There goes Muldoon, he's a solid man

"All I know about training I learned from him," Gene  Tunney said.

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

World champion wrestler, boxing trainer and strongman William Muldoon had limited experience with Colorado, but that did not stop him from being connected with the place.
"Muldoon wrestled in August 1881 at Denver in old Turner Hall at what is now Market and 20th. He also appeared in Central City and Georgetown in September of that year," notes a reader to a previous post.
Solid Man was a slang term used to describe a plain-thinking person from the country or overseas who doesn't adapt to city mores, the reader says.
Muldoon was a lot like many folks from Colorado in the 1870s and ‘80s -- hard-fighting, rough-and-tumble, confused about their origin, and perhaps prone to ‘improve’ their particular stories.
It was for Bill Muldoon, in fact, they chose to name a seven-foot-stone man, a "prehistoric human body," discovered near Beulah in 1877, according to many accounts.
Though Bill Muldoon’s nickname ‘the Solid Man’ probably originated from a song written by New York theater writer Edward Harrigan and first performed in March of 1874 in Manhattan.
The discovery was billed as the ‘missing link’ between apes and man and hucksters, including Soapy Smith, charged those interested 10 cents each to take a look. The 7-and -half-foot stone man was thought to be the "missing link" between apes and humans.
"There can be no question about the genuineness of this piece of statuary," said the Denver Daily Times at the time.
It was later revealed that George Hull, perpetrator of a previous hoax featuring the Cardiff Giant, had spent three years fashioning his second "petrified man," using mortar, rock dust, clay, plaster, ground bones, blood, and meat. He kiln-fired the figure for many days and then buried it.
A few months later, as the celebration of Colorado's year-old statehood approached, the statue was "discovered" by William Conant, who had once worked for the legendary showman P.T. Barnum. News of the find quickly spread to Denver and eventually New York. Displayed in New York, the "body" attracted large crowds until a business associate of Hull's revealed the hoax to the New York Tribune.
Harrigan’s lyrics for “The Solid Man,” go like this:

I am a man of great influence
And I'm educated to a high degree
I came when small from Donegal
On the Daniel Webster across the sea
In the 14th Ward [(or) Jersey City] I was situated
In a tenement with my brother Dan
By perseverance I elevated
And I rose to the front like a solid man.

CHORUS:
Then come with me and I'll treat you decent
I will get you drunk and I'll fill your can
And on the street every friend I meet
Says there goes Muldoon; he's a solid man.

To every party and every raffle
I always go, an invited guest
As conspicuous as General Grant, me boys
I wear a rosebud all on my breast
I'm called upon to address the meeting
Without regard to clique or clan
I show the constitution with elocution
Because you see, I'm a solid man.

Repeat CHORUS

Different accounts also suggest that Civil War hero and outspoken newspaper owner, David F. Day, (himself from New York) named his legendary Ouray newspaper (which later moved to Durango) after either the wrestler, the statue, the song, or all of them combined.
Bill Muldoon, grew up in Belfast, New York, and became a soldier, serving in the Civil War (though this is disputed by American National Biography, which says it was actually his older brother that served in the Sixth Calvary) and then for the French army in the Franco-Prussian War.
It was there he was introduced to Greco-Roman wrestling. By 1880 he was the champion of the world, having never lost a match and defeating opponents all over the world. Also by that time, he had become a New York City Police Officer, rising to detective when he resigned in 1882.
Famous sporting writer, Al Spink, had this to say about him in the Reno Evening Gazette, Saturday, March 8, 1919.
“He became famous in a few weeks by throwing all opponents easily in the police tournaments held in the metropolis.
Sporting writers called him “the noblest Roman of them all," and he was, perhaps, the finest-formed man ever seen in an American arena.
He was so handsome that when Modjeska, the Russian actress, laid eyes-on him she fell in love with him and immediately employed him to take the part of Charles the Wrestler in the play of "As You Like It," in which she was then appearing.”
Spink goes on to tell tell of his own disenchantment with the sport of wrestling as it related to Muldoon.
“Of the entire company of great wrestlers at that time there was not one to compare with Muldoon in splendid looks, in wonderful stature and magnificent muscle and strength.
Bauer came nearest to him, but it was only in height that Bauer possessed an advantage. I recall a bout in which the two were the principals, and I thought they were doing their level best, but happening behind the scenes between falls I heard Bauer say to Muldoon:
‘If you want me to go on, Mul, you’ll have to throw me lighter than you did then. If you don’t, I’ll never go on with you again.’
Then, for the first time, I discovered that the entire game of wrestling was rotten. Later, I learned more about it, but this was my first awakening.
Of all the wrestlers in the world I had looked on as being worthy of esteem and confidence, Muldoon appeared in my eyes the worthiest and squarest of the lot. And now even that dream was shattered.”
Muldoon in later years went on to form the Olympia Institute that catered to celebrities and politicians. He also trained a number of professional boxers including Gene Tunney.
William Barclay “Bat” Masterson, himself with an extensive Colorado history, befriended Bill Muldoon and after waging an aggressive campaign in his New York Morning Telegraph columns against two successive New York boxing commission chairmen, was somewhat responsible for his appointment. The campaign had the desired effect, prompting the ousting of first one and then another when Bat was unsatisfied with the replacement. The governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt, finally appointed William Muldoon, one of Bat's oldest and closest friends, as chairman in 1921.
Muldoon died in 1931 of prostrate cancer.
At the time of his death, The New York Times obit quoted retired boxing champion Gene Tunney, “All I know about training I learned from him…. His patience, intellectual courage and wisdom were inspirational.”
###

Listen to the oldtimers

“There is much good sleep in an old story,”
— German proverb

I like listening to old timers about the way things used to be — especially the way it used to be in Colorado. A few years ago, I got an old codger going on real estate in this and surrounding areas. To hear him tell it, all you would need to do make a bundle in land speculation is follow him around, buy his property after he’s given up on it, and then wait for the money people.
Before it was the exclusive Castle Pines residential area in northern Douglas County, it was his 400 acres of cow pasture. Before it was dozens of high-dollar, five-acre, gentleman farms near Franktown on Highway 83, it was his barely sustainable dairy with an unreliable water source. He even had good yarn about losing his brakes on a new truck in Ute Pass in the ‘40s and not running into a problem because they hit the only light on Platte Ave. in the Springs while it was green.
His luck, it seems, was not confined to Colorado. In World War II, he was stationed, and camped in the exact spot where the Chunnel resurfaces in England. A place he lived in Philadelphia for a few months later became a professional sports stadium. And so his stories went.
I joked with him, that in my own case, I have been able to eventually wreck almost every economy that I have been exposed to.
In the ‘70s working in a small town hardware store in Dolores, Colo., I was able to turn the boom of preparing and building McPhee Reservoir on the Western Slope into an early ‘80s bust when they finished digging tunnels, doing archeology, and clearing brush.
After college, I told him, the heydays of Wyoming oil exploration and exploitation began to fade almost as soon as I arrived. My first years up there, the schools had many of the grade school and high school students in trailers and other makeshift digs until they could get permanent schools built. By the time they were built, there were few students to attend.
In California in the late ‘80s, it was same, I said. Whole cities of 100,000 homes appeared in the desert north of Los Angles and in commuter towns of the Central Valley near the Bay Area. By the early ‘90s the value of those homes was dropping like a stone. Equity refugees and those trying to escape the wild fires, earthquakes, riots, taxes, regulation and other personal disasters made it almost impossible to rent a U-Haul headed out of the state.
Many of those refugees landed here, in Colorado. As the tech sectors and financial services ratcheted up, south Denver grew and grew. Colorado Springs stretched out toward Kansas.
But now things are really slowing, I said.
“It goes in cycles,” was his answer. “What goes around, comes around. What’s up, falls down. What’s down will rise.”
I like listening to the oldtimers, I thought to myself.

###
In memory of Harold T. "Andy" Andersen.
###

Martha Maxwell and womens' work

Leave HIStory sometimes and try to tell HERstory

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

“Historians relate not so much what is done as what they would have believed.” __ Ben Franklin, 1743

I was reminded recently that one must be careful in considering history. It often depends on who wrote it. Traditionally dominated by white men in the winner’s circle, their fantastic adventures, war stories and “important” achievements take on nuances that cast their kind in favorable or at least forgiving, light.
Their kind is my kind. Maybe that explains my predisposition to consume and my historic inclinations. But, in the interest of equal time, or at least a feeble attempt to acknowledge others might have had a role in what came before, I discuss today one of my young daughter’s heroes.
Martha Maxwell, a self-educated naturalist and artist, first came to Colorado during Pikes Peak Gold Rush in 1860 with her husband, a Pennsylvanian coal miner. Reportedly, her childhood affinity for animals developed into a taxidermy hobby and eventually an all-consuming nature study.
“In an effort to preserve a record Colorado’s wildlife, Maxwell created dynamic displays of wild animals.” notes Women of the West Museum. “ She single-handedly mounted and arranged them in detailed realistic habitats. In 1876, she exhibited one such diorama at the Philadelphia Centennial under the title ‘Women’s Work.’”
Maxwell dedicated her life to taxidermy and considered it “as a fine art, subservient to science.”
According to Bios In History, Maxwell was the first woman to collect and prepare her own skins and mounts. “She spent nearly eight continuous years in the field in the Rocky Mountains, documenting the presence of species previously not known to live here.”
Much of her camping and hunting for unique animals took place in the mountains around Boulder and many of her diorama display techniques are still used in museums today.
For these notable contributions, the respected ornithologist Robert Ridgeway named a new variety of screech owl (some accounts say she discovered the first one) Scops asio maxwelliae or Mrs. Maxwell’s owl after her. She is the first woman to have a subspecies named after her.
“To a naturalist, intent upon knowing the secrets of the natural world, the capture of the smallest bud or insect gives as much pleasure as to have outwitted and slain the fiercest grizzly in the mountains or the largest buffalo on the plains,” wrote Maxwell in 1878.
That is different historic perspective than I’m used to. As I said, we must consider who has been writing all the history.
###

May never be rich, start digging a ditch

The important role that water has played and continues to play in our history and development was reinforced to me in a previous conversation with Tri-Lakes Fire Protection District chairman at the time and former Palmer Lake Historical Society board member Charlie Pocock, The conversation originated with history but as such things often do, it meanders all the way upriver to the source.
Regarding water, Pocock tabbed the historical character of Sam Hackett.
Sam Hackett was described in Marion Savage Sabin’s 1957 book, “Palmer Lake: A Historical Narrative,” as a young Scotch-Irishman looking for a way to get up in the world.
“There was a very odd thing about Sam Hackett, ” wrote Sabin. “His was an unmistakably Irish physiognomy and his rich, deep brogue matched his face — yet there was little or nothing of Irish in his inner makeup. The genial gift of gab had been left entirely out of his composition; he was taciturn and cautious, like a Scotchman. His humor—few guessed he had any — was the sly, self-contained sort and his habitual aspect was dour. He was frugal and a confirmed woman-hater. Yet, he was never a mean man and stories are told of his generosity to visitors and harvest hands in later years.”
Hackett worked and originally ate and slept at the railroad’s section house managed by Camillus Weiss. Among his early duties there, was pumping water from Palmer Lake for the engines. Because of his general standoffishness and other reasons related to economics, he eventually decided to reside elsewhere.
“ He went some distance away to the west of the railroad, nearer the mountains, and made himself a dug-out. It was just a hole in the ground, a low mound set in a hillside. The entrance which faced south, was held up by logs; and a few pine planks hewn in the woods, chipped out by himself and secured overhead in his cave, kept the roof from falling in…” according to Sabin.
At the time of her writing in the 1950s, the ruin of that abode could still be seen on the very edge of the field to west of the Little Log Church.
In order to augment the amount of water available in Palmer Lake to use to fill the 12 or so daily train engines that required water to push over the hump, Weiss, as the section boss for railroad, asked Hackett to dig a ditch. The ditch diverted water from Monument Creek by use of a small dam and reservoir and solved the water problem for the railroad at the time.
“On December 29, 1882, Samuel Hackett filed in the Office of Clerk and Recorder of El Paso County an affidavit describing his ditch and claiming water rights for domestic, mechanical and irrigation purposes,” wrote Lloyd McFarling in footnotes to Sabin’s book in December of 1956.
“He said the ditch was constructed about the year 1872. Two other ditches were also important in establishing water rights, which were later acquired by the Town of Palmer Lake. One was the Anchor Ditch, dug in 1867; and the other was the Monument Ditch dug in 1868 and enlarged in 1875. These ditches were down-stream from the Hackett Ditch. Their headgates were within the limits of the town as established at the time of incorporation in 1889,” wrote McFarling.
In time, Hackett eventually left the employ of the railroad, purchased Weiss’ property and turned to raising potatoes. His prowess at that activity helped create an industry —and a dominant one at that — in this area for several years and earned him the title “the potato king.” He became very prosperous. Much of his success in potato farming business, however, was heavily reliant on his ability to irrigate. His irrigation, of course, relied mostly on “Hackett’s Ditch. So here we are once again, right back here at the source.
###

Build your own roads

Early  autos ability to climb prompts building of the Pikes Peak Highway

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

A number of historians claim that Spencer Penrose was so impressed with the first automobiles ability to climb a new road up the Ute Pass that he decided then and there to build the Pikes Peak highway.
“Colorado’s roads were an abomination all through that pioneer motoring period. As late as 1912, only a handful of tourists dared to risk their cars on visit to the Springs,” wrote Marshall Sprague in his 1971 book “One Hundred Plus: A Centennial Story of Colorado Springs.”
“A year later, car traffic increased with the opening of the new Lincoln Highway up Ute Pass. Penrose was so impressed with the ease the huffing Reos and Olds and Wintons climbed the pass without blowing up that he decided an auto road to the top of Pikes Peak was both feasible and dramatic enough to make news,” wrote Sprague.
“He was encouraged in this view on July 17, 1913 when two Denver daredevils, H. Brown and J.F. Bradley, drove a Buick Bearcat to the summit in four hours — the first car to go all the way.”
Upon learning of these successes, Penrose and several friends decided to seek permission from the U.S Department of Agriculture to build a highway to the top of the Peak along an existing horse carriage road that had been used at least since 1889.
He was reportedly warned that it could cost as much as $25,000 and was not likely to be profitable in that it would compete with the Cog Railway.
Penrose proceeded anyway on the road in 1915 and it ended up costing nearly a quarter of million dollars of his own money.
The road up Ute Pass was accelerated as much of the highway construction in Colorado near the turn of the century by use of convict labor beginning in 1905.
“Convicts built many of the first paved roads … including the State Highway from Pueblo to Leadville and the scenic highways in Big Thompson, Boulder, Colorado River and St. Vrain canyons, and the Ute Pass Road connecting Colorado Springs to Leadville,” says the “Historical Atlas of Colorado (1993),” by Thomas Noel, Paul Mahoney, and Richard Stevens.
“At first many felt that the wealthy who owned autos should build their own roads, as millionaire Spencer Penrose did,” notes the Atlas. “Penrose, who bought a new car each year, constructed a highway to the top of Pikes Peak as the ultimate challenge for motor cars.”
###

Things you can count on

Every single nut, bolt and screw 

between Christmas and New Years

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

At a hardware store where I once worked, we would inventory every single nut, bolt, screw and pipe fitting during the week between Christmas and New Years.
“There is over 40,000 common items of hardware in the modern hardware line,” went the speech from Merton Taylor, owner of Taylor Hardware. Merton tried to carry all of those items. And by Golly, we were going to count every single one of them, accurately, in all three buildings. Two of the buildings were two-stories and half-a-block long. The third was a track warehouse that stretched for a football field length along Railroad Avenue.
I was one of the regular employees but we would usually hire extra help during this massive inventory undertaking. High school kids would be camped in front of nail bins, pulling out 16 penny cement coat nails from CF and I Steel, weighing them, cleaning the bottom of the bin with a sponge and bucket of soapy water and then replacing them and dropping a paper tag with the counted weight. Then on to tackle the next bin of 20-penny cement coat.
A similar process occurred at the 10,11,12,14, 16, 20 gauge smooth black wire, and then the galvanized, and on to the chicken wire, hog fence and woven wire. We measured the joints of 1/2”, 3/4”, 1”... up to 2” galvanized and black pipe. We counted the bell reducers and 45-degree elbows. We weighed the fender washers, flat headed stove bolts, Mile High Grass Seed Mix, and 1/2” sisal rope. We separated and counted 80, 100, 120 grit sand paper and galvanized, black and aluminum stove pipe.
In the track warehouse and the two-story building we called the shop, there was no heat and we would usually work in two-person teams of a “caller” and a “writer.” The writer would be positioned in front a “torpedo” propane heater to keep his or her hands warm enough to continue writing as the caller would wade through the sometimes preweighed, precounted items calling the secret cost code.
And secret code it was. Merton, who had worked with Naval Intelligence in the Philippines (though he was in the Army) during World War II had devised a complex transference of numbers, letters, blocks and blind alleys that took two or three years and continuous practice to figure out how to read. I worked there seven years so I eventually became one of the elite group of “readers.” Which basically involved not only deciphering the complex code, but being able to read a seventy-five-year-old, semi-blind, hardware store owner’s shaky handwriting done with a number one black or red grease pencil.
Math skills were also required in that all the called items and their cost had to be “extended” which sometimes meant figuring out that were four squares per roll of asphalt rolled roofing, at $7 per square, times 400 rolls of red and 200 roles of green and so on.
At first I really hated working at the hardware store during inventory week in the week between Christmas and New Years. But later, I got to a point where I really enjoyed “knowing the code,” understanding what each of 40,000 common hardware item’s name was, comprehending that roofing is sold by the square, and being a master at “extension.” Inventory was a process involving various stages of personal enlightenment.
Today bar codes at the register and handheld scanners have replaced most of that process. I know it is faster. But, for things you can count on, I still sort of miss that week (in the old hardware store) between Christmas and New Years.
###

The passage of time and Woodmoor

Somewhere about 458 B.C. Aeschylus figured out that “Time brings all things to pass.”
Though announcements involving housing developments and such, have become quite commonplace in Northern El Paso County, I think it is interesting to take a trip back though those passing gates.
One fine spring day 43 years ago, word hit the streets of a large housing project in the Black Forest area.
“Woodmoor has a poetic ring to it. The word is so quiet sounding it could be a rumor. But it isn’t,” wrote Ralph Moore of the Denver Post in a March 22, 1965 article.
Moore noted that owner /developer Steve Arnold, “unpretentious and slight of build, a conservative in many ways, is busy promoting a pretentious 2,000-acre housing and recreational project in the Black Forest east of Monument.”
Arnold, 31, also described as a former Air Force captain who didn’t even play golf, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1956, and was a native of Los Angeles.
“Chief among the attractions at Woodmoor is an 18-hole, 7, -150-yard golf course which is hewed out of the forest by craftsmen who had little regard for hooks and slices.”
After graduating from the Naval Academy, Arnold reportedly chose the Air Force and spent his early military career at Lowery Air Force Base in Denver.
“Knowing the Air Force Academy would be located south of Monument, Arnold purchased 60 acres of land in the Black Forest because he thought it might be wise to own land near the AFA,” according to the Post story.
“He spent the 1958-1960 period with a flying squadron and in August, 1960, was transferred to the AFA as a freshman Gymnastics coach.
“Meanwhile, he kept adding to his holdings in the Black Forest, nursing the idea that someday their would be a need for a community in the area for the above-average income group. ‘It was just a belief,’ he says.”
At the time this article appeared, it was reported that Arnold had already sold more than 200 home sites in the price range of $4,000 to $11,000.
“Cranked into the project are plans for riding stables, shopping center near the Monument cutoff plus a motel,” Moore wrote.
J. Pres Maxwell was tabbed to design the golf course and a former assistant pro at Denver’s Pinehurst Country Club, Bob Hansen, was given the nod as the resident pro.
“Membership in the golf club is automatic with the purchase of a home site. Otherwise the price is $75 initiation plus dues. Anyone outside a 35-mile radius, meaning metropolitan Denver, can become a member for $500 with no dues attached,” Moore wrote in the Post.
The development’s front nine was expected to be completed and playable by August and the back nine, to be ready by the spring of 1966.

###

Blame it on the Russians

Other factors likely share some of the blame for the collapse of the fur industry here

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Some folks blame the Russians for the end of the fur trade in the Tri-Lakes area.
“In 1946 the fox farms were a good thriving business,” wrote Lucille Lavelett. “The United States made a trade agreement with Russia; Russia traded their furs to the U.S. for a metal we had, to be used to harden steel. The fur market soon became flooded with Russian furs. There was no sale for U.S. furs, and all the fur farmers had to get out of the business.”
In “Monument’s Faded Neighbor Communities and Its Folk Lore,” Lavelett noted that an area off of Baptist Road was once one of the largest and best fox farms in the west. The farm, established by a man by the name of Shelby in the 1930s, was first managed by Dave Gibbs. Gibbs later owned his own fox operation east of Monument on Highway 105.
Famous fur farmers flourished all over the Tri-Lakes area in the middle part of the last century. Jack Duckels, Colorado’s largest mink rancher during the height of the state’s fur industry in the 1960s, got his start in the Palmer Lake area.
“Duckels first raised turkeys and foxes near Palmer Lake in the 1920s. In 1932, he brought three pairs of foxes to today’s First Avenue and Havana Street – far enough away from Denver, he supposed, not to bother anyone with the smell,” according William J. Convery in a recent edition of Colorado Heritage, the state historical society’s magazine.
“To supplement his thriving fox business, Duckels added mink in 1933. The small sideline eventually eclipsed all other operations on his ranch. By 1961, the Aurora rancher employed twenty full-time hands to help feed the daily ration of some 15,000 pounds of meat byproducts, fish, cereal and fresh horsemeat to his 20,000 hungry charges,” Convery said.
According to Lavelett, the Baptist Road fox farm had eight units of fenced pens that accommodated 3,500 breeding foxes. “In 1937, the farm shipped 200,000 furs to eastern markets.”
Other factors might share some of the blame for the collapse of the fur industry here. Rising social criticism (Doris Day, the star of “A Touch of Mink”, turned animal rights activist led the Hollywood charge), the sluggish economy, and the advent of synthetic fur all were factors. But many blame the Russians.
“The rise of foreign competition ironically demonstrated how domestic fur producers had sown the seeds of their own demise. In the heady days of the 1950s and early 1960s, American fur farmers had gladly supplied foreign breeders, trained those breeders’ interns, and sold them breeding stock. Jack Duckels, for one, made extensive business contacts in Japan, Norway, and the Soviet Union. In the 1960s he traveled to Soviet trade shows and invited Russian merchandisers back to the United States to tour his own farm. Shadowed by FBI agents, the Soviets learned the ins and outs of mink ranching and signed lucrative contracts to buy Duckel’s brood minks,” wrote Convery.

###

Remembering beacon light

Blogger's note: This and the following comment was originally written as newspaper column in 2007.

“Be as a tower firmly set; Shakes not its top for any blast that blows.” __Dante Alighieri

It is often true that you don’t miss something until it is gone. Sometimes you don’t even miss it then. That may the case with the beacon light, of Beacon Lite Road fame, here in Monument.
I received fascinating copies of undated newspaper photos about the Beacon from reader Marianne Zagorski of Palmer Lake, and ever since that time I have been trying to nail down additional details and information. Perhaps you can help?
Zagorski, who has lived in Palmer Lake since the 1960s, says she thinks the tower was taken down in the early 1980s.
“As you’re coming up a long upslope on I-25 from Greenland, look for the beacon light on the right. Turn before you go west to Palmer Lake,” was directions she provided me but I have heard from other sources that it was roughly near where the two existing cell towers are today.
The captions from the photos were the attention getters.
“Aviation hazard – Two members of “C” Company, 4th Engineer Battalion from Fort Carson prepare to demolish a 110 foot tower Wednesday by climbing its base and planting explosive charges. The structure, considered a hazard to aviation, was destroyed as part of a military exercise,” read the cutline that apparently appeared in the Gazette Telegraph, crediting John Morgan with taking the photo.
“Going, going, gone. A little plastic explosive went a long way as a 110-foot tower was demolished in an exercise at Fort Carson. The tower was obtained in Monument and reassembled for a film by the British Broadcasting Company in April. With the film completed, the tower was no longer needed, so members of the 4th Engineer battalion ‘disassembled’ it in their own inimitable way,” read additional caption that appeared on a different page.
“By then we lived opposite the beacon and were disappointed and insulted by this use of it. Such a waste,” noted Zagorski.
Longtime area resident Dorothy Sibell recalled that the tower was removed using a helicopter but was at a loss to give a definitive date. Others recalled it was originally used as a marker to help locate an early airstrip in the area.
Other than that, it is all I have. Any additional information, stories and other recollections would be greatly appreciated. I would like to find a definitive date and know a little more about the film in which it appeared. I am also curious about when it was constructed and for what use.

###

Dr. Thompson, I presume

By late summer of 1890, financial burden of the Rocklands and other ventures compelled Thompson to leave town

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

It has been said that nature -- with all its overwhelming power -- knows what we need and the doctors know nothing.
Almost from its very beginning, Palmer Lake, a town initially tied to the very idea of being a health destination, has tested that theory.
“Dr. W. Finley Thompson assumed such a prominent leadership role in Palmer Lake during the 1880s that everyone has regarded him as the founder of the town,” writes Daniel W. Edwards in his new book “Dr. William Finley Thompson: Dental Surgeon and Founder of Palmer Lake” that was published in July. Thompson was the town’s first mayor and built area landmark Estamere House (Estemere).
Dr. Thompson himself, in a promotional piece published in the summer of 1884, laid it out pretty clearly.
“The healthfulness for the locality of Palmer Lake is fully recognized by all, and the prominent members of the medical faculty have frequently urged the establishment of a summer and health resort at this point...”
Thompson saw the area being developed in the same manner as European sanitariums in the Alps created for ‘lungers,’ a term often used to describe those suffering from tuberculosis and asthma.
“It is now conclusively proved that dry and rarified atmosphere is wonderfully curative, even in cases of tubercular disease. Colorado is full of people who came here in actually dying condition, who now are enjoying even robust health. Asthmatics are especially benefited in this altitude, and sufferers from this most distressing of all maladies have received permanent relief by residence here … The climate of Palmer Lake (Divide) presents without question, advantages of very superior character…” according Thompson in the promotional flyer.
Marion Savage Sabin, in her1957 book, “Palmer Lake: A Historic Narrative,” makes a similar observation about Thompson’s intentions.
“Here was the very place for a health resort and vacation community of luxurious type and not to be out-done by famous spas he ad visited in Europe. Here in ideal combination were scenic beauty, pure bracing mountain air and warm sunshine, icy springs rich in mineral content, healing pine forests, the seclusion – and at the same time accessibility by rail – which should assure the success of such an undertaking.”
Daniel Edwards notes that, “By May of 1888, he (Dr. Thompson) was actively engaged in making this happen – building a 70-room hotel with attached sanitarium – his last vigorous attempt to develop Palmer Lake.”
Edwards writes that two prominent physicians, experts in the treatment of lung problems, played important roles in that development. Dr. Alfred Tucker-Wise, the medical director for the Swiss Hotel Kursaal in Maloja, and Dr. Charles Denison, professor of diseases of the chest and of climatology at the University of Denver, consulted with Thompson regarding the construction and early operation of hotel.
Thompson also brought in his friend, Thomas Gaddes, a dentist associated with Thompson from his time in London, to become the medical superintendent of the sanitarium at the Rocklands.
Interestingly enough, Gaddes became the first elected Town Physician for Palmer Lake in March 1889, the same year he also obtained his M.D. from the Denver College of Medicine. Later in life, he also received patents for a number of inventions produced in England -- among them a wave mill which generated electricity from ocean waves, an automatic egg boiler, a window sash fastener, and a strainer that worked with a tea or coffee pot.
The dentist/physician combination was fairly common at that time, and in fact, Dr. Thompson, M.D., received his license to practice medicine on April 1, 1890, from the Colorado State Board of Medical Examiners.
“Finley’s hopes for a sanitarium at Palmer Lake were dashed by several factors,” writes Daniel Edwards. “First, not enough money was raised to implement his plan for a main sanitarium building with detached cottage and grounds. Then, Dr. Charles Denison apparently abandoned his support for Finley’s project.”
Two new sanitariums in Colorado Springs (Bellevue and Albert Glockner) apparently didn’t help matters either.
By late summer of 1890, the financial burden of the Rocklands and other ventures compelled Thompson to leave town, basically skipping out owing a lot of people a lot of money. The hotel was never wildly successful and was eventually destroyed by fire in 1920.
Thompson’s personal residence, Estamere, lives on of course, and is considered the ‘crown jewel’ of Palmer Lake, as does the town plat recorded in November of 1883, by Dr. Thompson and Dr. William A. Bell.
Bell was a Manitou Springs physician, director and financial recruiter for Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, and developer of Briarhurst Manor, his personal residence.
His Monument Farms organization began buying property in the Palmer Lake area as early as 1870 and had amassed nearly 3,000 acres by the time Thompson showed on the scene. Bell, and his organization, actually realized a healthy profit from land sales in the area.
Just what the doctor ordered. Perhaps there is a distinction between what various doctors know, and don’t know?
###

Treehuggers, if only given a chance

Not a tree or shrub is to be seen, except on the creeks

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Early travelers to Colorado may have been avid treehuggers -- if given half a chance. Today cottonwood groves along area streambeds are a pretty common sight but it wasn’t always the case. The rare occurrence as settlers made their way across the vast prairie was truly a sight for sore eyes and became landmarks on the trail. Big Timbers, on the Arkansas, for example, became a haven for Indian camps and later the site for Bent’s Fort.
“Prairie grass fires killed seedlings, and enormous herds of buffalo trampled and grazed whatever escaped the fires. The water flow in the rivers varied from high spring runoffs after snowmelt in the mountains to periods in late summer when even the Platte River was completely dry. Not only was the drought a severe trial for the trees, the spring runoffs were so powerful that the river bottoms were scoured out, washing away the sand, bars and banks and any young trees growing there,” writes Stuart K. Weir, in his research of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
One early visitor, George Ruxton, noted the lack of foliage on the Arkansas, east of Bent’s Fort.
“Nothing meets the eye but the vast undulating expanse of arid waste; for the buffalo grass, although excellent in quality, never grows higher than two or three inches, and is seldom green in color; being thinly planted, the prairie never looks green and turf-like. Not a tree or shrub is to be seen, except on the creeks, where a narrow stamp of unpicturesque cottonwood occasionally relieves the eye with its verdant foliage,” wrote Ruxton.
When the trees were found and became landmarks, all sorts of history became attached.
One such landmark in Pueblo was known as “The Old Monarch,” and was 380 years old when it was cut down in 1883, according to “Colorado: Visions of an American Landscape,” a 1991 photo book by Kenneth Helphand and Ellen Manchester.
“In 1850 there were 36 persons massacred near this tree by Indians. Fourteen men have been hung from one of its limbs. The first white woman who died in Colorado was buried under its branches,” read text from the back of a historic photo of the tree uncovered by Helphand and Manchester.
Early settlers of Denver and Boulder transplanted cottonwood trees as a domesticating act in order to fight the wildness of their new surroundings.
But General Palmer, in founding of Colorado Springs, took such plantings to a new level.
Palmer had 600 cottonwood trees planted when water was available from city reservoirs in 1872. Palmer employed large crews to maintain the city’s trees and parks and by 1910 the city had created the Department of Forestry.
The cottonwood legacy in Colorado remains fixed.
As Theodore Roosevelt observed, the trees will probably be a part of the fabric of what is Colorado for long time to come.
“From the upper branches of the cottonwood trees overhead – whose shimmering, tremulous leaves are hardly ever quiet, but if the wind stirs at all, rustle and quiver and sigh all day long – comes now and then soft melancholy cooing of the morning dove, whose voice always seems far away,” wrote Roosevelt in Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail.

###
1. Pueblo in 1880 with trademark tree.
2. Local Cottonwood near the Palmer Divide.
3. The Hanging Tree, also known as the Monarch Tree, was a landmark in Pueblo. Standing between present day C and D Street, the old cottonwood had to be removed to accommodate traffic. Photo courtesy of the Denver Public Library, Western History Photographic Collections

Longhorns on the Goodnight-Loving Trail

Everyone needs a good trail to follow -- especially one marked by history, romance and tradition.
Monument area rancher Stan Searle knows that.
Perhaps that is why he follows in the footsteps of legendary trailblazer Charles Goodnight and his partner Oliver Loving every year, when he leads the parade for the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo with a herd of his Texas Longhorns driven down Seventeenth Street in Denver.
“The Longhorn cattle drive preceding the parade was initiated last year, as the National Western celebrated its 100th birthday,” according to a release from Searle Ranch in 2007.
“Tens of thousands of spectators crowded the sidewalks from Union Station to Tremont Place, fascinated by the sweeping horns and wide variety of colors, genetic trademarks that go back 500 years. Reminiscent of the first Longhorns trailed into Denver 146 years ago, these cattle are the direct descendants of the Spanish cattle brought to the Americas by Columbus. Now dozens of Colorado ranches raise these historic cattle---which a century ago were nearer extinction than the bison.”
At the end of the Civil War, Goodnight returned to Texas and joined in “making the gather” – a state-wide roundup of free-roaming cattle left to fend for themselves during the four years of war, notes New Perspectives on The West, a project initiated by PBS.org.
“Having recovered his herd, however, Goodnight now faced the problem of bringing it to market somewhere outside the war-ravaged South. He decided to head west, toward New Mexico and Colorado, despite the fact that getting there would mean driving the herd across a waterless stretch of west Texas,” notes PBS – The West.
Larry McMurtry’s chronicles in Lonesome Dove were loosely based on Goodnight and Loving’s celebrated achievements.
Loving, who prospered during the war by selling beef to confederate troops, joined forces with Goodnight in 1866.
“They set out with two thousand head to blaze a trail from Belknap, Texas to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, which became known as the Goodnight-Loving Trail. Once in New Mexico, Loving headed north to Colorado, while Goodnight headed back to Texas for another herd. Between them, they had made more than $12,000,” according to PBS – The West.
“Loving’s part in this financial success did not last long; he died fighting off a band of Comanches who attacked him on the trail to New Mexico in 1867. Honoring his partners’s dying request, Goodnight turned back from that cattle drive to bring Loving’s body back to Texas. Over the following years, however, as the Goodnight-Loving Trail became one of the most heavily traveled in the Southwest, Goodnight extended his activities, blazing the Goodnight Trail from Alamogordo Creek, New Mexico, to Granada, Colorado.”
Information from the Searles Ranch notes that the cattle eventually ended up in Denver.
“Passing just east of the present site of Colorado Springs and following Cherry Creek, Goodnight brought his herd of Texas Longhorns into Denver where they were purchased by prominent Colorado pioneer John Iliff.”
Searle, who headquarters just east of Monument and winters his herd near Ellicott, says he and his foreman Gary Lake will have the help of cowboys from other ranches including Kit Haddock of Monument, who ranches in eastern El Paso County, when they push the herd onto the streets of Denver. Searle Ranch has provided Longhorns for other parades and events including annual cattle drives through Colorado Springs to promote the Working Ranch Cowboys Rodeo.
“Longhorns are probably the easiest breed of cattle to handle in a strange environment, even though they come off pastures where they live virtually unassisted year around.” He adds that “they are also the most interesting---not only because of their big horns but because they’re the original cattle of the Americas.”
Searle says the downtown drive helps build awareness.
“We like to let people know that the West is still alive, that ranching and cowboys are still a vital part of the Colorado economy.”
###

Chivington's history of contradiction

Chivington put his harsh words into action

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

John M. Chivington was a beady-eyed badger of man with a history of contradiction. Early Coloradans knew him alternately as the “hero of Glorietta Pass,” and “the butcher of Sand Creek.” As Methodist minister, he wielded revolvers from the pulpit, turned down a “praying” commission in the first Colorado Volunteer Regiment of the Union Army for a “fighting one,” and carried great contempt for slavery but advocated genocide.
For about two years beginning in 1865, he owned much of what is now the western portion of the city of Manitou Springs.
Ordained by the Methodist Church in 1844, he served as a frontier minister establishing congregations and building churches in the growing west.
“Chivington’s contempt for slavery and talk of secession caused him enormous trouble in Missouri,” according to New Perspectives on The West, a PBS film research project. “In 1856, pro-slavery members of his congregation sent him a threatening letter instructing him to cease preaching. When many of the signatories attended his service the next Sunday, intending to tar and feather him, Chivington ascended the pulpit with a Bible and two pistols. His declaration that ‘By the grace of god and these two revolvers, I am going to preach here today’ earned him the sobriquet the ‘Fighting Parson.’”
His frontier church building duties for the Methodist Church eventually landed him in Denver and when the Civil War began, territorial Governor William Gilpin commissioned him.
He rose quickly among the ranks and as a Major, Chivington commanded a group of 400 soldiers that slipped behind Confederate forces in Glorietta Pass in eastern New Mexico by rappelling down canyon walls in a surprise attack that cut off the Confederate supply train. The troops under his charge end up capturing or destroying 500 Rebel horses and mules and 80 wagons loaded with ammunition and food. The Confederate troops were forced to withdraw down the Rio Grande to Texas.
The battle became known as the ‘Gettysburg of the West’ and Chivington and the Colorado Volunteers returned to Denver as heroes.
In Denver, many gold seekers and settlers had reset their sights on a new enemy, as tension between the Cheyenne Indians and the growing white population began to bubble over. Denver newspapers called for the “extermination of the red devils” in front page editorials and urged readers to “take a few months off and dedicate that time to wiping out the Indians.”
Chivington himself was in agreement. “The Cheyennes will have to be roundly whipped – or completely wiped out – before they will be quiet. I say that if any of them are caught in your vicinity, the only thing to do is kill them.”
In late November, 1864, Chivington put his harsh words into action, as his troops attacked well known ‘peace’ Chief’s” Black Kettle’s band of Cheyennes on the banks of Sand Creek in what is now Kiowa County despite the fact that Black Kettle’s band flew an American flag and a white flag of truce over his lodge.
Afterward, the Joint Committee on the Conduct of War, which investigated the incident along with other military investigations, declared:
“Whatever influence this may have had upon Colonel Chivington, the truth is that he surprised and murdered, in cold blood, the unsuspecting men, women and children on Sand creek, who had every reason to believe they were under the protection of the United State authorities, and then returned to Denver and boasted of the brave deed he and his men under his command had performed,” wrote the Committee.
According to Ask.com, Chivington proclaimed before the attack “Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.” Between 150 and 184 Cheyennes were reportedly killed and some were mutilated. Most were women, children and elderly men. Chivington and his men later displayed scalps, human fetuses, and genitalia in the Apollo Theater in Denver.
A military tribunal and the earlier-mentioned Joint Committee, condemned Chivington and his men for the massacre but no formal charges were ever brought against him. He was forced to resign his commission and back completely away from state politics to which he originally aspired.
On December 1, 1865, he purchased eighty acres that included natural springs in the Manitou area for $1,800 from pioneers Thompson and Sarah Girten. Chivington kept the property only for about two years and sold it for a loss at $500. Later, in 1884, he sued Manitou Mineral Water Company for water rights that he claimed he still owned. The courts, however, disagreed.
After moving first to Nebraska, then California, then back to Ohio where he farmed and edited a small newspaper, and finally returning to Denver and working as a deputy sheriff, he died of Cancer and is buried in Fairmont Cemetery in Denver.
###

Irish Pat's walk through history

Murphy lived and walked all over Colorado for many years

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Common people walk through history. History, however, is a recording of uncommon deeds.
And speaking of walks though history — one of my favorite historic characters lived and walked all over this part of Colorado for many years. Patrick Murphy actually homesteaded near Highway 83, about 6 miles east of Monument, but was known to take off hiking just about anywhere. One of his favorite strolls, was reportedly a stage route from Monument to Florissant.
Born the day before St. Paddy’s Day, 1821, County Cork, Ireland, Murphy hit New York on the east coast of United States in 1864 after 14 days on a steamer named the “Kangaroo.” Once on dry land again, he took off walking, according to Lucille Lavelett, author of “Through the Years at Monument, Colorado.” From New York he walked to Nashville, Tennessee, then on to St. Louis, Missouri, then up the Mississippi River and on to Fort Lewis.
A small wiry man of maybe 100 pounds when soaking wet, Murphy was kept out of the regular army by his citizen status but served Union troops as a cook in the civil war.
“When he passed away at age 105, he was the oldest member of the Knights of Columbus in the world, the oldest man in the state of Colorado, and the oldest rancher in the state of Colorado,.. he lived on his ranch until he was 101,” wrote Lavelett.
“At 101 he ran a race in the main street of Monument with a man many years his junior and won, and danced at a dinner given in his honor that night. At 102, Mr. Murphy climbed halfway to the summit of Pike Peak and was only dissuaded from completing the trip through the intercession of a younger man who was accompanying him who told Murphy he was giving out.”
Uncommon deeds indeed. Murphy was a practicing Catholic and parishioner of St. Peter Catholic Church in Monument, and is buried (near his ranch) in Spring Valley Cemetery in southern Douglas County.
###

Saddle club and the view from the circle

Old stories become new again

“The pace of events is moving so fast that unless we can find some way to keep our sights on tomorrow, we can not expect to be in touch with today,” __ Dean Rusk, 1963.


By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Often change moves in a circle. Everything old might be new again. It becomes evident when you look at things like the Woodland Park Saddle Club and the names, and history past.
In July of 1950, the local newspaper, Woodland Park View, reported a “Large Parade” and “Exciting Rodeo” for the three-year-old saddle club.
An earlier article outlined how the club came into existence.
“Organized under a large pine tree in the south corner of the ball park, in August, 1947, twelve charter members were present: Mr. and Mrs. Ira Hollingsworth, Mr. and Mrs. Bob White, Mr. and Mrs. Ed Bean, Mr. and Mrs. Tom Atwell, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Maximoff, George Klumph, and sister Catherine, Carl Silbaugh, and Jack Willis. Ed Bean was elected the first president, with Herb Lyons succeeding him,” according to the View, which itself was only in it second volume and year. It was undergoing some changes as well.
“In true editorial fashion the Woodland Park View is going from the old to the new this weekend. Moving from Mrs. Whitmore’s Antique Shoppe where it has been comfortably located for more than two months, the View will make its new home in the very modern United Gas Co. building. We welcome you, your news and your patronage,” noted a front page box in the same issue as the story on the successful Ute Trail Stampede.
“Through the generosity of Bert Bergstrom, new rodeo grounds were made available in the fall of ’49. The new grounds are located in the center of town, south of the business section. With the co-operation of the people of the county and active members of the Saddle Club, the new grounds are being completed with a race track and a grad stand to be built later,” reported the View.
A decade ago,  (in the summer of 2008) Oscar Lindholm, 93 at the time, recalled Bert Bergstrom as a “big, rough, tough Swede, saloonkeeper at the Ute Inn, 231 pounds, that could drink quite lot of beer.”
Oscar said at that at that time he, himself, could put it away as well, but added that he hadn’t indulged in the recent 29 years. Oscar claimed he kept in fighting shape then by walking around the lake in Green Mountain Falls several times each day. “That’s the best medicine. That’s why I’m still alive.”
But Big Bert and Oscar were not alone especially when the Stampede was in town.
“… With the casino blaring away, all the local night spots lit up (and others?) and the square dance at the school ‘fillin’ up the floor’, Everybody had a GOOD TIME,” according the 1950’ article in the paper.
Cowboys and spectator alike agreed, “It is the best arena in the state and so beautifully situated with Pikes Peak and the breath-taking mountain scenery in the background,” reported the View.
The paper itself, published by Kenneth and Margaret Geddes, with Maurine Johnson as the city editor, only operated under that name for about five years, according their son Ken Geddes, Jr. Their son was an attorney in Colorado Springs until his death several years ago . He said when his parents sold the Cripple Creek Times to Blevins Davis, (who renamed it the Gold Rush) the View was discontinued.
“But that is the reason my mother called it ‘The View,’ I think, Woodland Park has that great view of the Peak,” said Ken Geddes, Jr. more than a decade ago.
###

Despite the dryness, we still must eat

Not only do we try to grow it, but historically, we have been pretty good at processing, packing and packaging our produce.

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

There is an old saying, batted around in farm circles, that it is so dry in eastern Colorado that the water is wet only on one side. The rest of the state is not that much better off, though you wouldn’t know it from a few weeks’ afternoon storms. Colorado’s annual average rainfall is somewhere near 17 inches a year.
But that doesn’t stop us from trying to grow things.
Irrigated farmland in Colorado – with acreage that trails only California, accounts for wheat on the South Platte and Arkansas drainage, potatoes in the San Luis Valley, peaches in Grand Junction, wine grapes near Palisade, corn in the Olathe Valley and sugar beets in several locations.
Colorado led the nation in sugar beet production for decades until the 1960s with giant firms of Holly, Great Western and National prominent and prosperous locally and nationally.
Not only do we try to grow it, but historically, we have been pretty good at processing, packing and packaging our produce.
As early as 1867, the Rough and Ready Mill opened in Littleton. Irishman John K. Mullen, who was known to be proud of his calloused and stone chip-embedded hands (from years of toiling in the flour mills) built an inland empire of mills, grain elevators, wheat fields in the form of the Colorado Milling and Elevator Company. The company is famous for marketing Hungarian High Altitude Flour that is still popular.
Until high labor costs, coupled with cheap imported sugar cane, virtually killed the sugar business in Colorado in the 1960s, the sweet spot encouraged the establishment of related businesses. Candy makers such as Jolly Rancher in Wheat Ridge, Enstrom’s in Grand Junction, Rocky Mountain Chocolates in Durango, and Russell Stover’s in Montrose can all trace their origins to a strong Colorado sugar industry.
The state is also excels in making beer. Hundreds of breweries have called Colorado home. The first one, Rocky Mountain in Denver, eventually became the Zang Brewing Company and was the largest brewery in the Rockies until prohibition. Only four survived the long dry spell between 1916 and 1934. Of those four, only Adolph Coors has survived continously and is around today. Tivoli, from Denver, Walters from Pueblo, and Schneider, from Trinidad were all gone by the 1970s. Tivoli was resurected a few years ago.
But milk drinkers were not forgotten either. Sinton Dairy, which began in Colorado Springs in 1880, is still with us today; as well as Robinson in Denver, Meadow Gold in Englewood, and Hillside in Pueblo.
“The development of inexpensive tin cans around 1900 gave rise to giants such a Kuner, which started out pickling in Denver in 1872 and merged in 1927 with the J.H. Empson Company,” according to Historical Atlas of Colorado by Thomas Noel, Paul Mahoney, and Richard Stevens. Other local canners include Stokes, specializing in chili, which started in Colorado Springs and later moved to Denver.
In this state, I guess it is not really how much water you have, but what you do with it. We all need to eat.
###

Air Force Academy is a newcomer

 

 

 

 

 

Bootleg whiskey, fox farms, governor's horse ranch, and pioneer cabins

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

In the scheme of things, the Air Force Academy really is a virtual newcomer to this area. Selected as the architect of the massive undertaking, the firm (actually a joint venture of several companies) of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, was not even awarded the contract for the project until July 23, 1954, according to author Steven A. Simon in “The Building of the Air Force Academy,” an article appearing the special publication celebrating 50 years of the Academy. Most of the now well-known buildings on the 18,455-acre military reservation were built in the mid- to late 1950s.
But what came before?
As early as 1860, lumber concerns began appearing in an area later to be known as Husted. In what is now located just about at the North entrance of the Academy, Calvin R. Husted built a sawmill, and by the late 1860s, nearly 200 people lived nearby as the town with many businesses, a church and even a newspaper (Husted Banner) developed around the mill.
“Husted operated the mill for many years. Calvin Husted was one of the earliest county commissioners in El Paso County. He was known as a generous man; during his prosperous years he was said to have given many a handout and grubstake. He died in the poorhouse in Colorado Springs,” wrote Perry Eberhart in Ghosts of the Colorado Plains.
Eventually the sawmill was abandoned but the town survived for years as a shipping point for ranches in the area. The buildings disappeared little by little over the years.
“One of the oldest was the Branding Iron café; It became a saloon, then a store, then a post office, and finally a church. The service station and store closed in 1956. The last signs of Husted were completely destroyed with the construction of the Academy and the U.S. 85-87 freeway,” wrote Eberhart.
But prior to then, the little burg had an interesting run. There was even a West Husted and East Husted separated by Monument Creek and positioned alternately near the Rio Grande tracks and the Santa Fe tracks. And at one time the D & R.G. maintained a roundhouse or turntable in West Husted.
“The steam trains had power to pull the freight and passenger trains from Colorado Springs to Husted, but not enough power to pull the steep grade to Palmer Lake to the ‘Divide,’ therefore extra helper engines and crews were kept at Husted,” wrote local historian Lucille Lavelett.
It was an area known for train tragedies as well. Rock Island and Rio Grande trains collided head-on near there in 1888 killing only two people but another wreck in 1909 took the lives of seven and injured nearly 60 people.
Interestingly enough, there was also an early airport there.
“An unwitting precursor to the area’s eventual grand purpose, a small airport and flying school were built in the late 1930s on land currently used for cadet airmanship operations. In fact, Charles Lindbergh rented a plane and flew from this location while a member of the Academy Site Selection Commission,” Simon says.
Additionally, in the canyons west of Husted, bootleg whiskey stills proliferated during Prohibition and cattle rustlers, horse thieves and other undesirables were reportedly hanged in nearby Deadman’s Canyon, thereby giving it that rather dubious namesake.
Fox farms operated near there in 1930s, and former Governor Oliver Shoup owned the Cathedral Rock ranch not far from Husted on what is now Academy land.
Other towns at one time existed on or close to what is now the military reservation. Among them, Pring Siding, Edgerton, Monument Station (on the south end of the Academy), Henry, Borst, and Stanley Camp to name a few. But they each have unique stories of their own.
The Burgess Ranch Cabin, constructed in 1869-1870 by William A. Burgess, remains today in the Douglas Valley housing area on the Academy. It is one of the oldest remaining buildings in the Pikes Peak region and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Three small lodges built in 1929 also remain standing close by.
###

Cheaper to use the horses?

Today there is a substantial movement back to horsepower 

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com
On the ranch, my father said it was sometimes easier and cheaper to use the horses than to get the tractor going, especially for mowing hay. Today, with gasoline headed higher once again, maybe we are getting closer to a time when a bag of oats makes as much fuel sense as feeding the John Deere.
If a person drives around the Tri-Lakes area, there is plenty of horse-drawn equipment now serving as lawn ornaments that once plowed, raked, bailed, cultivated, threshed and dug potatoes.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to know a few of those antique implements’ story? Perhaps there are a few of you out there that know those stories?
Perry E. Gresham tells of a close call while raking hay in “The Divide Country” near Elbert in his book “Growing up in the Ranchland.”
“Ranching and farming in those early days was much more rugged than it is today. The technological revolution has influenced the rural way of life. We did many things that are mechanized today.”
By way of example, Gresham talks of the potential danger. “We had mowing machines drawn by horses. The sickle needed sharpening from time to time, which was accomplished by stone wheel or a hand tool. After the hay was cut, we allowed it to dry for a day or two before we moved in with a horse drawn hay rake. When we worked frisky horses, these were dangerous occupations. I had a team run away when I was raking hay. The bumpy ride knocked me off my seat and down to where the tines were about to roll me over and over. I held on to the reins with the grit of a strong young country boy, and by the grace of God, the horses came to a standstill. I was fortunate enough to avoid an accident with the rake.”
The first half of the 19th Century was an age of discovery for farm implementation. Men like Jerome Case, Cyrus McCormick and John Deere successfully developed huge manufacturing facilities that began producing equipment that made the farming job that much easier than the old “scatch” endeavors up until then, writes Sam Moore in the “History of Horse-Powered Farming in America.”
“By 1900 sophisticated farm machines became available that embodied the principles of many of today’s modern implements. They performed nearly all the tillage, cultivation, or harvesting operations on progressive farms of the day. In some areas steam traction engines were being used for threshing or plowing, but they were too large, heavy and expensive for most farmers. The new implements were virtually all animal-powered. Even after the introduction of gas tractors, automobiles, and trucks during the first decade of the 20th century, the horse and mule population in the United States continued to grow until it reached the all-time high of 26.4 million animals in 1918,” writes Moore.
But for the next two decades, a real push to the gasoline tractors by agriculture colleges, extension agents, and equipment salesmen took its toll and by 1950, hardly anyone was still using draft animals.
Today there is a substantial movement back to horsepower in some organic farming circles as modern-day draft farmers claim farming with horses does less damage to land than gas-powered heavy machinery and reduces reliance on fossil fuels.
But before we get all fired up to switch to back draft-horse farming is this area, we need to consider some other factors.
The historic record indicates that it was a bit cooler and wetter back in the days of horses and hand implements in these parts. Rogers Davis, long-time director of the Lucretia Vaile Museum notes that you couldn’t hope to grow three-pound potatoes and get 383 wagonloads full with dry-land tactics in the modern age. All we need is a little water, and cool weather to go with our horsepower.
###

Grand Duke Alexis, celebs, and reality

What he really wanted to do was visit the American West

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Though they did not have celebrity and “reality” television then, a Colorado visit by Grand Duke Alexis Romanoff of Russia in 1872 might have made a good pilot.
Perhaps one of the more surreal elements of the trip were buffalo hunting excursions by the Grand Duke led alternately by Buffalo Bill Cody and a young General George Armstrong Custer, four years prior to the battle at Little Big Horn.
Grand Duke Alexis had arrived in New York in November of 1871, and had been hob-knobbing with elites in the East for months.
Dinners at the White House with then President Grant, giving Mayor Medill of Chicago $5,000 in gold for those left homeless from the Great Chicago Fire, and touring the Smith and Wesson factory producing pistols for his father’s army, were all on the agenda.
But what he really wanted to do, was visit the American West.
At a dinner at the White House, Lieutenant General Phil Sheridan wowed him with stories of mine activity in areas around Denver and great buffalo hunts on the plains.
That, of course, led to the Pennsylvania Railroad putting together a five-car special train, headed for the buffalo country of North Platte, Nebraska, and south and west into the Julesburg area of Colorado. Who to guide such important guests?
North Platte’s first resident, Buffalo Bill Cody, also enlisted the help (with the promise of 1,000 pounds of tobacco) of Sioux chief Spotted Tail and 100 Indians of the tribe.
The special train picked up General Custer and other army brass in Omaha and on January 12, arrived in North Platte. There they loaded their meager supplies including three wagons of champagne and Alexis’ personal chef, they headed out on the plain to hunt buffalo.
In the next two days, they killed 56 buffalo, the Duke himself accounting for eight, and in the evenings the 1,000 Indians offered shows involving sham fights, dances and lance throwing.
According to Marshall Sprague’s book, Gallery of Dudes, Cody remarked, “I was in hopes that he (Alexis) would kill five or six more before we reached camp, especially if a basket of champagne was to be opened every time he dropped one.”
Following that hunt, the Duke and entourage was entertained at a grand ball in Denver and toured other Colorado Front Range communities including Golden and Loveland. Disappointed by only the 56 animals slain in the first hunt, Custer and others decided to try additionally in the Kit Carson area of the Colorado plain, near the Kansas border. In one day of that hunt, the Duke killed 12 animals himself and the entire party was able to claim over 200 kills.
“In mid-February, Custer escorted him to New Orleans and to Pensacola in Florida, where he boarded his flagship Svetlanna and sailed for home by way of Cuba,” writes Sprague.
Today, The Krewe of Rex formed in 1872 -- principally to entertain the visiting Grand Duke Alexis Romanoff of Russia continues today as a New Orleans’s tradition.

###
Photo information:
1. Grand Duke Alexis Romanoff.
2. Duke in full regalia.
3. General Custer, Grand Duke Alexis and Buffalo Bill.

On truth and good stories

Jim Beckwourth crossed all cultural barriers during his 68 years

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

James P. Beckwourth had a reputation for being able to tell a good yarn.
And that was exactly what he did in dictating his autobiography to Thomas Bonner. Bonner, a Justice of the Peace in the California Gold fields. Of course, he was obliged to add or ‘improve’ certain details about himself in “The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout, and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians.”
Amazingly, most of it contained elements of truth.
“… While Beckwourth certainly had a tendency to exaggerate numbers or to occasionally make himself the hero of events that happened to other people, later historians have discovered that much of what Beckwourth related in his autobiography actually occurred,” according to beckwourth.org.
Born April 6, 1798, in Fredricksburg, Virginia, (his father an Irish American plantation owner and his mother, a Negro slave) Jim Beckwourth was educated by his father and could read, write and spoke Spanish, French and multiple Indian dialects. For eight to nine years, Beckwourth lived with a Crow band. He rose in their society from warrior to chief (a respected man) and leader of the "Dog Clan". According to his book, he eventually ascended to the highest-ranking war chief of the Crow Nation.
 “An often-told story has it that when the book appeared, a group of miners who were well-acquainted with Beckwourth, commissioned one of its members to pick up a copy while on a trip to San Francisco. But the man, being careless, got a copy of the Bible instead. In the evening, he was requested to read aloud from the long-awaited book, and opening it at random, he hit upon and read the story of Sampson and the foxes,” according to beckwourth.org.
“That’ll do!” one of the men cried. “I’d know that story for one of Jim’s lies anywhere!”
One local story, told by Beckwourth himself, involved the legend of Jimmy Camp. Beckwourth related a tale of Jimmy Boyer (other historians have said his last name was Hayes or Daugherty) “a little dwarf Irishman” who had established a cabin and fort about 10 miles east of what is now the center of Colorado Springs. Jimmy would trade items brought from ‘civilization’ to trade with the Indians for furs.
“His wagon train would follow a segment of the Cherokee Trail (before it was the Cherokee Trail) north from the Pueblo area, and his route was called Jimmy Camp Trail, which gave the name to Jimmy Camp Creek,” writes Perry Eberhart in “Ghosts of the Colorado Plains.”
Jimmy would then light a bonfire on the top of a hill to signal that he had returned and it was time to trade. By all accounts, the Indians liked and trusted Jimmy.
Sometime from 1833 to 1835, however, Jimmy was murdered by Mexican bandits, it is believed.
According to Beckwourth, he and Indian friends of Jimmy, tracked down the murders, slit their throats and hung them by their toes in a nearby tree.
Today, the James P. Beckwourth Mountian Club of Denver pays tribute to the noted storyteller.
“Jim crossed all cultural barriers during his 68 years, and the Club incorporates his life in its activities by storytelling, historical re-enactment and written materials,” says the club’s literature.
###