No short cuts across high saddles above Dunton

 Hard work may never pay off

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

The stories grow like a bad weed in high altitude sunshine on the mountain saddles above Dunton.
If you look down the slopes below — like the miners and outlaws and other desperados of the time — you might understand that hardship, isolation, heartbreak — and realize that hard work may never pay off.
Not far from here, at the turn of the last century,  Matt Warner and his accomplice, known then as Butch Cassidy, (his given name was Robert Leroy Parker) walked into the San Miguel Valley Bank.
Warner pulled the teller over his desk, threatening him with death. Parker filled a bag with cash, eventually calculated to be $20,750. That measures up to more than half -million dollars in today’s currency when adjusted for inflation.
Like Parker, your might have had a bad taste in your mouth and felt mistreated in general.  Perhaps you would come to the conclusion that there might be shortcuts.
"The young man who would become Butch Cassidy was hired to pack ore onto mules and bring the valuable materials from the mines high in the mountains around Telluride down to the mills," writes Stephen Elliott of the Telluride News in 2015.
"Parker was keeping a colt of his on a local rancher’s property, and eventually he decided to remove it from the ranch. After Parker took his colt from the property, the ranch owner accused him of stealing the animal, and he was arrested and tried for the crime in Montrose. He was eventually acquitted but left Telluride to find work on ranches around Wyoming and Montana, until he returned to the box canyon a few years later to begin his life of crime."
Well some might argue about the timing of such a watershed moment. But it is possible that a young Leroy Parker, high on that ridge or some other, stared down at Rico on one side, and Dunton to the northwest, and formulated a plan for an easier, or at least more exciting way to make a living.
He wasn't going to scratch around in a hole, pack busted rocks up the hillsides, or labor arm-deep in blood, cutting meat all day in the butcher shop.
From that ridge, he could have probably seen the Emma, the Smuggler and the American mines.
He might have even spied Joe Roscio, who  arrived in Dunton in the 1880s from Minnesota. Roscio mined on the West Fork while federal troops were still busy chasing off Ute warriors who called the area home, or at least the equivalent of the grocery store.
The Smuggler, a tipple operation, was built on the steep slope on the shady side of the river. Roscio and his wife had at least four children, including boys Joe, Jr., Chuck, and Emilio (Mello).
They mined and survived up there in the high lonesome by also trapping, logging and supplying other miners. They rented cabins, operated a bar and lodge, and reportedly charged a nickel to use the hot springs.
Young Parker, no stranger to the possibility of fun and entertainment of the region, no doubt knew of the operation at the local hot spot. And he was prone to enjoy a leisurely life.
After their first bank job in Telluride, they made a beeline out of town notes Stephen Elliott.
"Warner, Parker and one or two other accomplices then headed west out of Telluride on horseback, urging their horses into a gallop and firing their revolvers as a warning to any would-be pursuers as they left town. The group crested Keystone Hill, a few miles west of Telluride, where a horse relay was awaiting them, one of several relay points manned by friends who were given a share of the stolen money in exchange for their assistance in the getaway," Elliot wrote in 2015.
Warner took credit for having the idea to rob the bank. Both riders with a regional reputation for winning horse races, Warner said he approached his friend and fellow racer Butch Cassidy — and then, his own brother-in-law Tom McCarty. According to his version, Butch was excited by the prospect, while Tom was more reluctant. After riding into town and up to the bank, Warner says he placed his gun under the teller’s nose, while Cassidy gathered the cash, and Tom McCarty held the horses outside.
Perhaps because it was their first bank job, the inexperienced outlaws led the teller outside with his hands up, and in the process, alerted the entire town.
After firing a few shots to back off the crowd, the three or four outlaws, made a beeline out of town, eventually ending up in the mountains near Mancos. Running so fast that they left the fresh horses behind, they ran into one of their former employers, Harry Adsit, who later helped the posse identify them and tell the pursuing group what direction they were headed.
Interestingly enough, Telluride Town Marshall, Jim Clark later confessed to the Gunnison County Sheriff to being involved — by not being involved.
Clark reportedly told the Sheriff he received $2200 of the stolen money as payment for being out of town during the robbery and later acquired one of the horses used in the robbery.
Certain accounts speculate that the two horse racing friends, and now, bank robbers, along with McCarty and perhaps additional accomplices, changed horses in the Cortez area (perhaps even at Longabaugh ranch south of Cortez, home of Harry Longabaugh’s father. Harry, (a.k.a. ‘The Sundance Kid”) would later befriend Cassidy and famously ride with the “Wild Bunch,” in Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Texas and New Mexico.
The Roscios sold Dunton in 1974 to a group of investors from Telluride and the East Coast. Dunton clintele morphed from local sheepherders, valley ranchers, reservation workers, bikers, and hippies playing nude volleyball games in high-altitude surroundings — to high-dollar euro tourists and film stars.
In the 1990s, a group of German Chemical company executives and other European investors affiliated with Christoph Henkel, purchased the little frontier village.
"The interior of each cabin was reborn as a piece of art in its own right -- a magazine stylist's collage — created mostly by Katrin Bellinger Henkel, Christoph's wife," according to the New York Time's piece.
The Henkel family radically transformed Dunton from its rough and ready beginnings to an exclusive resort with pricing North of $1,000 per night.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the drafty old cabins with unchinked logs reportedly suffered from hard use by "outlaw" motorcycle gangs, careless hippies,  and a severe skunk infestation — not to mention party-focused local high-school kids and other miscreants.
In early January 2005,  a New York Times travel piece by Anne Goodwin, described how the Henkel family transformed the resort with museum quality art and Americana to help fetch those bank-robber hotel rates.
Goodwin quoted Tyson Horner, assistant general manager of the place at the time.

"Did you catch those names?" Mr. Horner's eyebrows arched as his practiced index finger nimbly found a prominent "Butch Cassidy," and just below it, a smallish "Sundance."

"Come on," I said. "That's got to be a prank."

"Well," he pulled on the word, grinning broadly, "they're not sayin,' but rumor has it they holed up here in 1889, after they robbed the Telluride bank — their first heist."

Only problem with that, is that it was not likely Cassidy's (Parker's) first legal transgression. He had been suspected of rustling cattle since his teen years in Circleville, Utah, and he was more likely going by another name, like George Cassidy, Tom Gillis, James Ryan, Santiago Ryan, Santiago Maxwell, J.P. Maxwell, James Lowe, Santiago Lowe, George Ingerfield.
And as far as being associated with the Sundance Kid, there also was no record that the two men were associated until later. Though they could have been.
Maybe the Dunton bar has 'Roy Parker' carved in it? Or Harry Alonzo, or Frank Boyd, as Sundance was prone to use as an alias?

Robert Leroy Parker did do a prison stretch in the Wyoming Territorial Prison from 1894-1896 for stealing horses. And in 1887, Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, a.k.a. the Sundance Kid, was sentenced to 18 months in the Sundance, Wyoming jail, for stealing a slow horse.
No evidence suggests that met before Parker was released from prison. But the two incarceration locations are several hours apart — by fast horse.

Perhaps bank robbers did take a short cut along the West Fork of the Dolores River, change to faster horses, and did briefly hide out in Dunton.
Perhaps carving their names in history, and the wooden bar. 

But what names did they carve? It is going to take hard work, hardship, and perhaps isolation and heartache, that may never pay off —before we ever know for sure. 

In the meantime, stories grow like a bad weed in high altitude sunshine on the mountain saddles above Dunton.

Photo Information:
West Dolores Hotel and Bathing House Sept. 18, 1887. Men, women and children in front of the hot springs. Photographed by T.J. McKee. Denver Public Library.

Dunton - Smuggler Mine: Creator: Wolle, Muriel Sibell, Broken lumber and timbers mark the site of the Smuggler Mine, Is Part Of WH906. Muriel Sibell Wolle papers, 1926-1976 Subject Dunton (Colo.); Abandoned mines--Western History and Genealogy Dept., Denver Public Library.

Dunton - Emma Mine: Creator: Wolle, Muriel Sibell, Western History and Genealogy Dept., Denver Public Library, Dunton - 1950 Creator Wolle, Muriel Sibell, 1898-1977 Date 1950 Donor Muriel Sibell Wolle estate, 1977 Summary View in Dunton (Dolores County), Colorado; shows a harp switch handle at a wye in the ore car tracks; dilapidated buildings and mountains are on one side, a sheer cliff is on the other.

Dunton - 1950 : Creator: Dunton (Dolores County), Colorado; shows a harp switch handle at a wye in the ore car tracks; dilapidated buildings and mountains are on one side, a sheer cliff is on the other.  ###

 

Is that wild woman still wailing?

It is best to ski in the several miles, or use the snowshoes, by the light of the moon because of avalanche danger, especially that particular year -- with seven, maybe eight, feet of snow in the flat areas. 

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

When silver was still king in San Juans, miners told the story of a wild woman’s blood-curdling scream that periodically jarred the sand out of their sluice boxes up near the head of Horse Gulch on the ridge between Dunton and Rico.
Loggers who followed, told tales of the same scream as they canted around logs in the lake around Barlow. Acid plant workers had similar yarns, as they walked back and forth between the mountain towns for dances and such, in the ‘30s, ‘40s and the ‘50s.
Some claimed it was mountain lions. Or the winds whistling through the bare gaps above timberline. But for many who had heard it first-hand, the scream had a human quality, though admittedly, it could have been from another world.
The trail snaked its way up Horse Gulch through the ‘quakies,’ pine and spruce. Then out into the open on an old roadbed with steep bare slopes above it, where the snow runs in slides, even in driest of winters.
It is best to ski in the several miles, or use the snowshoes, by the light of the moon because of avalanche danger, especially that particular year -- with seven, maybe eight, feet of snow in the flat areas. The five skiers parked the trucks down near Orville Jahnke’s place, strapped on the equipment, made their way around the gate used to close Lizard Head Pass, and were headed up through the darkness on the trail by 9 p.m. It was slow going up through the trees, but after reaching the open areas, a person could see forever up the steep embankments.
Finally, on a wide, flat bench that originates on the dark side of the gulch, and in the daytime, reaches clear out into the sun -- the trail leads to the big cabin, the smaller one, and other outbuildings. Positioned on a 100-year mining patent, the buildings look almost like a little town there in the high country. The main cabin hangs near the bench’s edge so it is easier to get rid of the snow accumulation on the one side.
When skiing group reached the cabins about midnight, two of them tunneled down to the door on the high side with an aluminum scoop they brought with. Another two went to shovel down to the outhouse with a beat-up scoop they found hanging under the rafters on the small cabin, and the last one was in charge of taking care of the skis and other equipment.
All the doors opened to inside in this country. If not, a person would have to shovel all week to get enough space for a door to swing outward like some external doors in town.
The plan was to try to eventually get the main cabin warm enough so the snow would slide off the tin roof and down over the benches edge into the creek. That’s the main reason they were up there. The seven feet of snow needed to be removed this winter to avoid roofs collapsing. A few years earlier, in ’78, everyone was complaining about a dry winter. Not a soul would complain about too little snow this year.
In less than 30 minutes, the skier/shovelers had the front door open and were working on getting a fire started and the propane lights working. Little steps made of snow and ice in the tunnel allowed them to navigate down the nine-foot drift into the cozy cabin. Windows on the ledge side of the cabin provided plenty of light from the moonlit snowscape inside to get the fire started.
They spread out their sleeping bags in the floor near the sunken fireplace, at least for the first night. When they able to get the temperature above freezing, they could move back into the bedrooms. In an effort to do so, they filled and stoked up the cook stove on the one end of the cabin and banked huge logs in the main fireplace on the other end.
At sunup, three of them grabbed shovels and headed over to take care of snow removal on the smaller cabin and the two remaining set to work, trying to conjure up breakfast. By 8:30, the starving shovel crew switched places with the breakfast bunch and they traded back and forth for the rest of the morning as someone got cold or wet or hungry, or all three.
By noon it was a tolerable 55 degrees in the center of the room and water was starting to run on the ledge side of the eaves. Around 4 in the afternoon, there was a slow rumble, a muffled crunch and then a big loud swoosh as two thirds of the sunny side snow pack slid off the roof. By sundown that side of the roof was clear and the shadowed side of the building was nearly bare as well. It looked like they would be able to ski all day tomorrow.
In celebration of their progress that day, the little cabin crowd stretched the poker game into the night. When one of them whined about funny noises, ‘like a woman screamin’ following his trip to the outhouse, the rest dismissed it as too much bourbon, too much imagination and too little experience in high country woods.
Most of them struggled a bit the next morning with the effects of limited sleep and some were slowed by their own excesses. It was at least 9 a.m. before the first of them crawled up through the tunnel out into the intensely bright, white snow and snapped into a pair of ski bindings.
They spent the day playing in the deep powder and didn’t make it back to the cabin for lunch until at least 2 p.m. By the time they had eaten, re-stoked the fires, changed socks, climbed back out through the tunnel and snapped back into the bindings, the sun was already edged by the high canyon walls.
The sun’s low angle and the 13,000 and 14,000 foot high peaked ridges made for spectacular shadow play, photos and the best skiing ever. The five pressed higher up the draw to see if they could see Dunton from the ridgeline. Though it was starting to get dark, the ridge loomed only a few hundred yards above them and they told themselves that they couldn’t ski out past those slide areas until 9 or 10 p.m. anyway. So they pressed on.
The first low moans went mostly unnoticed. But as they topped the high saddle promontory, all five couldn’t help but hear a sound like the wailing of a banshee. But what was it? It sounded like crying, or screaming, or what?
And then one of them spotted the dark figure, barely moving at first, then shuffling faster and faster in the shadows, near the rock outcropping almost a quarter of mile away, down on the Dunton side.
Although it was way too far off to say for sure, it looked like someone on snowshoes, a small man, or a woman, with a pack or something on his or her back.
Or did they see it at all? It would be too dangerous to try and follow. But they did see it, didn’t they? And screams, or wailing, or cries … those were real, weren’t they?
No one is going to believe this, they all agreed.
Skiing out, after gathering their stuff and resealing the cabin, they still fumbled with it.
As they carefully edged down toward Rico and out to the blacktop, the thought echoed between them in the steep canyon’s snow-buried walls.
No one is going to believe this.
And no one did. Years later, they began to doubt it themselves.
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