Effort hopes to honor Buffalo Soldiers for helping tame the West

Buffalo soldiers important impact on Colorado

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Years ago, one weekend I was asked to drop by a fundraising event at Jim Wider's Southwinds Fine Art Studio at Roller Coaster Road near where Hodgen and Baptist road connect.

Being historically inclined, three things captured my attention.

One, the invitation concerned a fundraiser for the Buffalo Soldier Community Memorial Project, which has a relatively obscure, but important impact on our history locally, and Colorado generally.

Two, the invite promised that the site would also have several fascinating Ute Indian Prayer Trees located on, or nearby, the property.

And three, the invitation came from former El paso County Sheriff John Anderson, who has just finished a book about the significance of local Ute prayer trees and is working on another historic account of El Paso County's first sheriff. Anderson began the book in the interest of preservation of remaining prayer trees after the Black Forest Fire.

This event was raising money with the expressed purpose of building a memorial (bronze statue) to Buffalo Soldiers in the northeast corner of Memorial Park in 2016, in time to mark 150th anniversary of Congress authorizing the establishment of the Negro regiments.

Host Jim Wider, gallery owner and a nationally recognized artist, displayed several outstanding paintings of the Buffalo Soldiers and artwork of other local artists, including a few of John Anderson's oil paintings and art photography.

"After the Civil War, Congress authorized the establishment of six Negro regiments in the summer 1866. They recognized the military merits of blacks by authorizing two segregated regiments of black cavalry, the Ninth United States Cavalry and the Tenth United States Cavalry and the 38TH, 39TH, 40TH and 41ST Infantry Regiments, " says Dennis R. Moore, working on the project since inception.

 "Orders were given to transfer the troops to the western war arena, where they would join the Army’s fight against the hostile Native Americans. In the 1869 troop reduction the 38TH, 39TH, 40TH and 41ST Infantry Regiments were consolidated into the 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments. The 9th and 10th Cavalry and 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments Soldiers were called Buffalo Soldiers by the Native Americans, some say because of the tenacity with which they fought, some say it was because of the texture of their hair reminded them of the Buffalo."

Moore notes that elements of the 10th Cavalry were stationed at Fort Lyons, and troops of the 9th Cavalry were at Fort Garland Colorado. These largely unknown soldiers assisted civil authorities in controlling mobs, pursued outlaws, cattle thieves, and even Mexican revolutionaries along the U.S. Mexican border. Additionally, these soldiers served as the first US Border Patrol, rode “shotgun” on stage coaches, and delivered mail longer than the Pony Express. Their outposts were located in Arizona, Colorado, both Dakotas, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. Buffalo Soldiers were also involved in numerous confrontations with hostile Native Americans. Among the most famous confrontations are: Beecher’s Island in Yuma County; Milk Creek in Northern Colorado; and the White River Reservation.
Several Buffalo Soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery in combat, Moore says.

Buffalo Soldiers Community Memorial Members as of July 3, 2014, included the following:

Willie Breazell, CWO3, USA, Ret., Captain, USAR, Chair, former, School Board member, D-11

Henry Allen, 1SG, USA, Ret., Vice Chair, Pres. Colorado Springs NAACP

E. Jim Mason, COL, USA, Ret., Vice Chair, School Board, D-11

Bob, Null, COL, USAF, Ret., member, School Board, D-11

June Waller, member, spouse, community activist

Dennis Moore, USAF, Ret., GS-13 USAF Civil Service Ret., community activist

Dawn Elliott, member, social media POC, (Washington DC)

Mark Knight, US Marines, Pres Buffalo Soldiers Motorcycle club

George Payton, CSM, USA, Ret., Buffalo Soldier living history presenter

John Register, SSG, USA, US Olympic Center

Cheryl Blanton-Chisholm, member, spouse, community activist

Mel Elliott, LTC, USA, Ret., member, Assist Secretary NAACP

Ed Jones, USA, member, former Colorado Senator, and El Paso County Commissioner

Artist/Sculpture: Rob Mench Studios LLC, USA (Captain)

Moore says the mission of the organization was to honor those soldiers who helped tame the West but are largely unknown and almost totally ignored by writers of American history and our public education organized materials.

Photo Info:

Top: Former El Paso County Sheriff John Anderson and Jim Wider, owner of Southwinds Fine Art Studio.

Bottom: Jim Wider’s Southwinds Fine Art Studio at Roller Coaster Road near where Hodgen and Baptist road connect.

Dee Breitenfeld: It was all about the history

Many years ago, I think I first encountered Dee Breitenfeld at the first meeting of the Teller County Centennial Committee, way back before the most-recent turn of the century, in the fall of 1998.
Liz Hook, working for the County at the time, pulled together a ragtag group of local notables that included, among others, Dee, Greg Winkler, Ed and Jeanette Zupancic, and several others, including myself. Our mission, should we decide to accept it, was to mark, and call attention to, the county's 100-year birthday. 
Within, a few moments of that first meeting, I recognized one self-evident truth.
Dee Breitenfeld, in all her years with the Ute Pass Historical Society and other organizations, her residency in Teller all of her life, and an innate understanding of the area —was markedly more valuable in this endeavor than any three to five, of the rest of us.
Marion Vance recalls Breitenfeld's energy for preserving history, as a member various coalitions, the Ute Pass Historical Society, Teller County Historic Advisory Board and the county's Centennial Committee. 
“In so many ways Dee was the heart of the volunteer community,” Vance said. “She really had a long-term creative vision.”
Breitenfeld's take on history was somewhat like Winston Churchill's, only without the arrogance.
“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it,”  Churchill said at one point. 
Dee efforts were similarly driven, but without the selfish bend and concern about her place in that history. She wanted to get all down — it was important — no vital — but she didn't suffer a lick from self-importance.
Tiring of having to go all the way to Colorado Springs to register land, mining, and other official documents, and seeing their tax dollars travel down the hill, mine owners and others pushed hard for the creation of Teller County is the 1890s. Teller County was created out of western El Paso County and the Northeastern tip of Freemont on March 23, 1899.
The property where the Courthouse now rests, at 101-105 West Bennett Avenue, was at one time owned by the Stanely brothers who sold it to Stewart McDougall shortly after the fires of 1896 destroyed wood structures that once resided there, according to Brian Levine’s book “Cripple Creek: City of Influence.” Levine was Historic Preservation Director for Cripple Creek at the time of writing the 1994 book.McDougall built a 100-foot wide, two-story brick building that the Palace Hotel leased and after Teller County was established, county offices resided. 
In 1900, the county purchased the property and proceeded on plans to build a grand courthouse building. Architect A.J. Smith of Colorado Springs designed the building and general contractor J.E. Devy was hired to build.
After being finished in 1904 at a cost of $60,000, the Courthouse proudly displayed the following features: gilt chandeliers, oak paneling with mahogany trims, skylights, gold standing electric fixtures (the building originally required 400 electric lamps to light it), standpipes with hose nozzle attachments, public drinking fountains, two 75-horse power boilers for steam heat, a Skinner high-speed engine with 110-volt dynamo for electricity, hardwood floors, and marble counters. 
Teller County, right from the start, developed a proud vision of what it was to become. Dee, of course, understood that.
By March of 1999, 100 years after the creation of this county, we stood on out there on a windy hill in Cripple Creek at a dedication ceremony one Saturday, and with Breitenfeld's uncomplaining guidance, knowledge and understanding of importance, marked the notable passage of time. 
But to her credit, and garnering all of respect possible from such a group of people, it was never, for an instant, about her. Despite having lived a great part of it, recorded it for years, listened intently to family and friends talk about and tell stories about it, with Dee, it was all about the history.
History will be kind to someone like her, who managed such great effort to preserve it.

Pushing 135, and still up for the challenges

Join in praise of the town's spirit at the milestone

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

A hundred and thirty-some years seems like a long, long time.
When the town of Palmer Lake was incorporated in 1889, and its first mayor, Dr. William Finley Thompson, was elected that April,  Benjamin Harrison had just replaced Grover Cleveland as U.S. President. The Wall Street Journal had just started publishing. Coca Cola was incorporated, and the Brassiere was invented, that same year.
Thompson served only one year before feeling the financial strain of building The Rockland Hotel, which was completed in 1890, and left for Mexico.
In the coming years, the town watched the rise and fall of the Rocky Mountain Chautauqua movement, the emergence of recreation community of Pine Crest, the creation of the Little Log Church in the 1920s, the inception of the Yule Log tradition in 1934, and at about the same time, came the idea for creating the 500 foot star of Palmer Lake that was built in 1935 and enhanced in successive years.
At the celebration of Palmer Lake's Centennial in 1989, then President George Bush noted, "As you well know, Palmer Lake is more than a collection of buildings, it is more than a place on the map. From its earliest days, it has nurtured the lives and accomplishments of countless individuals — individuals united through years by a common love for the place they call home.  That deep sense of community, of responsibility toward one's neighbor and the common good, resonates through all cities and towns across America. This milestone gives you a splendid  opportunity to reaffirm that community spirit, taking just pride in the past and rededicating yourselves to the promise of a bright future."
Then Colorado Governor Roy Romer also joined in praise of the town's spirit at the milestone.
"Palmer Lake's history is characteristic of the rich heritage that makes Colorado a great state. Colorado appreciates the spirit of community and the American values that you aim to preserve," Romer wrote.
It really is the spirit of notable figures like Lucretia Vaile, who visited here every summer with her family as child from Denver, and in the 1950s built a modern home, only to donate it, and much of the rest of her estate, later to the town.
Grace Best had that spirit as well, when she help arrange for additional funding, and made it possible to build the library and museum.
The same spirit held for people like Charles Orr, who was affectionately known as "Mr. Palmer Lake" and had lived there for more than 50 years until his death at 101 years in April of 1988. He was a 1908 graduate of Colorado College and had piloted "Jennies" during World War 1.
Elenor Romack had the spirit, living there in Palmer Lake all her life at the time of the Centennial, and remembering the days of only a few cars, with one resident owning a Stanley Steamer that had to be backed up hills to get enough power to get it going. She also remember how the place grew, first a one-room school, doubled to two.
"There were four pupils per grade, and everyone in town knew each other," Romack recalled in the late 1980s.
Challenges have come and gone over the years. Often they were dealt with directly, deftly handled and the community moved on to new challenges.
There in lies the lesson, I think, for future challenges.
A hundred and thirty-some years seems like a long, long time.

Photo info: William H.Walker, photographer. Summary: View of Palmer Lake, El Paso County, Colorado, shows tracks of the Denver & Rio Grande, water tank and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, railroads and depots. Date: [between 1889 and 1897], Western History/Genealogy Dept., Denver Public Library

Take a picture, it lasts longer

Special power is just another way of looking at the world

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

The thing is, I have a photographic memory.
That is not exactly what you think, however.
I remember things as images, and quotes, and snap shots of time.
Sometimes that memory is accurate. Other times, not so much.
Depends on which lens I see things through. What chemistry I use to process. Focus, and lighting, camera and enlarger, paper and vacuum board, resolution and file storage, pixel depth and display material, image software, exposure time, and color saturation. And about a million other variables.
For as long as I can remember, I have looked at the world that way.
My first trip to an emergency room was the result of sticking my thumb through a blown Speed Graphic flash bulb. I have photographed probably everything from space shuttles and U.S. presidents, to pets of the week and my own thumb.
I love the old photographs and the new ones. Positive and negative. Color and black and white. Big cameras and small.
I think the smallest camera I have ever operated was one of those microscopic surgical jobs they sometimes check your heart valves with, and the largest — was a process camera for shooting newspaper page negs and had a room of its own, and was on rails.
Cameras are my best friends.
Yes, I have favorites. But they might not be what you think.
An old two and quarter, two and quarter, Dualflex III Kodak with a Kodet lens, (amazing depth of field), the range of Speed Graphics, a Nikon FG 35 mm I bought in J-school, a Kodak Easy Share 195 14 megapixel with 5 x Aspheric lens ($60), Canon EOS 60 D (I shoot most stuff with now) and the first camera I probably ever snapped, a Spartucus "35 F" 400.
Some of my best friends and heroes are behind cameras.
Hector, Pleasants, Oguz Nayman, Jimmy, Perry
Ansel, Jackson, Yousuf, Capa, Dorthea, Ulesman, Gyula, Liebovitz, Duffy, Cartier-Bresson, Maisel, Poley, Chione.
My enemies take photos, and try to capture my soul.
Eidetic memory is the ability to recall images in great detail for several minutes. It is found in early childhood (between 2% and 10% of that age group) and is unconnected with the person's intelligence level. The ability usually begins to fade after the age of six years, perhaps as growing verbal skills alter the memory process.

Perhaps I have never progressed beyond that six years, but some of my most vivid images are nearly 50 years old now.
"It is difficult to disentangle memory abilities that appear early from those cultivated through interest and training. Most people who have exhibited truly extraordinary memories in some domain have seemed to possess them all their lives and honed them further through practice," says Barry Gordon, a professor of neurology and cognitive science at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in a recent Scientific American article.
Regardless, I need to keep up my image.
“I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate,” wrote Charlotte Bronte in "Jane Eyre."

My memories are photographic, but that is not exactly what you think.