Originally Woodland Park CCC Camp builds roads, fights fire, manages floods and more

Work leads to improved physical condition, 

heightened morale, and increased employability

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Saylor Park, described as a beautiful spot fourteen miles north and east of Woodland Park, and approximately eight miles west of Palmer Lake — on what was then the largest national forest in the country, the Pike — was the location of formation. Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) Company 1819, later to become Camp F-14-C, was organized here starting June 26, 1933.
"Instead of finding neatly constructed barracks already prepared for them, the men were given tents to erect, and until these were erected the men slept in the open at an altitude of 9,000 feet," reported a 1938 history of the CCC. "The first few weeks, meals were served in the open under an Aspen tree, with no shelter to protect the men from rain or wind, during meal time."
The Civilian Conservation Corps was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried, men. Originally for young men ages 18–25, it was eventually expanded to young men ages 17–28. The CCC was a major part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal that provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state and local governments.
The CCC was designed to provide jobs for young men, and to relieve families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression in the United States. At the same time, it implemented a general natural resource conservation program in every state and territory. Maximum enrollment at any one time was 300,000. Over the course of its nine years in operation, 3 million young men participated in the CCC, which provided them with shelter, clothing, and food, together with a small wage of $30 a month, ($25 of which had to be sent home to their families).
"A number of projects were started shortly after the camp had been constructed and organized to some extent. Timber stand improvement was perhaps the major project undertaken the first summer. A side camp was established at the Monument Nursery doing nursery work and a road was constructed from Woodland Park to the camp," according to CCC records.
"Early in November of 1933, due to the high altitude and existing weather conditions, the company moved to Manitou Springs, for the winter months."
During that winter, road work began on an important project.
"A purposed road project from Garden of the Gods in Manitou Springs up over Bald Mountain by way of Williams Canyon to connect with Mount Herman Road a few miles North of Woodland Park," was described. "This project has been named and designated as the 'Rampart Range Road.'"
Also, at about the same time, work began on a series of flood control dams on Fountain Creek in Ute Pass above Manitou Springs. In the process, a number o model relief maps were made in the camp, that were used for years later, and even today, in the Pikes Peak region.
"On June 1, 1934, the main camp was moved back to Saylor Park for the summer and construction was started on a road north from Saylor Park to Devils Head. Several other projects as rodent control, timber stand improvement, and fence and trail construction, were carried on during the summer.  A side camp composed of from sixty to eighty men had been left in Manitou Springs to continue to work on Dams "One" and "Four." A side camp was also maintained at the Monument Nursery doing nursery work," records indicate.
But just as Norman Maclean, the great writer of forests and men sent into them, noted, “time was just a hangover from the past with no present meaning.”
"Due to the severe drought during the summer of 1934, a great fire hazard was created. The later part of June the entire company was ordered out on a fire known as the "Tarryall Fire," on the Tarryall range of mountains. At altitudes of ten and and eleven thousand feet, in the most rugged part of the mountains, fire fighting was extremely dangerous. During the fire, men worked from eighteen to twenty hours per shift, with occasionally no meals, and the best bed one could secure consisted of one or two blankets with the nearest tree for shelter," according the CCC history written in 1938.
"On Memorial Day of 1935, one of the worst floods known in the Pikes Peak region took place in Colorado Springs. Immediately the entire company was taken to Colorado Springs to aid the flood victims to safety, and later help guard property and regulate traffic. A good many of the victims were housed and fed in the camp until they could be cared for otherwise."
In the summer of 1935, Camp 1819 headquartered at Manitou Springs, and a new side camp of nearly fifty men at Watson Park worked on Devils Head fire lookout. Another side camp continued work at the Monument Nursery through the summer, and a crew of about 100 men worked from the main camp tasked with flood control in the Ute Pass area.
"In early fall of 1935, the Jackson Creek side camp moved to Manitou Springs, and had by this time broken through with the Devils Head road to the Denver Highway," said CCC records.
"The Monument side camp remained at the Monument Nursery all winter. Work at the nursery consisted of mulching the tree beds and clearing another plot of ground which made the nursery twice as large and necessitated an increase in men at that side camp to take care of additional work. During the winter months another side camp was maintained at Woodland Park doing timber survey work in that area. As the first month of 1936 had slipped by, the series of flood control dams in the Ute Pass has been completed. Dam 'Eight' at Crystola being the last. After the completion of the dams, all men went to work on the 'Rampart Range Road.'"
In the summer of 1936, and on through the year, the camp continued to grow its presence at the Monument Nursery, and another side camp was working at Glen Cove, and others doing timber survey work in the Woodland Park area. During the winter of '36 and '37, men from main camp concentrated on finishing the lower portion of Rampart Range Road.
The side camp work continued during next years, with the establishment of sewer system at Glen Cove, additional participation in work at the Monument Nursery, with the eventual re-establishment of Company 3810 from Texas at Monument. The main camp moved out of Manitou Springs eventually back to its former home of Company F-64-C in Saylor Park and three side camps continued to operate, by 1938.
"Since its inception in June 1933, nearly eleven hundred-fifty men have been enrolled or transferred into the company. Of that number, more than nine hundred men have returned to civilian life in thirteen state. During the more than five years of its life, the company has been station within fifty miles of its birthplace at Saylor Park, Colorado. A great deal of valuable work has been completed which will long stand as a monument to the unstinted efforts of all members of the enrolled and supervisory personnel."
The American public made the CCC the most popular of all the New Deal programs. An individual's enrollment in the CCC was said to lead to improved physical condition, heightened morale, and increased employability. The CCC also led to a greater public awareness and appreciation of the outdoors and the nation's natural resources, and the continued need for a carefully planned, comprehensive national program for the protection and development of natural resources.

Photo information:
1. Workers of CCC Company F-64-C canting timber.
2. Building roads was a big part of the local efforts.
3. Replanting trees without modern equipment was labor intensive.
4. August 8, 1934 call to muster, at CCC camp near Monument Rock.

Leader from a very young age

Dickson Memorial effort brings veterans’ sacrifices home

By Rob Carrigan, rob.carrigan@pikespeaknewspapers.com


Eric V. Dickson – by all accounts, was a leader from a very young age – and Woodland Park student who joined the Marine Corp after graduation in 1967.

“The cold and harsh fact that an undeclared war in progress thousands of miles from Teller County has struck. And with a terrific impact, one which will perhaps never be fully understood,” said the Courier at the time.

“Although the confusing Viet Nam conflict has been under way for more than 10 years, it had, until last weekend, received little attention in this area. Many residents have extended sorrow to relatives and friends affected by the war, But Teller County had not given up one of its own,” the Courier said.

The U.S. Defense Department telegram read: “Lance Corporal Eric V. Dickson, a member of B. Company, First Battalion, First Marines, was killed in action near Quang Tri, Republic of Viet Nam, when he received fragmentation wounds to the body from a hostile explosion device while on patrol May 31, 1968.”

“Eric is Woodland Park’s hometown hero to many of us that are still around and remember him with love. His death was incredibly hard on all residents of the area at the time. He was very well known and respected by everyone, young and old,” said longtime area resident Steve Plutt several months ago.

“Back then, Woodland Park was a very small town compared to today. A beautiful memorial fountain was erected in his honor right on Midland Avenue where everyone could see it all the time. It was right across the street from the Ute Inn. The Marine Corp even sent an Honor Guard up here when that fountain was dedicated,” Plutt said.

“As the years past however, times changed and suddenly, not many if any, city leaders knew or had heard of Eric. Our war memorial for Eric fell in disrepair by lack of maintenance from the city and then was vandalized. Soon, it seems that it was in the way of progress and was finally torn down and a public toilet was erected in its place,” he said.

Cause for corrective action.

The group hopes to raise the money to pay for, build and dedicate a new tribute to Dickson on National Vietnam War Veterans Day, March 29, 2018. That will also mark the 50th anniversary of Eric’s death. They are trying to raise a modest $75,000.

“We are a newly formed organization committed to erecting a memorial to a Woodland Park man killed in action in Vietnam in 1968. He was Woodland Park and Teller County’s only death in that war. We are raising money to have a life sized bronze of Mr. Dickson commissioned and placed in Woodland Park,” Steve Storrs, also of group, said this summer.

“We are officially endorsed by the City of Woodland Park, Woodland Park VFW Post 6051, the American Legion Eric V. Dickson Post 1980, Woodland Park Arts Alliance, Aspen Valley Ranch/ Pikes Peak Community Foundation and the Lake George-Florissant VFW Post 11411. “Our Committee (The Eric Dickson Memorial Project) consists of the following members: Denise DeNomme, Elizabeth Agan, Kim Plutt, Mark Agan, Timothy Michael McMillin Sr., Elijah Murphy, Steve Storrs, Steve Plutt.”

The project has been endorsed by State Sen. Kevin Grantham, Congressman Doug Lamborn; Woodland Park officials Mayor Neil Levy and David Buttery; the Board of Teller County Commissioners; Sen. Michael Bennet; Sen. Cory Gardner and State. Rep. Polly Lawrence.

Donations for the commissioned statue of the late Eric Dickson can be sent to Ent Credit Union, Eric Dickson Project, c/o American Legion Ladies Auxiliary, Post 1980, 920 Paradise Lodge Ln., Woodland Park CO 80863.

“Eric Dickson volunteered to serve his country. And he did so without fear, in order that each of us might have a better life in the trying days ahead. We must not let his efforts be in vain,” said the Courier, back in 1968.

Gambling proceeds built much of Woodland Park

Woodland Park was the place to go for a good time

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

To hear many folks tell it, illegal gambling built much of Woodland Park.
The Ouray Casino building was constructed in 1948 by Robert Rex Beach and Homer Cooley and was used as a casino that was part of the Brazenhead located to the east on U.S Highway 24 on a different piece of property. The two buildings were called "Ouray Inn and Casino, " according to research done by True West Properties.
Legend has it that an underground tunnel connects the two buildings, and a bordello was also part of the mix. The building was owned by LeRoy and Mickey McManaman, from Texas, and licensed by the state of Colorado, as a private club.
The building, a rustic structure, originally had plush wall-to-wall carpets on the first floor and five bedrooms on the second floor.
Gambling became popular in Woodland Park in the 1940s and many locals were members of the club., according to True West Properties research.
"It was known at the time, that Woodland Park was the place to go for a good time and many visited to gamble, but many citizens of Woodland Park did not approve of gambling and it was against the law," according to an oral interview of Mert Cummins, conducted in 1990.
"As early as 1948, raids of these casinos began. Most times, the casinos were forewarned, and the gambling equipment had been removed. It wasn't until the early 1950s that the gambling issue came to a head with the citizens of Woodland Park taking sides and open fighting began," according the interview of Mert Cummins.
On Christmas Day, 1951, the Ouray Casino was raided and police found gambling paraphernalia. According to a later article by Jan Pettit, in the Ute Pass Courier, dice found during that raid would only produce even numbers, and cards that could be read from the obverse side were encountered. Also, it was determined that employees would pose as customers, to make the place seem busy.
The owner, Leroy McManaman, was also out on $40,000 bond in Wichita, Kan., in connection with three robbery charges.
By 1953, Leo A. Hoegh, who would later become the Governor of Iowa, purchased the building at federal sale to clear back taxes, paying $1,150 for the property and $55,000 in liens and mortgages against it. It sold again in the summer of 1957, this time for only $7,000.
It went through several owners, eventually becoming the one-time home of the Woodland Park branch library of the Rampart Library District in 1982. Upon good authority, there was still remnants of Casino days evident, until the library district's renovation was completed. The library occupied the building until the late 1990s, when the new Rampart Range Library was built.
Gabe Brock also verified gambling in Woodland Park in the late 1940s and the early 1950s.
Brock, longtime owner of the Crystola Inn, was quoted at the time of "Big Bert" Bergstrom's death on March 12, 1986, in the Ute Pass Courier,  as reported by Liza Marron.
Berstrom had owned and operated the Thunderhead Inn and Ute Inn, among other places.
"He had 75 slot machines and I had 75 slot machines. We pooled them and put them out all over the county. We had sanction from Teller County Sheriff. We went along there for about four years without any trouble. We would rake a little off each week, and with that we built the Woodland Park Community Church. The VFW was in trouble,  and Bert bought them a building behind the Ute Inn," remembered Brock.
The Eldorado Club, which later became Preschool in the Pines, was also one of Bert's gambling clubs, Brock told the paper.
"The proceeds from gambling built a lot of Woodland Park," he said, but it all ended in 1952 when a new mayor closed things down, according to Brock.

The first fifty of the Courier, and more

The Ute Pass Courier announced the winners of the Man of the Year Contest in the Jan. 7. 1965 edition of the paper.
"We were rather dubious about anyone taking it seriously," wrote then publisher Agnes Schupp at the time. "Would any votes reach the Courier office?"
She answered in the next graph.
"Yes, indeed! The Reverend Micheal Kavenagh voted into first place unanimously by a flood of votes. We asked for a 'reason.' Perhaps the best one found lying on the desk one noon;"
"Us kids want Rev. Micheal Kavenagh to be The Man of the Year. We waited in your office but you wasn't here. We got to tell you why. Well — We like father Kavenagh because he is him."
Right behind Kavenagh, is Pete Brown for "going right ahead, not caring if people agree with him or not. He believes is progress and growth of this area and he wants everyone to prosper — not just himself," the paper reasoned.
Not far behind was Bert Bergstrom, of which it was noted "Bert has lent a helping hand whenever and wherever it is needed. Bert never cause much commotion — he is just a good guy."
The paper offer congratulation to these men but identified a possible improvement in the project for coming years. "I still think there should have been a Woman of the Year — and our votes would have been cast for Mrs. Hunter Caroll."
Strangely, this was only Publisher Schupp's first year of year of running the Ute Pass Courier and she was willing to try new things.  In fact, it was within the very first year of existence of the Ute Pass Courier.
That's right, the paper is now in its 50th year. We plan to mark that accordingly.
The first edition of the paper hit the streets on July 23, 1964.
"A morally bankrupt publisher, who was printing the short-lived Woodland Park paper called the Eagle, skipped town with the subscription money from local residents after 10 issues," according to later articles in the Courier.
"Manfred (Monte ) and Agnes (Ag) Schupp saved the paper from scandal and early demise," reported the Courier at the 25th anniversary of the publication. "About one month after he stole out of town, the Schupps put out their inaugural edition of 500 copies. Staff included Tom Bonifield, then owner of Woodland Pharmacy, and M.E. "Pete" Brown, who owned the Browncraft Steakhouse. He was later instrumental in establishing Langstaff-Brown Medical Center."
The paper was first printed in La Junta and was taken there by bus and returned Thursday mornings for distribution.
"The driving force behind the Courier, Agnes (also a mother and free-lance writer) often used her kitchen table as the production room for the paper," the paper reported later. "She suffered from a heart condition which was aggravated by the area's high elevation, and during her failing health she sold half interest to Maureen Jones in the fall of 1965."
Agnes Schupp died of heart attack June 19, 1966, and Manfred and Jones sold full interest to Roy and Carol Lee Robinson Sept. 1, 1966. Publisher, editor and reporter for 12 years, Roy Robinson received many honors and awards from Colorado Press Association for the paper's overall progress. During his tenure, the Courier was published in Cripple Creek along with Cripple Creek Times, then owned by his father, B.G. Robinson.
The paper, later published by notable mainstays of Woodland Park, Gene and Carol Sperry,  and others, (a complete linage will follow in coming editions as we gear up to celebrate over 50 years of serving Teller County and the Ute Pass region). The publication has many locations over the years, finally residing in the building it is in now, since 1984.
The Courier became the Pikes Peak Courier View as the Cripple Creek Gold Rush was merged with it in 2007, and recently View was dropped to reflect its longtime roots. The Gold Rush (with ancestors of the Times, Record, Citizen, and others) traced it roots all the way back to Cripple Creek Crusher, born Dec. 4, 1891, of which this year marks 124 years. To most locally, we have always been the Courier.
Look for details of our first 50 years of history here on the flanks of Pikes Peak, and the businesses, sources, readers, advertisers, and friends who helped make it possible in coming editions.  And  we will offer clues on where we are going for our next 200 years. Yes, indeed!

Building flood protection on lessons learned in our past

Hope is that mitigating, and other measures, are built on what we have learned from our past.

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

It is no solace, but floodwaters have raged here before.
When the Coalition for the Upper South Platte (CUSP) and El Paso County removed 260 dump truck loads of gravel, sand, muck and other material a few years ago, they were working on top of flood structures originally built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
The Works Progress Administration also contributed to work on flood control projects in the area nearly 80 years ago.
Where there is steep, narrow canyons, there can be, and eventually probably will be, severe and dangerous flooding. And for at least 100 years, we have been cleaning up after one flood or another, and trying to mitigate the next ones.
In looking through records of the National Weather Weather Service in Pueblo, floods in August of 1904 washed away a train near there, killing 89 passengers in a local watershed. Again in 1921, more  deadly flooding.
"Thunderstorms and heavy rainfall causes flooding in Cripple Creek and Cripple Creek Canyon. Damage estimated at $30,000 in Cripple Creek alone," the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association reported a July 15, 1923 storm.
Then again, on Memorial Day in 1935, 18 people are killed on bridges and structures in downtown Colorado Springs when Monument Creek washes through.
In May, 1949, heavy afternoon thunderstorms caused a landslide in the Ute Pass sending nearly 400 tons of rock and mud into Highway 24.
Wait a few years, June 15, the first of 15 days of rain and flooding on both Monument and Fountain Creeks, washing out bridges all the way to the Kansas border, and destroying much of the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.
And I guess, floods are not the only thing we should worry about. The day before Independence Day in July 1966, A tornado rips through the Victor business district damaging the Baptist Church and the Masonic Hall, among other places.
Another tornado in June of 1979, can opener-like, tears the roof off a gas station and rips up trees by the roots in Manitou Springs. Nearly a million dollars in damages was reported.
Then, there is always the possibility of a microburst like the one north of Woodland Park that leveled 35 acres of trees in the summer of 1981.
Still, we haven't even really talked about the snow, as in the storm on May 18, in 1995 that dropped 18 inches in few hour on Woodland Park and rain in the Springs, not only flooding low-lying areas there, but closing the Highway 24 corridor in the Pass with a landslide then. Another storm in June of 1997 closed U.S. Highway 24 again and flooding much of Manitou Springs. Just two years later, in July, 1999, a group of teens were stranded while hiking Waldo Canyon and in another weather event that Nov. 21, 17 inches of snow buried Green Mountain Falls.
We can and will get weather around here. And not to make light of it, but as Dr. Suess says, “The storm starts, when the drops start dropping. When the drops stop dropping, then the storm starts stopping.” 
And our hope is, of course, that all of our mitigating, and other measures, are built on what we have learned from our past.

Fading memories of Holiday Hills Ski Area near Woodland Park

The area contracted with the Air Force Academy to run a ski school teaching cadets the basics

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

"The Rocky Mountain Regions's newest ski facility, the Holiday Hill Ski Area is now open," proclaimed the Ute Pass Courier on January 21, 1965. The paper attributed the news to the owners Harlan and Kay Nimrod.
I spoke to Kay Nimrod a few years ago, about her family's experiences running the area from 1963 to 1972.
"It was a lot of hard work. Didn't know how complicated it would be before we got into it. Things like finding insurance — we were down to only being able to find two companies, Lloyd's of London, and Capella, that would even consider writing a policy. You get older, I guess you smarten up," Kay said.
But she did have fond memories related to their experience.
"Some days, we would be swamped. Our three children worked there. People would come up from Colorado Springs and Pueblo. We didn't make snow, so it wouldn't be icy. It gave the kids growing up a chance to work outside. And I always enjoyed skiers. They are not picky. If we were out of root beer, they would drink a lemon-lime soda. And their checks didn't bounce.
"Located three miles west of Woodland Park on U.S. Highway 24, the ski area development was started in the fall of 1962," says the Courier article. "Signs on the highway direct enthusiasts to the easily accessible area. There is ample parking space provided at the site. Nimrod, who developed the Holiday Hills subdivision, and is now selling acreages for mountain homes in the area."
The 1965 account says, "Ski trails have been bulldozed and hand raked to clear rocks and stumps from the skiing area."
"The ski tow at the site is a J-Bar type nearly 2,000 feet in length, and is enhanced by a nearly complete A-frame lodge equipped large moss-rock fireplace. It is planned to serve refreshments in the lodge."
Kay and Harlan Nimrod, both 83, when this was written in 2014, and were living in Colorado Springs and had for the last 22 years. They sold the lift equipment years ago and dissolved the corporation. At its peak, the area had three lifts, rope tows, and nearly seven miles of trails.
"But we were a lot younger back then. And you had to depend so much on the weather. I have sympathy for farmers. Nature is not always cooperative."
Kay said they had a contract with the Air Force Academy at the time to run a ski school to teach cadets the basics.
She had done extensive research on temperatures and rainfall in that watershed before opening however, and they were fairly comfortable that they would have enough snow to open. During the years of operation, they were not disappointed.
"We were closer than most areas, not as icy, and families could afford to ski there," Kay said.
The price for tow tickets in 1965 was $3 per day and $1.75 for a half day. The area was open from 9 a.m. until the 4:40 p.m. closing.
"The property borders the Colorado Springs watershed at an altitude of 9,600 feet. Vertical rise of the ski run is nearly 400 feet and the rise in the tow line is 280 feet. The other tow services will extend to the lower area next season," reported the Courier in early 1965. "The owners have announced that Mr. and Mrs. Sam Bleam of Woodland Park will help with the operation and supervision of the facility."
Her caution for modern ski entrepreneurs, "You would have to be well-capitalized, for things like insurance (which was difficult back then) and have a lot of energy."

 "Here is my photo of the original ski lodge (without the ski rental addition) with Jeanne Nimrod on the left with her collie dog, Prince." _ Steve Plutt

 

Photos of Holiday Hills near Woodland Park, by Steve Plutt. 

"Big Bert," Santa, Stampede, pocket full of cash

Founder and main benefactor of the 

Woodland Park Santa Claus Club

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1gmail.com

When Woodland Park's legendary figure "Big Bert" Bergstrom died on March 12, 1986, more than 500 people filed past his casket a few days later at Woodland Park Saddle Club Arena in the center of town.
A fitting tribute for the founder and main benefactor of the Woodland Park Santa Claus Club, the man who donated the ground for the Saddle Club itself, and the owner of several area gambling dens and houses of ill repute.
Even today, stories swirl around in the thin mountain air about the "big Swede" with heart of gold and a community conscience, along with the far-reaching illegal operations to help finance them.
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 grand stand to be built later,” reported the View.
A few years ago, in a conversation with Oscar Lindholm, who was 93 at the time, Bert Bergstrom was remembered as a “big, rough, tough Swede, saloonkeeper at the Ute Inn, 231 pounds, that could drink quite lot of beer.”
Oscar acknowledged, at the time, he could go through a fair amount of beer himself. 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, said Ken Geddes, Jr. the son of the former publishers and an attorney in Colorado Springs. 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 call it ‘The View,’ I think, Woodland Park has that great view of the Peak,” said Ken Geddes, Jr. in a conversation years ago.
It was said that Bergstrom did all of his banking out of his shirt pocket.
"He lived for his elk hunts," reported Liza Marron, at the time of his death in the Ute Pass Courier. "Terry Morse, (then) current saldleclub president, can vouch for his generosity."
Morse went elk hunting with Bergstrom on the Dolores River, near Durango. "When  we got ready to get in the motorhome, Clara (Bergstrom's wife) tapped he shirt pocket and Bert nodded," Morse said.
Gabe Brock, longtime owner of the Crystola Inn, remembered the elk hunting trips on the Dolores River as well. According to Brock, as reported by Marron, he had been going to the same spot for 38 years and his reputation preceded him. People from Maine to Texas would show up at his camp just because they knew he was there.
"He would bring all the food, beer and four or five cases of whiskey. He had a big tent and he was the host. Anyone who came would get fed. A lot people sponged off him but Bert was one who didn't mind. As long as he was having a good time. He called them all friends," Brock was quoted in 1986.
Brock verified gambling in Woodland Park in the late 1940s and the early 1950s.
"He had 75 slot machines and I had 75 slot machines. We pooled them and put them out all over the county. We had sanction from Teller County Sheriff. We went along there for about four years without any trouble. We would rake a little off each week and with that we build the Woodland Park Community Church. The VFW was in trouble,  and Bert bought them a building behind the Ute Inn," remembered Brock, as quoted by Marron of the Courier.
The Eldorado Club, which later became Preschool in the Pines, was also one of Bert's gambling clubs, Brock told the paper.
"The proceeds from gambling built a lot of Woodland Park," he said, but it all ended in 1952 when a new mayor closed things down, according to Brock.
Bergstrom is buried in Woodland Park Cemetery.
###

Photo Info: Out buildings were once part of the vast Thunderhead Ranch, one of the largest in Teller County. Though the farmhouse burnt in 1927, the barn, built in 1886, and the ice house survived and became part of the folklore surrounding nearby Thunderhead Inn. The Inn was reportedly a gambling and prostitution den built in 1935.

Early dude ranch fantastic, but almost forgotten

Cowboy ethics for conspicuously citified characters

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Dude, I want to be a cowboy.
Perhaps more than almost any other fantasy (if you disregard some of my racier ones) as Willie Nelson said, “I grew up dreaming of being a cowboy, and loving the cowboy ways.” It has always been simmering in the background. Growing up in the West, that is probably no surprise. But obviously, I am not alone.
“A famous early dude was Theodore Roosevelt. After World War I the popularity of dude ranches increased enormously and during the 20s and 30s they were the main tourist attraction in the Rocky Mountain area. Writers like Owen Wister, Zane Grey and Mary O’Hara and painters like Remington and Russell brought the fabulous romance of cowboy life on an open frontier to millions throughout the world. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was an unprecedented success in Europe and the East,” according to Bayard Fox, who established “The Bitteroot” ranch in Wyoming in 1972.
“Perhaps no other era in recent times has provided such picturesque color unless it is the East Africa of Isak Dinesen (Out of Africa), Beryl Markham (West with the Night) and Earnest Hemingway during much the same period. Two people who saw both cultures and wrote about them were Hemingway and Theodore Roosevelt though Roosevelt especially concentrated heavily on the hunting aspects of his long trip to Kenya.”
From The Dude Ranchers' Association based in Cody, Wyoming:
“Dude ranching did not begin at a defined time. It evolved slowly from several divergent sources in different locales. The first organizational gathering of these independent- minded pioneers occurred in Bozeman, Montana in September of 1926 at the urging of the Northern Pacific Railroad. The rail road, looking for an additional source of revenue and a means to combat the new method of travel, the automobile, saw the dude ranches of the area as natural partners in the burgeoning tourism industry of the West. This meeting of ranchers from the Yellowstone area led to the formation of The Dude Ranchers' Association,” according to the organization’s website.
“The Association's original membership of thirty-five ranches from the Yellowstone area has now grown to 100-plus member ranches in 12 western states and two Canadian provinces. In spite of this growth, the Association today remains dedicated to preserving the beauty, natural resources, and the original western ranch experiences that attracted the first visitors.”
Within this framework, the association regulates standards, and promotes dude ranch vacations. The Dude Ranchers' Association is a diverse group, composed of cattle ranches who accept paying guests and mountain top lodges that offer a ranch atmosphere.
“The formation of lasting bonds and memories still brings families back to ranches generation after generation. This is truly a living testimony to the timelessness of the values and standards of the original dude ranchers. Today, as it did over a century ago, the western dude ranch experience offers relief for both the body and spirit of those seeking refuge from the pressures and routine of modern life.”
So while recently sifting through old photos in Denver Public Library’s historic archive, I was fascinated by shots of Skelton Ranch early in the last century.
Erik Swab, a former computer programmer turned historical researcher, apparently had a similar experience. Although Swab was first directed to the early ranch in Teller County by the United States Forest Service, his research for them, and his interest in hiking in the Pikes Peak area, according to a March story by Dave Phillips in the Colorado Springs Gazette.
“When I first started asking about this place, there were so many rumors: It was a Japanese internment camp or a brothel or other things,” he is quoted in Phillips story.
In fact, he said, it was a dude ranch — one of the first in the state. It was many things over the years, including a resort that courted the moneyed class, and a place where locals attended community dances and suppers, according to the account.
The Skelton Mountain Ranch apparently operated from 1905 to 1916 and was situated three and half miles west of Woodland Park, with 400 acres there, and an additional 1,140 acres near Divide, according to Swab’s research.
“William Skelton was born in Kentucky in 1864 and married Lizzie Butler in 1885. They moved to Denver in 1898, where Skelton was a member of a law firm and briefly held the position of Judge. The couple left Denver in 1906 to reside in Woodland Park at the ranch,” writes David Martinek in Pikes Peak Country, citing Swab’s research.
“The resort ranch was famous. It had 30 log guest cabins, a 10-room house and log dining house, a large three-level barn, and a 104-foot long chicken house and an assembly hall with a large stone chimney. The promotional literature claimed that each cabin had indoor plumbing, but the reality was that there were surely several outdoor privies, instead. The ranch could accommodate up to 250 people at $15/week. And they only accepted “refined people as guests,’” writes Martinek.
According to Swab’s research, a fire in 1908 destroyed several buildings and may have cut short its life as a dude ranch. It was sold to a St. Louis shoe company executive named F.A. Sudholts, in 1916, and was to focus mostly on raising stock, but was largely vacant after that until the 1940s.
Despite that, the sentinment lives on, and people still aspire to learn cowboy code.
Cowboys are heroic — not just because they do dangerous work, but because they stand for something. Principles like honor, loyalty and courage lie at the heart of the Cowboy Way.
The Center for Cowboy Ethics and Leadership in Texas, promotes the following ten principles for Cowboys to live by:

1. Live each day with courage

2. Take pride in your work

3. Always finish what you start

4. Do what has to be done

5. Be tough, but fair

6. When you make a promise, keep it

7. Ride for the brand

8. Talk less and say more

9. Remember that some things aren’t for sale

10. Know where to draw the line. 

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Photo Info:


View of riders on base of Balanced Rock at Skelton Mountain Ranch. Oats raised without irrigation, Skelton Mountain Ranch, Woodland Park, Colo. Photographed by Louis Charles McClure, between 1900 and 1919. L.C. McClure Collection, Western History/Genealogy Department, Denver Public Library.

Homeland security in the 1980s

Visitors were to be temporarily housed in public buildings like schools, courthouses, city halls and other similar locations

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

It seems particularly important to reflect on homeland security and how our views change over time.
In response to a different threat and a different world back in the early 1980s, American civil defense planners became concerned about an evolving large-scale Soviet civil defense plan in addition to a Soviet nuclear threat and started drawing up their own blueprint for right here in the States.
The "crisis relocation plan" as it was known nationwide at the time, called for each state to develop individual versions that could be integrated into an overall picture. Because the North American Air Defense Command system was headquartered in Colorado Springs, it was considered a likely target.
Likely targets or "high risk" areas were to be evacuated and residents would be moved to nearby safe areas in times of escalating tension between the two super powers.
According to articles by staff writer Alan Gottlieb in early 1980s Ute Pass Courier, the El Paso County crisis relocation plan called for up to 8,000 people from the Springs to be temporarily housed in Teller County. Additional population was to be housed in eight other outlying Colorado counties: Fremont, Chaffee, Gunnison, Sahwatch, Rio Grande, Mineral, LaPlata and Archuleta.
In the event of an attack , the visitors would remain in the safe areas until harmful radiation effects had dwindled, according to Frank Mollner, acting regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as reported by the Courier articles.
These visitors were to be temporarily housed in public buildings like schools, courthouses, city halls and other similar locations. In addition, the articles by Gottlieb noted that some local residents had made preparations for such a dire occurrence as well.
Woodland Park resident Richard Carvill began building a fallout shelter during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and still maintained it at the time of Gottliebs articles in the early 'eighties.
An electrical engineer at NORAD for 25 years prior to retiring, Carvill was quoted at the time on his beliefs that the Soviets would launch a first strike.
"That is why I live up here instead of the Springs. I think there will be an attack, and it will be with nuclear weapons."
In tune with other survivalist philosophy at the time, Carvill told the reporter that his shelter was for his family only and he was prepared to protect it from trespassers with "a whole arsenal of guns."
"I built it for my family and there is just no room for anyone else," he said. Other local survivalist expressed similar sentiments.
Another Teller County man who also had built a shelter and stored food was also quoted anonymously.
"Somebody who comes for my food is in trouble, big trouble," he said. "He has two choices, go back or go down."
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Hayman Fire and the newspaper

In sky above the ridges surrounding us, air was filled with smoke and an ominous bright pink in color

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

For three intense weeks in June of 2002, the Hayman fire, Colorado’s largest wildland fire in recorded history (at that time), ravaged our circulation area. Hayman burned over 137,000 acres of prime forest in five counties, destroyed at least 132 homes and reduced over 800 other structures to ash piles.
The Ute Pass Courier and The Gold Rush were paid weekly news products servicing the U.S. Highway 24 corridor with circulations of about 4,000 and 1,200 respectively. They were produced in Woodland Park, Colo., and delivered by U.S. Mail on Wednesday. A total market coverage shopper was also put together at the same location and mailed, bulk rate, to every mail box in Teller County. I was the publisher at the time of the fire of these three products and managed operations and about 20 full and part-time employees. We printed at a centralized plant 50 miles away in Castle Rock, Colo.
Highway 24 snakes its way up through Ute Pass and the communities of Manitou Springs, Cascade, Green Mountain Falls, Chipita Park, Woodland Park and then meanders over the ridge at Divide and drops down into Florissant.
Eventually it finds its way to Lake George. The fire started a few miles northwest of Lake George and then traveled, mostly along the South Platte River watershed, torching, scorching and threatening subdivisions and our readers homes and land.
For weekly newspapers such as The Courier and The Gold Rush, covering breaking national spot news on deadline in the same environment with radio, TV and daily newspapers was an awesome challenge. With four full and part-time news employees covering six or seven communities 60 or 70 miles apart, it was tough getting the papers out every week. Now try to beat outfits that send teams (larger than our whole staff, publisher and paper carriers included) out for up-to-the-minute reports.
For members of our staff at the newspaper, the weeks of stress related to intense long-term sustained coverage of a big story was compounded by whether or not their house, or place of employment, or both might burn. And all their friends and neighbors were in a similar predicament.
Tuesday, June 18, tested our collective nerves the most, I believe. Woodland Park rests in a bowl. In the sky above the ridges surrounding us, the air was filled with smoke and was an ominous bright pink in color. City officials with bull horns were driving up and down the streets warning residents that they were on standby evacuation alert.
Reports vary on how close we were to being evacuated that night in Woodland Park. Some officials say 15 minutes was all that separated us from the “trigger points” on evacuation. At the newspaper office, we went as far as pulling our main servers and made plans to put the next week’s papers out in staffers’ homes and/or the printing plant in Castle Rock.
We were a Macintosh-based operation and pulling servers meant backing up everything by burning CDs and grabbing two G3 blue boxes. Theoretically, we could have put PDF pages together on any Mac and e-mailed them to the plant to be imaged through the raster image processor — theoretically. Fortunately we didn’t have to test the theory.
If Highway 24 was closed, we were to drop mail deliveries at the U.S. Postal Service’s Fountain distribution center at the south edge of Colorado Springs and carriers would originate from there instead of two post offices in Woodland Park and one in Cripple Creek.
Tuesday night, the fire burned up to the Manitou Experimental Forest about seven miles from town and then fell down and went to sleep. Our offices and other businesses and residences in Woodland Park were removed from standby evacuation warnings two days later.
Our fire coverage ran through much of the main news sections in the coming weeks but we also tried to dedicate four broadsheet pages in the center of the paper as an information guide for relief efforts.
As that was updated, and as needs changed, the pages became more of a forum for people in the community to give their take on what was happening.
In addition to our own staff coverage, we felt it was important to offer our readers a mix of submitted material as well. Some of the voices brought forward in our pages included a diary of the first weeks of the fire as seen through eyes of local volunteer firefighter, exceptional photos from those documenting the loss of their homes, and excellent accounts of animal rescue efforts from those involved.
For three weeks during the height of the coverage, we overran our primary product, The Ute Pass Courier, by about 500 papers. About half of the overrun was distributed free at Red Cross and Salvation Army shelters in Woodland Park, Divide and Lake George. The rest of the additional papers sold on the newsstands and to locals who continued to wander into our office for months after the fire, saying they missed the paper during the conflagration.
For years afterward, we continued covering the fire in various aspects. The effects on the tourist-reliant business community, the government responses, the cleanup, the flooding, and all the evaluation and Monday morning quarterbacking were continuous elements of our weekly products. Personally, I know I will always remember how ragged we felt, even months after the intense initial three weeks of baptism by fire. Today, talking with survivors of Hayman and hearing about their experiences still brings back images in my mind of that weird pink, smoky glow on ridges above Woodland Park.
###

Texas Seven out the front window

One Monday morning more than seven years ago, we watched out the front window of the Ute Pass Courier newspaper office in Woodland Park, Colo., as multiple emergency vehicles began filling up the newspaper parking lot.
“No information at this time,” is what they emergency staff told us when we tried to find out what was going on.
After nearly 20 minutes of being completely in the dark of what kind of operation was taking place in our own neighborhood, we discovered that police, including local city and county officers, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, FBI and federal marshals, arrested members of the Texas Seven in the Coachlight mobile home park directly to the east of us.
The seven inmates made their break from a maximum-security prison near San Antonio, Texas, six weeks prior to the excitement near our office. Before showing up in our town, police say the fugitives killed an Irving, Texas, police officer, shooting him 11 times and then running over him as they looted a sporting goods store for clothing, weapons, ammunition and more than $70,000 in cash.
On August 14, 2008, Michael Anthony Rodriguez became the first of the gang to be executed for his part in the killing of Irving Officer Aubrey Hawkins on Christmas Eve in 2000. The rest of the surviving Seven’s cases are in various stages of appeal in the Texas courts.
Rodriguez, claiming a religious conversion on death row, asked for years that his appeals be dropped so that he could face his punishment and stand a better chance at going to heaven.
Three of the escapees were surrounded in Woodland Park by a police SWAT team at a convenience store a few miles down the road as they left the Coachlight RV Park to get their morning coffee. At the same time that was happening, police surrounded the RV in the park with two other fugitives inside. By using a bullhorn, police were able to get one of the two in the RV to surrender. The holdout, Ron Harper, took his own life by shooting himself twice in the chest. He used two different weapons, according to information released later by the county coroner. Two of the men remained at large for two more days and were finally captured in a Colorado Springs hotel room about 15 miles from here.
By the time we knew what was happening, the calls from Texas television stations, CNN and other national media were already coming in. At times, three people from our newspaper would be on a phone with TV stations or other news organizations. With only four voice lines, it made it tough to get our own business taken care of. The TV stations would call and then pass us back and forth between affiliates, live talk shows, and various news programs. By late afternoon, however, area phone lines became too busy to call us or anyone else in Woodland Park.
From Monday night until early Wednesday morning, TV trucks with satellite dishes on top and shivering reporters out front, stretched from the bottom of our parking lot, down a half mile of Highway 24. We loaned phone lines, fax machines, desk space, and offered directions, travel advice and restaurant recommendations for reporters and photographers working for outfits including Reuters, The New York Times, America’s Most Wanted, Time, Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune and others.
The media circus gradually split up and migrated to several nearby locations including the Teller County Jail, the Teller County Courthouse in Cripple Creek, and down the hill to Colorado Springs where the last two were captured.
Reporter stragglers for various national publications and TV shows were still wandering into our office a month later.
In the midst of the excitement that Tuesday morning, reporters and photographers from The Denver Post, working a story about the little newspaper office near the big story, had a good laugh about our light tables.
Their amusement with our antique equipment, the instant info and live feeds, along with the exposure to national media’s top-of-the-line technology made us realize how fast the news business is evolving, even in the weekly newspaper world.
Granted, our papers were probably about seven years behind where we should be in terms of technology, but how things have changed, even for a one- or two-horse operation like ours. Seven years ago, a small weekly probably wouldn’t be moving photos and pages around on the Internet. No PDF workflows. No affordable digital cameras. No cell phones that worked in our mountains. No laptops connected to the cell phones to file stories with. Not even much of a World Wide Web.
This story broke on a Monday, which from a deadline standpoint was not bad for us as a weekly newspaper. We print our main product, the Ute Pass Courier, Tuesday afternoon and are on the street by Wednesday morning. Our initial coverage was very similar to that of the local dailies and national reporters.
On that first day, everybody was being fed much of the same info as fast as the police could pull it together. Tuesday, a few minutes before we were leaving for the printer, we received word that the police had found what they thought to be the remaining two fugitives’ van, and were conducting a room-by-room search of nearby hotel rooms in Colorado Springs. With this information, we ran with a small update box on the front of our paper near the main write-through.
As fast-moving as this story was, however, by the time we hit the street with our edition Wednesday, the remaining two fugitives were in custody, having been talked out of a Holiday Inn room with the promise of five minutes of airtime each on a local TV station.
Wednesday morning, after speaking with our news staff and realizing how frustrated they were at not being able to keep up with the story with our regular weekly schedule, we bumped the press time for another of our weekly news products and made arrangements for a special edition that would hit Thursday night. We printed enough of the special editions to insert in all three of our weekly nameplates, each having different drop dates beginning with Friday and carrying through the following week. We also printed an additional 2,500 to distribute free as soon as they were back from the 100-mile round-trip to the printer Thursday afternoon. All 2,500 were distributed to countertops at local high-traffic areas in our market by Friday night.
Competing with local dailies, national newspapers, magazines, television and news services that had larger crews dispatched on this story than we have staff in the whole building, we tried to put a good package together with "first-light" information that still had a shelf life into the next week. The special edition stretched our resources to see-through levels, but when it was put to bed, we felt pretty good about both our first-day information and the special section.
One of our reporters, Pat Hill, put together two excellent color pieces on the role local emergency services played in the raid. She then left immediately for an emergency appendectomy before the editors had a chance to read her stories.
Other reporters on our staff were offered as much as $250 per quote to shag quotes for national media outlets.
Even after a few months, locals were still talking about it, of course, and comparing their own Texas Seven stories. A few area businesses with little or no shame are trying to capitalize on the national attention, by doing things like offering "Texas Seven pizzas" or trying to auction off a pool table on Ebay that the infamous group reportedly played on. I’ve even heard members of the local chamber of commerce half-jokingly suggest changing the chamber motto from "City Above the Clouds" to "Escape to Woodland Park."
But most people here in Woodland Park are just happy that none of the locals were hurt, the bad guys were caught, and law enforcement was able to perform so efficiently.
###

Ghosts hang out at the old school

You must feel a presence

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

I know where the ghosts are. They hang out around the old school. Maybe they don’t live there — but that is where they hang.
Henrik Ibsen suggested as much in his 1881 text “Ghosts.” Ibsen said, “I’m inclined to think we are all ghosts — everyone of us. It is not just what we inherit from our mothers and fathers that haunts us. It is all kinds of old defunct theories, all sorts of old defunct beliefs, and things like that.”
Maybe you, as I, have felt them on several occasions. As you wait in crowd to ascend the steps to Ute Pass Cultural Cultural Center in Woodland Park,. you think back to its days as gymnasium — the days in which Friday night crowds waited on the same set of steps for entry to a basketball game.
Or maybe when you read the chalk board messages in the guest rooms of Carr Manor in Cripple Creek. The building, built to serve as the high school and later used for K-12, is the only one of the five original schools in Cripple Creek to survive.
The view from that corner classroom, er... I mean guest suite, how could any student keep there mind on the three Rs?
If you rush down the stairs, past the fountain that now sports a plant in it, and into the Grand Ball Room, you can feel it. ... It’s the same rush, and sounds, and sights and texture of a feeling that thousands of students from the turn of the century, all the way through to 1977, could feel as they rushed to class. The ghosts, we know are there.
Driving by the lonely white one-room building, complete with bell tower and weed-choked playground, out on the Wyoming plains you must feel a presence.
Or in the meeting room of a South Dakota park that was converted from a similar one-room school — yes ghosts. And in the museum in Keystone, S.D. that is housed in the old school where the first class was the largest. The parents followed their lust for gold, the students followed the parents, but the gold ran out and soon, so did the students.
Even in your memories of the Mrs. Denby’s first grade, or of the coat rooms behind each of the class rooms in grade school, and as you wander down the halls in the old High School with all the students from previous classes staring down at you from the class portraits on the walls above.
As you see the rolled up maps that once allowed a teacher to pull down the world, and in the abandoned biology texts, or the old-fashioned desks with the ink well hole in the top near the center edge, or ...
That’s where the ghost are. They hang out at the old school.
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Billboards, Cusack and Cascade

Large-scale advertising was not welcomed by all

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Although they weren’t compelled to advertise it, most of the Cusack family’s money originally came from selling space on billboards. With some of that scratch, they built some of the most notable landmarks in the area, including Marigreen Pines and Chapel of the Holy Rosary.
“Thomas Cusack started out in business in the East as a wagon painter from which he turned to sign painting in 1875, and then made a fortune in the outdoor advertising business,” according to Virginia McConnell in her 1963 book Ute Pass Route of the Blue Sky People.
“Starting in the 1870s and 1880s, large advertising posters began to appear in American cities along elevated railroads and streets, and the first companies leasing outdoor space were formed.” says the New York Historical Society. The Cusack family was a pioneer in that business as they branched out from the Chicago area.
“As automobiles grew in popularity, outdoor advertising became much more prolific.... Such large scale advertising was not welcomed by all,” according to the society. As a result, efforts by citizens and politicians attempted to limit this activity.
One such effort traveled all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1917, in the famous case of Thomas Cusack Company v. City of Chicago. Cusack’s company argued that a Chicago city ordinance governing the erection and maintenance of billboards in that city, was unconstitutionally restrictive.
“Upon the question of the reasonableness of the ordinance, much evidence was introduced upon the trial of the case, from which the supreme court finds that fires had been started in the accumulation of combustible materials which gathered about such billboards; that offensive and insanitary accumulations are habitually found about them, and that they afford a convenient concealment and shield for immoral practices, and for loiters and criminals,” wrote Justice John Hessin Clarke in the majority opinion.”
Though they lost that battle, they won the war in the sense of still being able secure a massive fortune in the advertising business.
“The Cusack family began vacationing in the Cascade area as early as the turn of the Century, but did not build their Marigreen Pines residence until 1920. According to McConnell, Thomas Cusack had purchased the Cascade Town Company for $100,000 in 1892. For much of the next century, descendants would sell land and provide water for the town from Cascade Creek.
Jan Pettit’s book, Ute Pass and Cascade, Chipita Park, Crystola, Woodland Park, Green Mountain Falls and Divide: A Quick History, notes that Thomas’ son, Frank Cusack planned to develop a series of hunting quarters that would eventually hook up with the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs via trails and had the company build a hunting lodge on top of Pyramid Mountain.
Pettit says the Chapel of Holy Rosary was built in 1931 as memorial to Thomas and Mary Cusack by their children and that structure over looked the site of the former Ramona Hotel. 

Ramona Hotel, Cascade

Thomas Cusack purchased the Ramona and tore it down with the intention of rebuilding it, according to information submitted by Rowenna Blum for use by the USGenWeb Archive Project. Cusack had hoped to build a smaller, more modern structure with a Spanish design but died before the project was completed.

Thomas Cusack, about 1899.


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Blacksmith Oscar: The ultimate recycler

'The first rule is never throw anything away.'

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Sometimes in February, I remember something from television icon Mr. Rogers, and think of Oscar Lindholm, and his conservative ways.
It has been years since Oscar's death, but still I have an overwhelming desire to recycle some of his blacksmith/ferrier wisdom, from time to time.
“Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else,” the Mr. Rogers character said of being truly conservative.
For Oscar Lindholm, it might have been an old horse shoe or a piece of railroad track, or maybe even a bull’s skull. But he’d squirrel it away for use later because he didn't believe in wasting anything.
“In blacksmithing,” Oscar told me more than a decade ago. “The first rule is never throw anything away.”
And he didn’t. For years he has scanned magazines like Western Horseman for ideas on things to make from scrap metal, old horse shoes, salvaged wire etc... Gate latches, boot jacks, toys, wall art, paper weights, dinner bells are just a few of his repertoire.
Oscar, born on April 12, 1916 in Holmquist, South Dakota, passed away at the age of 93, on February 7, 2010. Having joined the US Army in 1936, he was awarded the Bronze Star and retired as a CW03 in 1957. While in the Army, Oscar married his wife Elsie Alexander in October of 1940, and they had four wonderful children. He spent many years perfecting the craft of "horse shoeing" in which he became very well known as the area's "Horse Shoer." 
He is buried in Woodland Park Cemetery. 
Oscar’s carried his unique smithy’s devotion to anti-waste and conservation habit since he first learned to shoe horses for the army back in the ‘30s. He told me, he remembered it well,  learning the trade.
“When you first start, the more you hammer, the worse it gets.” says Oscar about his initial solo horse shoeing at Fort Mead, South Dakota for the Fourth Calvary in 1936. “I was sweating and swearing pretty good in both Swede and English,” he said and as Sergeant Sears, his superior at the time noted, “I guess he’ll make a pretty good blacksmith, he got the language right already.”
Items made by Oscar still adorn residents and business in the Pikes Peak region from Cripple Creek to Black Forest — Colorado Springs, Woodland Park and points in between. He said he once was able to knock out five or six projects a day.
But in his later years, he complained a bit.
“Anymore, I’m getting nothing done. That’s what you get for living too damn long.”
And as far as social commentary on general conservation policy. “Nowadays you get a million dollars from the government to redo it, blah, blah blah. That’s progress.”
Asked what he does with completed art work —if he sells items or not?
“Sell them. Then I would have to make some more.”
Oscar lived in same house in Green Mountain Falls from 1956, until shortly before his death. He retired from the Army in 1957. He and his wife, Elsie, raised their children there. She has been gone for 30 years. “But she has the best view of Pikes Peak in the cemetery,” he says of her resting place in Woodland Park Cemetery.
He told me at time, all those years ago, how proud he was of his grown children, Myrna, Marjorie, Larry, and Wayne, the later who he notes “doesn’t say much but is the best damn electrician in the United States.”
He also said he could tell you how long every item in his place in Green Mountain Falls has been there. The folks that knew him from his daily visits to the Pantry, or the Old Pub, in GMF, still recall him fondly.
All those years ago: In the living room there, sets a his prized rocking chair that he purchased in Atlanta, Georgia in 1947. “I had it fixed a few years ago and now it’s better than ever,” he told me more than a decade ago. The TV set that quit working 20 years ago is still there on the chance it can be fixed. And a pair of horns from “Old Tex” a bull’s head he salvaged from Mueller’s Hereford ranch. The skull itself rode above his work shop.
His white pickup, a 1973 Ford F-100, rested outside with various projects in various stages of completion. “I quit driving it a year ago,”  He told me nearly a dozen years ago, during one visit.
His favorite things were also there at the house, like rope makers that he’s made and is one of only a few who knows how to use it. And an old Cavalry bridle stamped with the Fourth Calvary, Machine Gun Troop designator, and shoes from Budweiser Clydesdales, and various items picked up “back when I used to drink beer.”
Things like the sign that he wanted the city of Green Mountain Falls to put up that says “This is God’s country, don’t drive like hell through it.”
He told me however, in 2006, he hadn’t drank beer since he stopped 23 years ago.
But his workshop was still full of pieces of iron, and steel — scraps of this and that, all things waiting for new uses at the hands of the ultimate recycler, Oscar Lindholm. That true conservative blacksmith wisdom, and Oscar's easy smile and stories, still have a place, and likely will come up once again, from time to time.

###

Matter of perspective

He could tell us all, about a lot of things

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

A little more than a decade ago, I befriended local character Jack Shippy, and he would stop by the office once a week or so, to make sure I was running the paper correctly, and offer some of his wife's crab-apple jelly, that she had made from the fruit he picked off the tree at corner of Courier office downstairs. Ever since then, I have attached great value to lessons he taught me, all those years ago. I wrote this, and it first appeared in 2003.

 I suppose it is a matter of perspective.
“I’m 81-years-old and it is just too much,” said Green Mountain Falls resident Jack Shippy to me. He was talking about maintaining residence in two states.
I listen to Jack and if you ask me, “too much” is relative. If you ask him, he can tell you about a lot of things.
Shippy still drives a ‘71 Chevy Impala cross-country from Colorado to Florida.
“Last of the muscle cars,” he explains. “It has a 350 Chevy V-8 and it just floats down the highway.”
But he put his Florida home on the market and plans to stick closer to home here in the shadow of the Peak.
Shippy could tell you about things like Pearl Harbor. He was there when the Japanese Imperial Army attacked on Dec. 7,1941, bringing the United States into WWII.
But maybe its hard to speak of such things. “I get pretty emotional about it. It was terrible —our boys in the water, everything on fire, the noise.” he told me once.
Jack had joined the Navy at 16. He said he had lied to recruiter about his age. Twice, the first time when he was 15. “He told me to come back in a year. I did and I was in.”
He could also describe to you what it was like to put an airplane back together on an island in the Pacific in the complete darkness. Darkness because he knew a sniper was out there waiting for the lights to come on to take a shot.
All of the following experiences (and many more) make up his story list. He can tell you Navy test pilot tales about damaging his ears, battles with various kinds of cancer and illness, leaving Oklahoma during the dust bowl, coming to live with relatives in Colorado Springs as an orphan, working on the “bull gang” as a mechanic for Golden Cycle Mining company, trying to scratch out a living during the depression, volunteering for years in service clubs like the Lions Club and Friends of the Fossil Beds.
After retiring from the service, he could even speak in Whiskey salesmen parables of a Colorado past and of people in small towns like Gunnison, Creede and all across the state.
And he usually has a joke for us, though it is sometimes it is off-color enough that I’ll decline to retell most of them here.
Sometimes in the summer, I’m even able to trade him yellow crookneck squash for jars of chokecherry jelly that his wife makes. He threatens every year to come down and pick the crab apples off the tree outside the office window so his wife can make crab apple jelly. Nothing should go to waste.
He always has ideas. Perhaps, just by discussing it, he and I can solve the Social Security crisis or balance the budget or pick the best president to lead the country. Maybe we will chat about his newest acting gig in television commercials for the hospital or the TV commercial where he is in the steamed up car “with someone else’s wife” as he describes it.
He lets me know when he thinks I should write about the city’s arrangements with the Lions Park, or tells me to find out what they are building at the edge of town.
But what did he want to talk about today?
“The war over in Iraq makes me nervous. And all these economic problems,” he said. “I took getting knocked around in the Pacific so that my kids don’t have to go through another depression or fight another World War,” he said.
That is a valuable perspective. I trust that if you ask Jack Shippy, he can tell us all about a lot of things.

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