paso County recently removed 260 dump truck loads of gravel, sand, muck and other material, they were working on top of flood structures originally built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The Works Progress Administration also contributed to work on flood control projects in the area nearly 80 years ago.
Where there is steep, narrow canyons, there can be, and eventually probably will be, severe and dangerous flooding. And for at least 100 years, we have been cleaning up after one flood or another, and trying to mitigate the next ones.
In looking through records of the National Weather Weather Service in Pueblo, floods in August of 1904 washed away a train near there, killing 89 passengers in a local watershed. Again in 1921, more  deadly flooding.
"Thunderstorms and heavy rainfall causes flooding in Cripple Creek and Cripple Creek Canyon. Damage estimated at $30,000 in Cripple Creek alone," the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association reported a July 15, 1923 storm.
Then again, on Memorial Day in 1935, 18 people are killed on bridges and structures in downtown Colorado Springs when Monument Creek washes through.
In May, 1949, heavy afternoon thunderstorms caused a landslide in the Ute Pass sending nearly 400 tons of rock and mud into Highway 24.
Wait a few years, June 15, the first of 15 days of rain and flooding on both Monument and Fountain Creeks, washing out bridges all the way to the Kansas border, and destroying much of the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.
And I guess, floods are not the only thing we should worry about. The day before Independence Day in July 1966, A tornado rips through the Victor business district damaging the Baptist Church and the Masonic Hall, among other places.
Another tornado in June of 1979, can opener-like, tears the roof off a gas station and rips up trees by the roots in Manitou Springs. Nearly a million dollars in damages was reported.
Then, there is always the possibility of a microburst like the one north of Woodland Park that leveled 35 acres of trees in the summer of 1981.
Still, we haven't even really talked about the snow, as in the storm on May 18, in 1995 that dropped 18 inches in few hour on Woodland Park and rain in the Springs, not only flooding low-lying areas there, but closing the Highway 24 corridor in the Pass with a landslide then. Another storm in June of 1997 closed U.S. Highway 24 again and flooding much of Manitou Springs. Just two years later, in July, 1999, a group of teens were stranded while hiking Waldo Canyon and in another weather event that Nov. 21, 17 inches of snow buried Green Mountain Falls.
We can and will get weather around here. And not to make light of it, but as Dr. Suess says, “The storm starts, when the drops start dropping. When the drops stop dropping, then the storm starts stopping.” 
And our hope is, of course, that all of our mitigating, and other measures, are built on what we have learned from our past.

It will turn up, if I press the issue

It is a mystery that probably will eventually will be solved. But like such mysteries, it might take some time, and pulling some threads, and listening to a yarn or two.
I am talking about figuring out where several tons of printing iron went.
The old flatbed press I knew in my ink-stained childhood. Namely, six thousand pounds of magic, that I first caught copies off of the Dolores Star on Thursday afternoons back in the late 1960s, and folded for a half cent each.
I grew up next to the folks that owned the Star and their son, Andy, was a few months younger than me. Pleasants gave me an opportunity to learn elements of a disappearing craft at the last of of the hot type era.
Printing is sort of like voting for me. Do it early and often, if you can.
Larry Pleasant and Filbert 'Shorty' Lobato were the masters of the craft.
"Larry and Shorty continued with hot metal and the old press for a few months while I made the switch to offset. The press was still there when I left in '80,"according to Lewis McCool, who purchased the Dolores Star from the Pleasants.
Larry and Shorty continued on with a job shop in Dolores, running various smaller offset presses.
The topic came up the other day when Ellis Miller, who folded a paper or two in his own day, mentioned I might know something about the old press from Dolores. 
"I remember it from when my Uncle Tom Johnson was editor of the Star, but that was a long time ago," Miller said. "Shirley Dennison might also have some idea."
Indeed she might. 
I sent Shirley a message, and she was unsure of what might have happened to the old press, but had acquired a wealth of stories about when it was running, including one where the job required so much time and attention, that it was actually possible (but dangerous) to fall asleep while operating the beast. 
She suggested I try Larry's son Tim, or possibly Dean Coombs in Saguache. 
"I have a picture of it loaded on a flatbed trailer, but don't know where it was taken. Sorry, by that time, I was in the Marine Corps, and wasn't around to see and know," Tim tells me.
On to Dean Coombs, who I know from my time at the press association. Dean is running the last hot-type newspaper operation in the country, and probably the world. Saguache Crescent ... Last of a kind, a hold out in techno-adapted planet... so strange a being, that news organizations all over the world report on how he reports on the little burg of 500 in the San Luis Valley. 
"Yea, I'm supposed to be on CBS Sunday Morning sometime this month," he said. Along with with being featured by the LA Times and Al Jezeera, he adds.
"I bought some of Larry's stuff but I don't have that press," Coombs   says. 
"I have parts of one that he had in the shed there. It was kind of sinking down into the dirt. But it was a smaller one, like what I am printing on now. The parts are interchangeable. I got an old Ludlow (typograph device that casts bars, or slugs of type) from him. Seems like if I bought anything, Larry would always throw something else on the truck when we were getting loaded up. He was generous that way."
Coombs wasn't sure either where the larger press went. 
"Seems like it went to museum or something down in New Mexico," he said. "Though with so few of us running, I probably should have kept track." 
"It will turn up," I told him confidently. It will turn up.

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S.K. Hooper created the business of railroad promotion

I have spent my entire life, of course, in the newspaper business. But if born 100 years earlier, it might have been the railroads, or both — like Shadrack K. Hooper.
Newspaper editor Tim McGuire says "Many people have heard the old story about the railroads and how they should have realized they were in the transportation business in the same way newspapers ought to realize they're in the information business. I heard someone says a few years ago that in fact the railroad people knew they needed to be in the transportation business. They just loved the railroads so much they couldn't make the change. There is a lot of that in our business."
McGuire is right of course, but Hooper knew how to made it work.
"Hooper was known as the 'father of railroad publicity' and his extensive advertising efforts on behalf of the Rio Grande made the railroad known throughout America and Europe," wrote my friend, Palmer Lake historian Dan Edwards in one of his papers. "Many prominent hotels, union stations, and ticket offices displayed pictures of scenery along the route of the Rio Grande that Hooper had provided. He arranged for the photographer, William H. Jackson and the writer, Ernest Ingersoll, to travel over the Rio Grande in special trains and record in pictures and words what they saw. Hooper popularized the Royal Gorge and the Black Canyon's Curicanti needle that served as emblems of the railroad. He also published several booklets on tourist spots and landmarks along the route of the Rio Grande."
Those booklets... works of a lost art, as far as I am concerned.
"For the convenience and information of the traveling public this booklet is issued," writes Hooper in the introduction of his most circulated one. "The attempt is made in as few as words as possible to inform those who desire information, how they may easiest, with least expense and inconvenience, visit any or all of the many attractions in Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. A perusal of these pages will enable tourists to determine what points they visit, inform them of the attractions they will see while en route, and afford them much useful information."
S.K. Hooper, like so many in development of the railroads, had learned the trade in the Civil War. He worked for five different lines before becoming general passenger and ticket agent for the Denver and Rio Grande in 1884, a position he held for decades, scaling back duties at the end of his career, finally retiring in 1917.
"Major Hooper did not neglect Palmer Lake. He worked with Finley Thompson and to the officials of the Glen Park companies to promote Palmer Lake as a tourist destination and offer special railroad fares for Chautauqua travelers to Glen Park. Hooper bought a lot in Glen Park in 1887, and later spent time during the summers at 'Casa Pobre,' his cottage in Pine Crest. He vacationed at Palmer Lake as late as 1917. He died at Denver in March 1923," according to Dan Edwards' research.
Born more than 100 years earlier, I might like working for someone like S.K. Hooper. I might have found it hard to change over time. There is a lot of that in our business.