Dolores Archaeological Project sifts through time

“...as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold - everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment - an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by - I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, 'Can you see anything?' it was all I could do to get out the words, 'Yes, wonderful things.”

― Howard Carter, Tomb of Tutankhamen

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Lipe and his colleagues roamed area of the project during the summers

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com
As a youngster, some of my most vivid memories are surrounded by a pinion- and juniper-tree backdrop and the strange abandoned cities on the green table drained by the Mancos River in southwestern Colorado.
Early in those days, the entire mummified remains of “Ester,” and various other ancient pueblo inhabitants, still were displayed openly in cases at the museum on the rim above Spruce Tree House in Mesa Verde National Park.
And, of course, I had read books of archaeologists and seen "Curse of the Mummy," and other classic portrayals of the romantic view of the study. "Raiders of the Lost Ark" had not yet appeared. When it did in 1981, it pretty much fell into line with my early world view of what those cats do for a living.
But I don't really think I had really encountered a true, honest-to-goodness archaeologist yet.
That is, until that early spring day, in the late 1970s, right there at the nail counter of Taylor Hardware. Personified in the rough-and-tumble image of Professor Bill Lipe. I believe he was there to buy a mop bucket.
As things tended to do back then, he happened to catch Merton Taylor's attention. At that very point, conversations between the two progressed along the lines of wonder and awe, and mystery — twisting and turning, winding here and there, and landing at, what perhaps was already was known as DAP, or the Dolores Archaeological Project.
I talked with Professor Bill Lipe a few years ago in a telephone conversation, at his office, then professor emeritus of anthropology at Washington State University.
"Merton Taylor would have come in contact with, either as a child or later in the hardware store, these early archaeologists in the area. I’m sure he knew Paul Martin and Al Lancaster, and he very likely knew Arthur Rohn and Joe Ben Wheat," Lipe said about some of those early conversations, of which, I was the proverbial "fly on the wall."
"Paul Martin did extensive excavations in the Ackman-Lowry area near Pleasant View in the summers from 1928 to 1938. The best-known part of this work was his excavations of Lowry Ruin, now a BLM visitor site. He also did important work in some of the earlier sites of the Basketmaker III and Pueblo I periods. In the late 1920s, he worked for the Colorado Historical Society, but then moved to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago about 1930, and spent the rest of his career there. At the end of the 1930s, he shifted his area of study to the 'Mogollon' highlands of west-central New Mexico, where for many years he excavated sites that represented ancestral Pueblo traditions, but ones that differed from those of the 'Anasazi' of the Four Corners area. Martin was one of the best-known archaeologists of his era," Lipe said.
"Al Lancaster was a WW I veteran from Oklahoma who homesteaded near Pleasant View in the 1920s. As time permitted, he started identifying archaeological sites for Paul Martin and then started helping with the excavations. He became very skilled at this and Martin gave him increasing responsibility and employed him full-time directing excavation crews. Lancaster was the field foreman for Martin’s work at Lowry Ruin. In the mid-1930s, he was hired by J.O. Brew of Harvard University to be field foreman for some extensive excavations at Alkali Ridge in SE Utah. And later he served as field foreman for other major excavation projects with Brew at Awatovi in NE Arizona and for Emil Haury of the U. of Arizona at Snaketown in southern Arizona. Between these assignments, Lancaster worked for many years at Mesa Verde National Park, where he helped develop better methods for preserving and stabilizing standing masonry walls in the sites there. He also excavated and stabilized some of the mesa-top sites that visitors see on the 'ruins road' loop at the Park.
"In the late 1950s and earl 1960s, Arthur Rohn excavated the Mug House cliff dwelling on Wetherill Mesa in Mesa Verde National Park, as part of a major National Park Service project funded by the National Geographic Society. Following that, Rohn completed a PhD dissertation at Harvard and became a professor at the University of Illinois, moving later to Wichita State University. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he excavated several open (non-cliff-dwelling) sites in Montezuma County, in the general Goodman Point area," said Lipe.
Merton Taylor may also have known Joe Ben Wheat, a University of Colorado Professor who for a number of years in the 1970s and early 1980s excavated several sites in the Yellow Jacket area of Montezuma County (though not the very large site typically referred to as the Yellow Jacket ruin). Wheat directed University of Colorado field schools at these sites, and a number of young archaeologists received their first field experience there.
"Southwestern Colorado has been an important area for archaeological research for many years, and many of the archaeologists and archaeology students who worked in this area may well have ventured into Taylor Hardware during the years when it was in business, Lipe said.
At the time back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Lipe and his colleagues roamed area of the project and stayed locally during the summers.
"The Cline house we used as a base for our camp on the Dolores Project, my understanding is that it was a farmhouse, and not part of the McPhee community. We used it for office space and for cooking meals, but the members of the WSU excavation team lived in tents. It was a single story frame house with probably two bedrooms. There was also a functioning well, and that was useful. I don’t think I ever met any of the Clines, so I’m not sure of the name of the Cline family that lived in this house," he said.
"Another house that was left standing and was used to some extent by the Dolores Project was the Periman place. This was a two-story home made of concrete blocks cast to look like stone. There is information about it in the small book “River of Sorrows” that documented some of the historical sites and the history of the reservoir area," he said.
Longtime local musician and history buff Ellis Miller remembers those days.
"I returned to Dolores in June of 1979 after a long absence," Miller said,
"V.T. Boyd was mayor of Dolores, as well as owner of a couple of businesses including the restaurant formerly known as the Italian Cowboy and Shadow Mountain before that. It adjoined the Del Rio Hotel on the east. Prior to the beginning of construction on the dam project he expanded the restaurant to include a saloon, utilizing the vacant lot next door and called the whole enterprise the Sawmill Run. The saloon opened in June of 1979 and I was the first one to play there," he said
"The saloon was reminiscent of an old west saloon with a long bar, sawdust on the floor and a bandstand and dance floor at the far end. Shelled peanuts were served at the bar and on the tables with the expectation that the shells would be thrown on the floor to mingle with the sawdust. V.T. kept lots of cash on hand and would cash the dam worker’s paychecks with the certainty that they would spend a good amount at the establishment and that the dam workers would become a reliable customer base. He was correct on both counts. The Sawmill run did a roaring business with patronage from both the dam workers and locals," according to Miller.
"The Hollywood Bar, the long time local institution was down the street from the Sawmill Run. I called the distance between the two, the hundred foot mile. The Hollywood did a booming business as well. The Sawmill was geared more toward entertainment and the Hollywood was more about shooting pool and solving the problems of the world, and both were about serious drinking. Patrons would usually fit into one of several groups: The home guard – cowboys, loggers and other locals, the Archeologists and the dam workers. People would meander up and down the street as moods dictated and the money flowed freely. While it was not too hard to arrange a fist fight between the various factions (and there were a few), most of the time everyone got along well," he said.
"I was also on the Town Board during the early 1980s. The major federal force through the process was the BLM. A unique aspect of the Dolores Project is that there was to be no private land adjoining the Lake or in the river valley downstream from the dam to the Bradfield Bridge. Therefore imminent domain came to play both in acquiring the land for the lake, the area surrounding it and downstream from the dam. I don’t know the particulars, but there were a couple pieces of property that the BLM was not able to acquire. One was up House Creek, owned by Eldon Zwicker and there was a 20-acre parcel in the river bottom about half way between the dam and the Bradfield Bridge. There were also a couple of properties on the downstream end of Dolores that were actually condemned but somehow got returned to the owners. One was the house on the hill by the sewer plant and the other was the old Porter place. The old Dolores Cemetery was preserved," Miller said.
"The BLM went out of their way to work with the Dolores Town Board. Joe Rowell Park is the result of a joint effort between the Town and the BLM. The BLM filled and graded the area which opened the door for the Town to secure funding from the Department of Local Affairs to put in the irrigation system, grass etc. Corky McClain expressed concern that during low water the area below the bridge would become an unsightly mud flat. The BLM agreed to construct the ponds that are there now with the bypass channel for the river.
"The sewer plant was one of the more challenging issues. No one wanted it where it is but the choices were the current location or to pump the sewage to the top of the hill which would have been cost prohibitive. And so, the lesser of two undesirable possibilities – just like politics," he said.
I asked him if he thought DAP and the Dam project changed the place and how.
"It seems to me the Dam project and the DAP were part of several factors leading a general opening of the area in the 80s and 90s. Dolores and SW Colorado in general were 'discovered.' Recreational property along the Dolores River and near the National Forest and BLM land increased in value as people of means built second homes. There were also the folks who wanted to move from urban areas in California, Texas etc to raise their families in a safer, rural, more family friendly place.
There were some impacts more specifically related to the Dam project, he said, and impacts were multi-pronged.
1. The Forest Service and BLM increased their presence in the area which brought a number of permanent, high paying jobs.
2. Agriculture became easier and more lucrative for farmers who were able to access Dolores Water Conservancy District water and dry farm crops (beans and wheat) were abdicated in favor of irrigated crops – mostly hay.
3. The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe was able to utilize water rights granted by treaty leading to a large farming enterprise on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation.
4. The outdoor recreation and tourism industries in the area have experienced steady growth since the project albeit not as rapidly as many had hoped.
"In my opinion a more subtle but profound impact of the Dam project and the DAP was the elevation of the awareness of the archaeology in the area. The 'Indian ruins' at Mesa Verde were often perceived more as a novelty or a side trip. The archaeology that was done pursuant to the Dolores Project along with the building of the Anasazi Heritage Center provided a new dimension to perceptions of the importance of the Four Corners area as a world class archaeological destination," Miller says.
I asked him if it altered where we were headed.
"I don't think it altered where we were going as much as accelerated where we were going. Conversations of damming the Dolores River for a major irrigation project began in the late 1800s in the context of the first efforts to provide irrigation water to the Montezuma Valley. The area had been a recreation destination and the Dam enhanced the recreation experience. Agriculture had been a major component in the local economy and the Dam made it possible to farm more effectively and lucratively. The tourist / service industry didn't begin with the Dam project but was enhanced by it. There are other examples. Mining and logging have experienced significant changes that impacted the economics of the area, however, those changes had nothing to do with the Dam," according to Miller.
"The long term effects were not transformative. Instead the changes have been more subtle than perhaps was expected. Big picture, I think most would agree that the economy and quality of life were enhanced by the project in a slow and steady manner,"
A hundred years from now, what will be the legacy of the work that was done?
"That is a tough one, given the complexity of our times, rapidity of technological advancement and that sort of thing. My father once told me that if there was ever a 'shootin' war in this country" it would be over water. Water is often taken for granted, but can also be the source of huge political and economic power. In a worst case scenario, he who controls the water has the power of life and death over what and who resides downstream. The majority of water resting in McPhee Reservoir is owned by downstream entities, municipalities etc in Arizona, Nevada, California and Mexico. Water law is complex and hard to interpret. The Colorado River Compact which is the basis for allocation of water in the Colorado River drainage favors upstream states. Since the compact was written, the populations of Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix have expanded exponentially as has the demand for water. Therefore the Colorado River Compact is frequently challenged and efforts are usually afoot to rewrite it or do away with it altogether. We can see the conflict over the water intensifying now and it promises to escalate," Miller notes.
"I don't plan to be around in a hundred years but it will be interesting to see if dear old Dad called it correctly, " Miller said.
LouAnn Jacobson, Retired Manager, Anasazi Heritage Center and Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, also helped me understand the impacts of the project.
I asked her to describe the significance of that work, and the connection to the DAP in general?
"The DAP was one of the largest, for a long time, the largest (might still be—I’m not sure), archaeological projects in the US. It was one of the first to emphasize careful maintenance of the provenience of excavated materials. As a result, it is extremely valuable for researchers," she said.
"I wasn’t in SW Colorado during the height of the DAP but many of the DAP archaeologists stayed in the area; some becoming well-known, cutting edge archaeologists; others stayed because they loved the area and established themselves in other careers," Jacobson said.
"For a long time the AHC had a massive collection of sports trophies from the many DAP teams that participated in community sports leagues. There were so many archaeologists associated with the DAP that every year there were multiple DAP teams. The trophies took up a lot of valuable space and had no special significance to the AHC mission/scope of collections so we offered them to any DAP person who wanted one. Some folks raised quite a ruckus about this because they thought the trophies were a part of DAP history, but ultimately the trophy collection was culled down to a few representative examples."
"Initially, the Anasazi Heritage Center (AHC) was developed to be the curation facility for the DAP. Local citizens wanted to make sure that the collections stayed in SW Colorado rather than being moved to the University of Colorado, Washington State University, or some other far away location," she said.
"The AHC is a user friendly museum and interpretive center with exhibits and information about the archaeology and history of SW Colorado, the Ancestral Puebloan lifestyle, and relationship between the Ancestral Puebloans and Pueblo people today. The AHC is the primary curation facility for the DAP collections and the AHC continues to make the DAP collection available for research. The AHC library began as a reference library for DAP archaeologists and continues to be a reference source for professional and avocational archaeologists, educators, volunteers, and the general public. The complete 19-volume final report from the Dolores Archaeological Program (1978-84) is available, as are numerous technical reports and the original unedited field reports," she said.
Also, Jacobson recommends the following site for information about the collections there:
http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/nm/canm/collections___research.html

http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/fo/ahc/dolores_archaeological.html

Canyons of the Ancients National Monument was established in 2000 to protect cultural and natural resources on a landscape scale. More than 6,000 archaeological sites have been recorded in the Monument—which has the highest known density of sites in the United States. The Monument is primarily undeveloped back country and provides an opportunity for visitors to explore this outdoor museum on their own.
One of the noteworthy accomplishments and attributes of the Dolores Project, according to Lipe, was the fact that it was one of the first fully computerized. There is a wealth of precise data as result. The former 'Apple Barn' was once a big spacious building at the figurative center of the project where people writing the reports collected, and artifacts were stored for a time.
I recall the large crates and ladders, and surrounding orchards, peacocks and farm animals from a time before the project. And my mother picking apples for Everette Tibbits. Later, documentation, explanation and presentation of the massive project had a profound impact me personally. I continue down that, winding path, first hinted at in those barely-remembered conversations of long ago.


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Photo information: Clearing and mapping the floor of a large pithouse dating to the AD 800s. Paper tags indicate where artifacts were found on the floor. Photo courtesy of William Lipe.

Ways of times past prevails

I was just fifteen when I burst on the scene
At the store on the corner of the old river town
Once a cow camp, and later, log and miners tramp
Dolores was a place you couldn't knock down
In the southwest corner, downstream from Stoner,
It was marked by the passing of the long-gone rails
But the strangest of the batch, was Taylor's old patch
Where Merton, Cecile, and ways of times past prevails

There were red dogs in the floor, on oak between counters and near the door
Canine-filled blue Scout, at lunchtime about, added to the place's lore
Jason after rounds north and south, with bank bag in mouth, and a wag in his tail
Carried the cash, down the block in flash, to bank and post office for mail

In windows out front, a saddle, or stuff for the hunt, filled glassed-in holiday displays of regalia
Down through side isles, cabinet hardware and files, sandpaper, paint, stain, fastener paraphernalia
Above the nail bins, were the Gerry cans and tins, in the darkness near where cash register rung out
There on the scale, you might find coffee or cement-coated nail... perhaps lies, regarding size of trout

Back through double doors, near the basement stairs, and mops for the floors
Sat Merton cussin', wantbook, government, and technology he was fussin',  and Mirofiche he abhors
But what really sets him mad, is the times past he had, and the fading picture and store
The good old days gone and time marches on, new stories, same problems, new battles, same war

I was just fifteen back then on the scene
At the store on the corner of the old river town
Once a cow camp, and later, log and miners tramp
Dolores was a place you couldn't knock down
In the southwest corner, downstream from Stoner,
It was marked by the passing of the long-gone rails
But the strangest of the batch, was Taylor's old patch
Where Merton, Cecile, and ways of times past prevails

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

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W. H. Jackson and Dolores go way back

The iconic "Stage to the San Juan" Jackson photo must have been taken between 1891, and the fall of 1893

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

For me, it is almost a personal relationship with William Henry Jackson photos.
Starting the day after Thanksgiving in 1978,  I worked for Taylor Hardware in Dolores, Colo. for more than seven years with Merton Taylor and his family. Merton's father, George, had owned the store and had been around almost as long as the building, I think.
The old J.J. Harris & Co. building was built with the first structures in town when the little village was relocated upriver about two miles from Big Bend, on the Dolores River, when the Rio Grande Southern arrived in 1891. The hardware store still had elements of a bank, and beautiful hardwood floors that we mopped every day as long as it stood.
I speculate the iconic "Stage to the San Juan" Jackson photo must have been taken between 1891, and the fall of 1893, when the Silver Panic that year slowed activity of  the second San Juan rush and boosterism of that period. Merton had several copies of the photo (some displayed in the store) and Jackson must have spent the greater part of a day or two in Dolores, as he had had multiple frames. I have never been able to precisely date it but other photos appearing in Jackson albums indicate that he was likely shooting for a railroad company, and created at least several week's worth of work in the area.
The day after Christmas, in 1984, a terrible fire, that began in the T. H. Akin Merc. building next door (old building, but had not yet built at the time of Jackson's photo) destroyed the building.
I would guess the other photos included here, one from Rico by Jackson, and Cowboys of the Dolores were produced about the same time, perhaps in the same trip. But that is just speculation, as Jackson easily could have visited my hometown, Dolores, on several occasions.

Frame 1: Stages from Dolores
Creator: William Henry Jackson
Sumary: Stages load with men are in the street in front of the J.J. Harris & Co. mercantile store in Dolores (Montezuma County) Colorado. men stand on the sidewalks, and in the street, some with mining equipment and guns. A burro packtrain is in the street.
Date: Photo created between 1882 and 1900?
Attribution to Jackson based on the photo negatives inclusion in the History Colorado William Henry Jackson Collection. Hand-lettered twice on the negative, "3861." Phot negative, glass, 5" x 8."

Frame 2: Rico, Colo. , W.H. Jackson Sample Album, Colorado Book III, No. 169
Creator: William Henry Jackson
Summary: View of the town of Rico with frame buildings and dirt streets.
Date: Photo created between 1882 and 1900?
Attribution to Jackson based on in bound W.H. sample album. "3219" hand-lettered on negative and reproduced in print. Photoprint, 4"x 7" mounted on album page.

Frame 3: Cowboys of the Dolores, E.H. Allen
Creator: William Henry Jackson.
Summary: Cowboys on horseback in front of a sod-roofed log building in Colorado. A dog sits on the ground near probably E.H. Allen. Photographer's stamp printed on verso of card mount. Title, "3631" and "50" inked on original and reproduced in photographic print. Photographic print on card mount: 4 1/2" x 7".
Source: Pueblo Public Library
Western History/Genealogy Dept., Denver Public Library.

Taking care of business with a button

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”
― Pablo Picasso

Merton believed in technology, he just didn't like to deal with it.

 

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Years ago, you couldn't talk to Merton Taylor on Monday afternoons.
He would hole himself up, back at the check-in stand, working on an order for Amarillo Hardware's truck coming in on Thursdays. Mostly, he would cuss the state of the nation, slur half the people in that nation, and then start in on the other half.
But the biggest problem with the world at that time, according to him, was technology.
Having experienced the turmoil he went through dealing with a microfiche reader, I can't imagine what kind of cussing would have went on — if he had to deal with the Internet.
Merton believed in technology. He just didn't like to deal with it.
Those were different days.
The Post Office and the Bank were on opposing corners of the center block of Sixth Street, and business was still a face-to-face affair in our little town. Every day, at 11 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., the entire population would converge between the two landmarks and do that business.
Though, Merton often sent a 'red dog' representative to conduct his.
Which means, one of his Irish Setters took the bank bag down and dropped it off with a teller, (slobber and all) with someone following to take care of the paper work.
But, back to the technology.
World War II was the last time any of this technology crap made sense, he said.
And to prove it, he would have you mark every one of any of the 40,000 common retail hardware items in Taylor Hardware, via black or red grease pencil, with his own secret cost code, that took employees about seven years to learn how to read.
That code had all kinds of blind alleys and blocks, repeaters and switches in it. It was similar to the one he used during the war, in the Philippines.
When I first worked there, the Amarillo Hardware salesman, carrying two leather-bound, foot-thick, catalogs (one in each hand suspended by tooled leather handles) into the store once a month, to take care of "problems."
Seems like there was always a "problem" or two to resolve.
The rest of the time, (weeks without a salesman) on Monday, Merton, after gathering up the seven or eight 'Want Books' off of counters throughout the store, creating a list, then would painstakingly look up and transpose numbers out of the microfiche cards.
Which was all well and good, as long as the 'fiche bulb didn't burn out. Or, the numbers matched up, or the quantities were acceptable, or the illustration correctly identified an item. All of whch, almost never happened.
But at least, at the end of the day, all five of the red dogs, and grey one, or perhaps a black one, would lumber out the side door after 5:30 p.m., load up in the old International Scout, frailest to most agile by order, and head home at the end of the day.
Ready to come back and do the same thing tomorrow.
Still, it is sort of like that today, with the use of computers, the Internet, and all business taken care of with a button. Maybe we haven't learned a thing in 40 years.
It is in this environment that I've have heard the common discussion among writers, and customers, sources, and co-workers, etc... the common discussion that goes something like this.
"You can't talk to Rob Carrigan on Monday afternoons. He'll cuss the state of the nation, slur half the people in that nation ... then start in on the other half.
The biggest problem in the world today is technology.
I have the answers.  What we really need ...  the questions.

Like sandpaper softly wearing edges off hardware

One could find him there every day, six days a week

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

He was traditionally a creature of habit, and the backroom. 

Behind the double doors, and the stairwell to the basement, at the check-in stand (or perhaps, on the tall red-seated metal barstool in front of the Microfiche), one could find him every day. That was true for… I don’t know, sixty… seventy years.

Merton Taylor surfaced at the coffee pot in the back corner of the front room, precisely at 10 a.m. daily, and then, again at 11:30 a.m., gathering the dogs in the Scout, for the trip home to lunch. He returned in an hour and spent the rest of the day in the backroom until someone asked him for a key at 5:30 that evening.

“They would not find me changed from him they knew – Only more sure of all I thought was true,” wrote Robert Frost in 1913. Merton Taylor and Frost, it seemed, were contemporaries.

I reveled in stories he would tell of Dolores area characters past, like Doc LeFeurgy, and Reverend Flanders, and the “Wild Woman of Horse Gulch.”
His odd take on life -- a constant draw for others, as well. His advice sought for particular hardware concerns, or archaeology, or mining, or forestry and farming. He held court in that back room, as surely and regularly as the federal district.

I knew him just barely before the “Walmarting” of America, but I think he would have understood and liked Sam Walton, the change agent who opened his first store in Rogers, Arkansas, more than 50 years ago, and altered retailing forever.

Probably, he would not agree with him however. It wasn’t his nature to necessarily agree with anyone.

It is not that the Walmart Top 10 would bother him: everyday low prices, selection, altering the retail landscape, the decline of the labor movement, supplier partnerships, the ‘cult’ of Walmart, data-driven management, a culture of over-consumption, with the odd partner of sustainability, and the power of access. He might just be slightly miffed that he didn’t become famous and rich for embracing them.

But on second look, he wasn’t really interested in becoming either that rich or famous.
He was interested in success, as evidenced by his involvement in the establishment of Dolores State Bank in 1959, and later the Bank of Telluride, but he measured things differently, I think.

He certainly looked at Dolores with different eyes than most. The long view, through birth, and school, railroad and dam building, lumber mills, plywood plants and dryland farming, depression to ‘80s recession, fires, floods, Roosevelt, and Reagan, WW II and the Iranian hostage crisis, Jack Dempsey and Elvis.

But times, they were a changing.

As Frost noted (again in 1913), in Reluctance.

“Ah, when to the heart of man,

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?”

Quite traditionally a creature of the backroom, in a time before great change, in the late fall, or early winter of a season of a different truth. One that I can barely remember.

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The promise of history, habit and ritual

We have seen the sunset before

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

 Ritual is a benefit for a regular guy.

Doing the same thing, over and over again, holds your place in the world. It allows you to recognize change. With it, comes a promise for tomorrow.

Make the coffee in the morning. Walk the dogs. See to it that the lilacs are watered. Mow the lawn. Work every day. Not just chores, but with a purpose… a history … a filter through which you can look at life. No wonder, ritual becomes a ritual for some.

Six days a week, almost precisely at 7:55 a.m., the light blue 1964 International Scout, loaded to the hilt with aging red dogs and nice old man with a history of his own, arrived and parked at side entrance to the hardware store in Dolores, Colorado. Merton Taylor would be wearing the same “uniform” as the day before… denim painter’s pants, a grey work shirt with button-down pockets, and crepe-soled, moccasin styled, split-leather, high-topped, work shoes and dented and stained mouse-colored Stetson. The dogs would disembark from the vehicle in precisely the same order everyday, all five of them. Jason, Feathers, Cindy, Christa, and Sarah.

Most of the time, for more than seven years in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, I would be waiting there for them. Merton would hand me the keys and I would head to the front door to unlock it, as he gathered boxes of newspapers, paper work and miscellaneous crap he had brought from home to the store that day.

Collectively, we would hit the various lights, unlock the side door and back slider, and I would head out to the incinerator to empty the big freezer box with hand holes cut in the sides. We had dumped all the trashcans in the building in there the night before. If there was no new snow to shovel, depending on how many of us were doing chores, one, usually Merton, would scrub the bathroom fixtures with a toilet brush. Another filled the big three-gallon mop bucket with a little bit of Tide, and hot water, from the outdoor hose bib under the indoor sink there in the corner. We would place the “mop wringer of death,” (a long-handled lever contraption that could explode a water melon if placed in the wringer carriage and squeezed) and wheel it up to the front door.

Every single day that I worked there during that time, we mopped the ancient oaken, hardwood floors, stem to stern — taking care on cold winter days to avoid the steel plate under the side door, lest the mop would stick and freeze. Around the two sides in front aisle, up by the office, register, nail counter to double doors just before you went in to the backroom. A red-handled mop and a splintery unpainted one that, when unused, hung over a shelf made just for that purpose on one side, above the stairwell to the basement. If you were not careful, and failed to wring them out good when finished, it would drip most of the morning on the bottom two steps.

Merton had been in the army, but loaned to the navy, during WWII and would ‘teach’ new recruits the exacting method that the floors were to be mopped, with long, sweeping motions that covered the most floor, with the least duplication — or he would come to expect old hands at the chore to do so.

One of us would make the coffee (always in a percolator, none of this new-fangled Mr. Coffee crap technology) and another would do the dishes, which consisted of eight to ten coffee mugs (used by the regulars almost every day) scrubbed and placed on paper towels that covered the bottom of a silver tray.

In the evenings, it was a similar routine in reverse. Rather than mopping the floors, however, we would pour carvous oil out of a 5-gallon container and into clean sawdust that was kept in a 55 gallon drum with a metal lid at the bottom of the stairs. We mixed our homemade sweeping compound in an old coal bucket with a coal shovel. Then we spread it on the same floors, and would take to it with long-handled push brooms.

When it was close to quitting time, I would ask Merton for key to lock the front door. He would hand it to me, usually with the same lame joke, “Aqui,” and I would turn it in the tumbler at exactly 5:30 p.m., unless there was a straggler rushing to buy a plunger before we closed. But stragglers usually knew to arrive at the side door, because the whole dog-loading process into the Scout had to be reversed before Merton could go home.

Certainly, at the hardware store there were other rituals, habits and history to follow. Things that had been done that way since George Taylor, Merton’s father had owned the business. Perhaps even things that occurred in perpetuatuity since the building was the old J.J. Harris & Co, with the mercantile and bank there as early as the 1890s.

The other day, when I was walking the dogs (after mowing the lawn and watering the lilacs), I thought about how, in a lifetime, you see the same things over and over again. I thought about the videotape I watched the other day of my kids when they were much younger. It seemed so familiar, but oddly different, because they are nearly grown now.

Feeling all whiney the next day, I quoted Martin Amis, “Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark-spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving. "


Rosanne Gain offered perspective at the time with some advice from her mother. “When I was a callow youth, my Mother explained it this way: 'My dear, the older you get the faster the time will pass. In old black and white movies they marked the passage of time by showing a desktop day calendar with a wind blowing the pages back. One day you will understand.'"

The next night, I looked at the sunset, burning orange red over the Rampart Range, with the peak behind it. It sort of wraps itself around you, with the dark greens fading to blue into the white of clouds and brownish red of a smoky sky feathering off into grey and then darkness. I had seen that sunset before. Maybe, not exactly, but close enough that I felt the promise — the promise of history, of habit, of ritual.

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Photo information: 

1. View of the stagecoach and passengers on the main street in Dolores (Montezuma County) Colorado. A passenger holds a gold pan. Men stand in front of a storefront with a sign that reads “J.J. Harris & Co.” Photographed by William Henry Jackson between 1890 and 1900. Colorado Historical Society, William Henry Jackson Collection.

2. Sunset on the Rampart Range, from near the North Gate of the Air Force Academy.

Here for the summer, then gone for good

Peering through film-covered windows of times past

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Try to remember because it is important. That’s what I’ve been telling myself about conversations I had more than 30 years ago, places that we went to, and people I knew then.
In the conversations, stories of the past rolled off their tongues and took me back to times and places long since disappeared. The world was changing – markedly, even then. But not so much as it had already changed.
We were trying to put plastic storm windows on the outside of the old house, the kind you stretched and then tacked in place with the little wooden strips. That’s how the topic came up – the old house.
Merton Taylor had moved it from the abandoned lumber town of McPhee, and he and Cecil had lived in it for years ever since. I, of course, had heard many accounts of McPhee. But then, they began to take on new meaning with the understanding that area would all be under water in a few years.
At the turn of the century, after the Rio Grande Southern Railroad arrived in the area and Edgar Biggs of the New Mexico Lumber Company began buying up cutting rights to newly accessible timber that now could be shipped somewhere, it was only a matter of time before all ‘woodcutting hell’ broke out in the forests north of Dolores.
“Biggs hired Arthur Ridgway to survey the region for its timber potential. Ridgway’s report estimated that 210 square miles or 134,400 acres of prime western yellow pine were available in the area. He proposed that Biggs construct a sixty-five mile logging railroad with which to harvest close to 135,000 narrow gauge carloads of lumber,” according Frontiers in Transition: A history of Southwestern Colorado. The book was developed for Bureau of Land Management’s Cultural Resource Series and written by Paul M. O’Rourke in 1980.
Biggs, who had worked with C.D. McPhee and J.J. McGinnity of the New Mexico Lumber Company at operations in Pagosa Springs and Lumberton, New Mexico, had planned to harvest the timber north of Dolores without the new Mexico Lumber Company backing. “McPhee caught wind of Biggs plan however, and purchased the Denver-based lumber company which Biggs had hoped would finance the operation. Although Biggs remained affiliated with New Mexico Lumber until 1917, McPhee and McGinnity, after their coup of 1907, took charge of operations in the Dolores River Valley.”
By 1913, they had amassed rights for cutting nearly 90 million board feet of lumber in the area. With another huge purchase of rights in 1924, the company made plans to build a mill town about four miles north of Dolores.
“The town of McPhee was only part of the company’s expansive lumber monopoly,” writes Lisa Mausolf in her book The River of Sorrows: The History of the Lower Dolores River Valley. “During its peak in 1927 McPhee and McGinnity had five lumberyards in Denver, five in San Luis Valley and five on Moffat Road with 25 branches in Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming.”
The company originally looked at placing the mill in or near the town of Dolores but local opposition forced them to look elsewhere. That is how they arrived at the 800-acre site of the old Charlie Johnson homestead.
“The town site was originally known as Ventura. It was also temporarily called Escalante. McPhee was situated on the alleged spot where in 1776 Father (Silvestre Velez de) Escalante stopped for several weeks beside a stream he called the Dolores River. The town was given its final name after an influential visit to the site by William McPhee in 1924,” wrote Mausolf.
By 1925, the mill at McPhee was producing 61 percent of all lumber in the entire state, more than 27,445.360 board feet.
The mill itself covered a city block with a three-story main building, three-acre pond planing mill and box factory.
The town had 1,400 people living there, with a school for 500 enrolled students, company store complete with its own ‘picture show,” church, boarding houses and restaurants. It was connected to logging camps via 60 miles of logging railroad.
“The majority of the Anglo employee housed contained five rooms… The houses were simple rectangles capped by broad gable, with front and rear porches and painted dividing. In many cases the rear porch was screened for an additional sleeping area. Rent was $10 a month and was deducted automatically from wages. Electricity was provided by the company, as was running water. Sewers were connected to the superintendents’, doctors and some of the larger homes. The rest of the town had outdoor privies,” says Mausolf in her book.
“A separate area ¾ of a mile away from the Anglo community was reserved for the Mexican-American employees. This so-called ‘Mexican town,’ ‘Chihuahua’ or ‘Chilitown’ consisted of two rows of small houses of unfinished lumber, spaced at 15-feet intervals… Rent averaged about $2 per month.”
By 1945, the timber was all but gone, and the dismantling of a town had begun. The houses were sold at average cost of $100 to $125 but they had to be moved. It reportedly would take two days to jack one up and a day to move it.
Houses ended up in Dolores, Dove Creek and out at Lebanon.
Merton and Wilson Brumley bought several of them, relocated to 17th Street and Merton lived there the rest of his life. The superintendent’s house was moved out on Summit Ridge in the late 1970s and Evelyn Royce lived there for years. Dr. Speck’s office was moved to Cortez where it served as his office and then his son’s until 1968. The Catholic Church at McPhee ended up out in Dove Creek.
The town had lasted only 24 years.
The Bureau of Land Management purchased the old town site property to begin preparing for the McPhee Reservoir project from Fred and Margaret Sheperd who bought it in 1948 in the waning days of lumber production.
Today, I try to picture in my mind's eye what the area looked like before it was submerged under hundreds of feet of reservoir water. I try to remember the conversations of those who had been there and peer through the film-covered windows of times past.
I think it is important.
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Shine restored to '34 fire truck

I wrote this story more than 24 years ago when I was still in J-school and working summers and holidays at Taylor Hardware in Dolores. It first appeared on the front page of the Dolores Star (edited at the time by Melinda and Sam Green) on August 2, 1984. Unfortunately, I can no longer put my hands on the photos that appeared with it. The above model is similar, minus the brass rail where this one has a windshield and pump connections and gauges on the front. 

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Even though they had a debt for one bottle of whiskey and no assets, the Dolores Fire Department began planning to buy their first fire truck more than 50 years ago.
The department, which had been Dolores Hose Company #1, was forced to reorganize and would years later become Dolores Fireman, Inc. A winter fire, early in 1934, left virtually all of Hose Company #1’s equipment, including the hand-drawn or horse-dawn hose cart, useless because of frozen hoses, said Merton Taylor, a long-time Dolores fireman.
The fireman had charged a couple of bottles of whiskey to help fight cold during the fire, Taylor said. After the fire, they returned one of the bottles, leaving them with a debt for the other bottle and a bunch of useless equipment. The town was left with very high fire insurance rates.
The Dolores Town Board decided on July 15, 1934, to buy the best new fire truck available, even though it was expected to cost as much as $1,400 for the chassis and about the same for the body. The money came from the town itself and from donations from local businessmen.
The truck, purchased through the local Dodge dealer, Musgrave and Calhoun, and constructed by W.S. Darley of Chicago, arrived in Dolores in late October, 1934.
M.A. Plumlee, his wife Helen, and their daughter Ramona(now Becher) who was not quite four years old at that time, had ridden the train back to Chicago, picked up the truck, and had driven it back.
The truck had an open cab but a canvas cab was built for the trip home.
“It was a little cold,” said Helen Plumlee, “and Morey (M.A) had a sore throat afterwards, but we made it.”
Mrs. Plumlee said the train trip to Chicago took two days and they had to wait there for nearly a month for the truck to be completed. They took in the World’s Fair while they waited, she said.
The truck was “absolutely the latest thing in that class of equipment” and “one of the finest pieces of firefighting apparatus of any of the towns in the Basin,” according to the Dolores Star at the time.
The truck had a ton and a half Dodge chassis and a pumper that could pump 650 gallons a minute and 300 pounds per square inch. It also had a 300-gallon storage tank.
The Dolores Star of October 26, 1934, said, “Mr. Plumlee said the new truck attracted a great deal of attention in the cities and towns he drove through between here and Chicago. In some places, the police and wouldn’t let him go until their firemen had a chance to examine the new truck.”
The truck provided fire service a number of years for the town and then was sold to Pleasant View Fire Department in 1954 for about $1,000. Pleasant View used the truck for a while, then sold it back to Dolores in 1960 for $325. Dolores has used it in parades and conventions since then.
A year and a half ago, David Doudy, captain of the fire department now, and other members of the department, began restoring the truck back to its appearance when it first arrived in Dolores. They used a picture that belonged to Ramona Becher to make the truck as close as possible to the original.
Doudy said he personally had about 450 hours of work in the truck and that other members also worked a lot on the truck.
Doudy estimated the restoration project was worth about $3,000 to $10,000. The department spent nearly $2,500 on materials, Doudy said.
The truck will be used for show only, but it is in working order. It has already won a second place in the Ute Mountain Rodeo Parade in the antique car class since it was completed earlier this summer, and the department plans to take it to other shows, Doudy said. The truck will definitely be in Mancos this weekend for the Tri-State Convention there. And it will make its first appearance in restored condition at Dolores’ own Escalante Day parade Aug. 11, looking much as it did when it was first welcomed by the community 50 years ago.

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