“The pursuit of beauty. The word is hard to articulate. As soon as you
open your mouth, it flies off, like a bird of paradise. Beauty can not
be caught, but we are obliged to reach for it. Beauty is not neutral;
pursuing it is a political act. Building is a grand act, a gesture
toward peace, the opposite of destruction.”
―
Atlantis: A Journey in Search of Beauty
Sapinero, Cebolla, Iola —Three towns submerged under Blue Mesa
By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com
Many Coloradans have heard of the submersion of Stout under the waters of Horsetooth Reservoir — or the little mining town of Dillon below the reservoir of the same name — or even McPhee (under McPhee Reservoir downriver from Dolores) and Sopris in the depths and Trinidad State Lake Park.
Approaching Sapinero Canon of the Gunnison, two men sit on rocks and fish in the Gunnison River, near the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, possibly near the town of Sapinero (Gunnison County), Colorado. Narrow gauge Denver and Rio Grande tracks are near the river. A bridge crosses a portion of the river. Telegraph poles and steep rock formations are visible. William Henry Jackson photo, Date: between 1882 and 1900.
But at least three towns reside now in Blue Mesa, Colorado's largest body of water. Blue Mesa Reservoir, which spans 20 miles and boasts over 96 miles of shoreline is part of the Curecanti National Recreation Area. Sapinero, Cebolla, Iola are extinct towns in Gunnison County, in Colorado. The communities were inundated and destroyed by the creation of Blue Mesa Reservoir.
Women fish in the Gunnison River at Cebolla (Gunnison County), Colorado; their gear includes wicker creels, gloves, hip waders, nets, and straw hats. Men use a net in the distance. Photo from Denver Public Library dated between 1870 and 1890.
Western Colorado University Historian David Primus, popular for his presentations on Blue Mesa Reservoir at Gunnison County Libraries, and other locations, has studied the modern-day, Atlantis-like locations for years.
"Blue Mesa Reservoir was created by the construction of Blue Mesa Dam, a 390-foot tall earthen fill dam constructed on the Gunnison by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in 1966 for the generation of hydroelectric power. Managed as part of the Curecanti National Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park Service, Blue Mesa Reservoir is the largest lake trout and Kokanee salmon fishery in Colorado."
For over half a century, Sapinero served as a crossroads of traffic—cattle, railroaders, freighters, and resort-goers. The town controlled the entrance to the Black Canyon and two surrounding mesas—Blue Mesa to the south and east and Black Mesa to the north and west. After being inundated by the waters behind Blue Mesa Dam, the community of Sapinero moved uphill on the south side of the reservoir.
"When it was first conceived of in the years following World War II and legislated in the 1956 Colorado River Storage Project Act, the reservoir was part of a broad plan to capture the arid west’s seasonal flow to feed the growing need for reliable sources of water," said a June 6, 2012 article in the Crested Butte News, celebrating 50 years of Blue Mesa Reservoir.
The Colorado River Storage Project Act (CRSP) commissioned, among others, four mega-reservoirs—at Flaming Gorge in Wyoming, Glen Canyon on the Arizona/Utah border, Navajo on the San Juan in New Mexico and Curecanti, west of Gunnison—to hold as much as 30 million acre-feet of water, or about twice the annual flow of the Colorado River, for future use.
All of the planned reservoirs were in unpopulated areas, where there was little resistance to the proposals, except in Gunnison.
Long-time local writer and historian George Sibley told the story of those early days to a near-capacity Alpine Express bus tour heading toward the dam on Monday, June 4, 2012.
As the group moved out of town and into the hay meadow west of Gunnison, Sibley said, “If the Bureau of Reclamation had gotten what it wanted in the 40s, we’d be entering Blue Mesa shortly now.”
"Looking around, it was clear the consequences would have been
devastating. People knew the land would be stripped below the water
line, leaving a barren expanse exposed when the water was drawn down.
Prevailing westerly winds would have pushed the parched earth across the
surrounding ranches and town."
“They knew it would turn Gunnison into a dust cloud,” Sibley commented. Opponents fought the most expansive plans, with the help of Dan Thornton, a local rancher who was then governor, and won."
"In its compromise plan, the Bureau of
Reclamation reduced the maximum size of the reservoir by more than
500,000 acre-feet, to the size it is today.
Still nearly a million
acre-feet, Blue Mesa Reservoir is the state’s largest body of water
being held in by what amounts to a rock wall. And while capturing water
was one goal, power generation was another. After the citizens’ protest,
the idea of one huge dam was replaced by a plan for three, equipped
with turbines that today generate enough stable electricity to power
about 8,000 homes from the Blue Mesa facility alone. "
Two wood buildings and an observation tower in Iola, Gunnison County, Colorado, are near the Gunnison River. The larger building has a sign in a large gable reading "Iola Hotel and Fishing Resort;" a smaller sign reads "Iola Post Office." A Black man in a white apron and hat stands on the porch near a suitcase, and a child and a man in overalls sit on the edge. The tower is on a small hill with an entrance built into the ground; a tripod, barrels, and a fenced garden are in front of the buildings.
But as with
many proposed dam projects, many people lost out on the deal, suggests Crested Butte paper.
"There were old railroad towns at Iola and Sapinero, with what Sibley described as “thriving little resort communities” that cashed in on travelers and the annual emergence of the giant willowfly that brought anglers to the area. All that slid below the waves, along with the sheer canyon walls and verdant floodplains. "
At one point Sibley turned toward an upcoming bridge that crosses the reservoir, commenting that the bridge is taller than it is long, although it didn’t seem so. While the road is only a short distance from the surface of the water, the bridge is some 300 feet above the canyon floor.
"And while it might seem massive, Blue Mesa alone wasn’t big enough for the Bureau of Reclamation’s grand vision. The two other, smaller, reservoirs are tucked in the canyon below, each with an important role to fill in the system," says the article that appeared in the Crest Butte paper more tha decade ago.
"As the tour bus turned off the highway at Pine Creek and started down a precarious incline, Gunnison River Water Conservancy District manager Frank Kugel let out a thanks to the brakes on the bus, which suddenly gripped hard, jolting everyone forward."
Eventually the bus covered the 390-foot depth of the dam. The pull of gravity on the bus was enough to appreciate the power harnessed by an earthen mound holding back a million acre-feet of water. At the bottom of the canyon, all that power was put into terms everyone understood: water, gravity and electricity.
Together, the three maintain a delicate balance to produce all that comes from the Aspinall unit today. While Blue Mesa Reservoir is the biggest of the three reservoirs, offering recreational opportunities, Morrow Point Reservoir directly below Blue Mesa generates the most power, by a lot. Although it holds back only 179,000 acre feet of water, or a fifth as much as Blue Mesa, Morrow Point dam can generate 192 megawatts of power, compared to 82 mW at Blue Mesa dam and just 31 miles west at Crystal dam, the last dam in the unit.
By keeping water at the top, power generation in the middle and a consistent flow of water from Crystal Reservoir into the river below, the Bureau of Reclamation has been able to give the public power, water, recreational amenities and a source of income while maintaining some semblance of an ecosystem in the Black Canyon, below the chain of reservoirs. Only a few years ago did the managing federal agencies settle on a way to return a simulation of the spring runoff to the Black Canyon, allowing for an important annual cleaning.
But environmental concerns weren’t always a priority for the federal government. Facility manager Ted Dunn points out the nation’s system of dams “is the part of the federal government that actually makes money.” Not only does the resulting reservoir pump tens of millions of dollars into the local economy; the power generated at the dams raised $26 million in revenue last year. And power production needs to be consistent and reliable, he said, to be marketable.
But for its utility, hydropower is incredible stuff. Without it, Dunn explained, a region-wide power system blackout would be hard to come back from, since nuclear and fossil fuel-powered generators need power to start generating. Water only needs someone to turn on the spigot to fall through a turbine.
From outside, the dam’s scale was impressive, spanning nearly 800 feet from side to side and 300 feet thick at the base, tapering up to just 20 feet. All the material used in its construction, from the clay to big chunks of riprap on the surface, was sourced in the area. The design is antiquated, with only one intake, or penstock, for the generators, but passes annual inspections with flying colors.
Although Blue Mesa dam is earthen, the other two dams in the system are concrete and the Morrow Point dam was the first dam built by the Bureau of Reclamation with a lens-like curvature across the horizontal and vertical surfaces. It’s a technical marvel, held against the canyon walls with the force of a reservoir behind it.
And the
technology inside is equally impressive, although antiquated in its own
way. By Thanksgiving of 1965, the diversion tunnel at Blue Mesa was
closed and by 1968, the reservoir was full. As it looks today, not much
has changed since then. But the importance of the reservoir is
growing all of the time, proven the day before the tour. Sunday, June 3
was officially the peak storage at Blue Mesa for the year and it was 36
feet below full. Less water means less electricity and obviously less
storage for a year such as this.
Fifty years is a reason to
celebrate the dam, but a dry year might be a better reason to celebrate
the reservoir. As Kugel pointed out after remarking on the large size of
Monday’s tour group, “It’s amazing how a dry year can generate an
interest in water.”
“Iola wasn’t a very big town, but a lot of the foundations, oh 10 and 15 foundations, have appeared," Primus said.
Iola foundation appearing in 2018.
The Blue Mesa Dam was built in the 1960s as a part of a Bureau of Reclamation Colorado River Storage Project, which collects water from the Colorado River and its offshoots for agricultural, municipal and power generation uses across the Southwest.
"Iola is the first
and maybe only of the buried structures to emerge after the drought
because the town was on the upper end of the lake," Primus said.
"The cold is just the cold. Bob Robbins and Bill Sunderlin know it all too well," wrote Boster.
Negative 2? That’s nothing, says Sunderlin, 78. “Child’s play,” says Robbins, 69.
"Their feet crunch the snowy ground floor of the Blue Mesa Reservoir, the land they know as Iola, the town that was here before the dam’s construction starting in 1962. They were among ranching families whose homes would be submerged by the dark depths of Colorado’s largest body of water. Iola was sacrificed with the bigger Sapinero and smaller Cebolla."
"The people are gone, most anyway — Robbins and Sunderlin don’t know of many others who stayed like them, settling in higher ground nearby. And the town is gone, though not entirely.
"Old foundations, semblances of fence lines and corroded remains of farm life have returned to daylight. As a devastating drought dragged on this summer, as the Blue Mesa dropped to this century’s lowest levels, Iola re-emerged, enthralling Western Slope dwellers who didn’t know of its sunken existence.
As the stark reality of a drier climate settles in, they find a refreshing distraction in Iola. But Robbins and Sunderlin, they only find harsh reminders.
“Well, we’ve had our ups and downs over the years,” says Sunderlin, his voice low and grainy over the chilly gust.
The downs come when the water is low enough to see what they lost. The memories come flowing back, as they did for Robbins’ mother in 2012, he recalls, back during the last driest year before this one, back before she died. “She just bawled like a baby,” he says.
It’s all coming back now on this visit.
The wavy fields of hay. The shimmering stream beneath the cottonwoods, and the fish the size of monsters in a little boy’s eyes. The neighing of horses and lowing of cattle, and the endless sky that blushed above the hills.
How green everything was. How they hid around the rock up there, where the teacher couldn’t find them. The song they sang: “We’re in our places with sun-shining faces …”
And, oh yes, the cold. The blistering cold. Those cold, long days of work and those nights by the fire.
That was cold. Not today. It’s gotten warmer all right, they say.
The temperature has nothing to do with the pain they’re feeling now.
“If people ask me, I will come out here and talk to ’em about it,” says Robbins, as he and Sunderlin have done for reporters this season, because they can’t let the past die. “But no, I don’t just come out here and sit. It’s just … yeah … it’s very painful.”
Their stories are a couple collected by David Primus over his years of researching life before the Blue Mesa. A community engagement facilitator at Western Colorado University and longtime Gunnison resident, he has presented regularly at the local library. Crowds always show.
“It’s not me,” Primus says. “It’s because it’s not there.”
Wide-eyed young people, people with no memory of the valley before the flood, tell him their drives west along the shore to Montrose never will be the same.
“If you’re older than 65, and you’re local, you remember it,” Primus says. “So for older people, it’s just being reminded of what was lost. I’ve had several people come up to me afterwards, this one woman I remember the most. She said, ‘I almost didn’t come, because I didn’t think I could handle it.’”
The number of people displaced is uncertain. Primus guesses between 200 and 300.
“Put it this way,” Sunderlin utters, “it wasn’t enough to fight the government.”
The prospect of hydroelectricity, as well as storage and mass recreation, grew in the minds of regulators. So grew a dark cloud over the hayfields.
“The problem was the resistance was just local here,” Robbins says, recalling the populations in either direction taking on the role of bystander. “They promised them cheap electricity for the rest of their lives. They were more than willing to have a pond out here rather than a river.”
Perhaps they figured the human casualty would be minimal.
“Not that many in the big picture,” Primus says. “But for those 200, 300 people, they lost their livelihoods, often times lost ranches that had been in the family for four generations.”
Robbins is an example, his ancestors having homesteaded the AK Stevens Ranch in the 1870s. Sunderlin grew up about 2 miles downstream at the Tex Lodge Ranch Resort, one of several tourist outfits rooted in the valley.
Best-known was the Sportsman’s Home, hosting the likes of John Wayne and Herbert Hoover over the years. The fishing took on a mythical quality, some of the best catches of the West reported right here. Primus learned of a tradition: Far upstream at a Sapinero hotel, a boy would report the spring larva hatch, and his father would send word across the land, attracting far away visitors.
It wasn’t only fishing that put Iola on the map. After the railroad came in 1881, the town became a pivotal stop for loading cattle on their way to market. Robbins and Sunderlin remember leaving school to help, and the nickel-priced reward of a candy bar at the convenience store.
Then, the road came, like an alarm sounding.
“You could hear ’em,” Robbins says, looking out to the blown corners of the canyon. “It was like World War III.”
And the trees. What they did to the trees. “It looked like they were just dropping bombs on ’em. Just sticks, sticking up.”
Sunderlin remembers the machines. How they got bigger, fiercer. “When they were clearing here, they had a D8 with a shear blade, a big blade that curled down, chopped the trees. Then they came in with a D7.”
Robbins distinctly remembers the summer. The summer of ’63. “That summer, we went ahead and put the hay up, baled it and sold it all. The year before, this was still the home ranch.”
The house was burned. Mom and Dad couldn’t watch, neither could the teenaged Robbins, but Grandma did. Auctions were held all over, farmers flocking for equipment, collectors for antiques.
Some buildings were saved, including the schoolhouse, which now sits just over the hill, the modified home of Sunderlin. He keeps pictures there. Him with his horse, Chico. Him with his dog, Bingo. Him as a smiling kid with that “sun-shining face.”
And Robbins keeps pictures, too, taken with the camera some down-on-his-luck passerby left Dad in exchange for 5 gallons of gas. Robbins never thought to use it, until it was all coming to an end. “If I knew then what I know now, I would’ve taken pictures all up and down this valley.”
Robbins and Sunderlin can see it now, the paradise before this hard, blank canvas.
They stop at the cement base of a flag pole, on which they still can make out their initials. They move on to the cut legs of a windmill. At a foundation that they believe was a barn, they sift through mangled tools, too contorted to determine their former purpose. But how amazing to find them still.
“You know, they made it very clear to us that this ground would be a mud flat,” Robbins says. “I mean, they didn’t envision this all to be here right now. They expected mud. They thought this would cover up so fast that nobody would ever come out and see it.”
"The thought lingers for a moment, silence but for the cold wind. Iola’s sons trudge back to their trucks, leaving footprints soon to fade in the snow. And the sun shines on their faces, but they’re not smiling now," writes Seth Boster of The Gazette.
Frame mine buildings identified as a U.S. Vermiculite site on a hillside in Iola. (Gunnison County), Colorado (later covered by Blue Mesa Reservoir). Shows tailings piles, log retaining walls, a truck and processing equipment.Bob Zellers photo. History Colorado.
A man in a hat with a round crown and a sack coat stands in front of a two-story hewn-log building with chinking, which has a sign that reads, "Iola Fine Trout Fishing" under the gable roof. A small evergreen has been planted in front of the building. Denver Public Library Special Collections
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