Reading the paper before I was born

We’re not the nation’s authority on mining, but were not dead yet

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

I was reading an interesting edition of the Gold Rush published a few months before I was born, “the Vacation Edition,’ from Friday, June 30, 1961, Richard W. Johnson, editor.
Of particular note, a column titled “This is Victor.”
“The biggest payroll mines were near Victor and in the early days when they all got paid in gold, there would be a queue of miners three or four blocks long on paydays marching four abreast past the bank to receive their pay. And the golden eagles were piled so high on the paymaster’s tables that the tables had to be reinforced with steel to stand the weight.,” noted one story under the title “This is Victor.”
The city of Victor, according to the paper, was founded in 1893 by the Woods Brothers and named for Victor Adams who fathered the town of Lawrence, southwest of Victor on Wilson Creek in 1892. The Woods Brothers made their original fortune with the Gold Coin Mine in Victor, which they discovered while digging a basement for a hotel. With some of their fortune they built mansions in Colorado Springs on Wood Avenue and other Cripple Creek district miners followed suit to create a “Millionaires Row” that is still partially intact today.
“The only hard money seen in the District now is silver, and silver dollars are still popular with the natives to the delight of tourist,” notes the 1961 edition. “Gold coin went out in 1933, during the Roosevelt’s ‘bank holiday,’ a fact much bemoaned by the miners.”
Gold Rush Days recently, sponsored by the City of Victor, still features a parade, family events, and traditional mining games presented by the Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mining Company that include loading a one-ton ore cart by hand, jack leg drilling, hand drilling and mucking. Also the historic home and building tours are conducted this weekend as well.
“Victor has been through the years, and still is, Cripple Creek’s chief rival in top honors in the District,” notes the 1961 newspaper. “The other thriving towns have gone with the wind. There are a few residents left in Goldfield, two in Independence, a very few in Elkton and Lawrence and none at all in Cameron, Midway, Anaconda, Altman, Love and Gillette.”
Of the paper itself. “We’re not the nation’s authority on mining, but were not dead yet,” notes a subscription advertisement.
“True, we have what we call our “selective readers” who buy the paper just for the weather column, those who read only “Them Was The Days,” or “The Evesdropper,” and then wrap up the garbage with the rest of our wasted efforts. We have a man in Oklahoma who subscribes because he got cut off from Sears and Roebuck’s mailing list. A few friends subscribe because they don’t dare not to.”
And other content comes into question. “We almost forgot about the editorials. They’re not always good and you won’t agree with us all the time, but a least you don’t have to read them over two or three times to find out what we think. We call a square point a square point. That’s a shovel, in case you don’t dig mining jargon.”
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A missed thank you

With an Orange Crush bandana and anything else flashy

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Life is shaped by experiences and the people you rub up against as you go through it.
Lynn Leavell was a close friend of mine. He grew up directly across Seventh Street in Dolores from me. As kids we catacombed entire city blocks with Tonka Truck tunnels, under sidewalks, through city storm sewer systems and in to neighbor’s yards. In the winter, when city crews created 30-foot piles in the middle of the street, we would tunnel through them as well.
I can’t remember a grade in elementary school when he wasn’t in my class. He had 12 years perfect attendance. I missed a day in third grade. We walked the five blocks to school every day together and Granny (his technically), who was a cook at the school cafeteria, would always offer us something when we arrived.
When we both were 11, we went into business together with a Durango Herald paper route that covered the whole town. He took “upriver,” I had “downriver.” We bought 10-speed bikes with some of the first of that money and rode the all the way to Cortez and back a few times. Our folks were ready to ground both of us for life when they found out, but they were usually about ready to ground us for life. They were probably still cussing us in recent years during their regular “community updates” in front of the Leavell or the Carrigan house or in the unpaved street between.
In high school, he was the student architect and quarterback behind a number of Dolores’ successful Single A football seasons, even though his cousin Scott was the star. That didn’t stop him from being easily the most identifiable Dolores Bear, with an Orange Crush bandana and anything else flashy that Coach Rice allowed him to get away with wearing to perpetuate his regional reputation as a Prima Donna.
We worked together off and on at the hardware store, me being the boss by virtue of six months seniority.
He bought a motorcycle and used to wear this army-surplus leather aviation helmet and old-fashioned aviator goggles with the Orange Crush bandana as he scooted through, the sagebrush, scrub oak, juniper and pinion “downriver.”
Today that whole area is under 500 feet of McPhee Reservoir. I had to buy a motorcycle myself so I wouldn’t miss out on swimming with the “bonedigger” girls at Big Rock. College students from Washington State University and University of Colorado did $7 million worth of archeology in that river valley before water started to backup the eight miles into town. Lynn, myself, and the rest of our friends knew every square inch of the lake bottom.
We had regionally famous run-ins with local history and mythology. We lived true stories. Stories that you could never have imagined on your own — things like brushes with death and catching a local politico with someone other than his wife “buck naked” in a cave. Government agencies are probably still looking for someone to pin a killer phone bill on from the old Graystone farmhouse where we had big ol’ party our senior year. The Graystone two-story was one of the few structures left on the lake bottom for fish habitat. Folks tell me they catch monster trout in that area today.
When we graduated from high school, Lynn, James Biard, and myself pooled our resources and purchased what we were later to decide was an excessive amount of Tennessee sour mash in celebration. James tells me he doesn’t care much for sour mash to this day. Except for medicinal purposes, I avoid it myself.
Lynn went to Mesa State in Grand Junction and I went a year to Fort Lewis College before transferring to Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Dolores kids and folks that we knew from Mancos, Cortez, Dove Creek, Pagosa, Bayfield would run into each other at college, and road trip back and forth with abandon. His friends at Mesa, became our friends at Fort Lewis, and with others we knew at School of Mines, and Boulder, and Western State and CSU and Adams State and Metro and UNC and where ever else we circulated.
Some how after college Lynn ended up in Akron as a teacher and assistant football coach under Coach Rice. When Rice left, he became head coach, and eventually principal of Akron High School. Most years his teams were successful in making it to the state playoffs at least, and by most accounts, Lynn lived at the school. He married, had two boys and one day, after trying to figure out why he couldn’t see as well as he used to, was diagnosed with an inoperable tumor that wrapped around stem of his brain.
For eight years he fought the cancer, and also lived his life, principaling, finishing a masters degree, continuing to coach, teach, raising his kids, working summers for the city as rec department coordinator — and always the Prima Donna, tooling around Akron with a pith helmet on.
One May, having received a call from Lynn’s family informing us that the experimental wafers that they put in his head were not working, myself and another buddy from Dolores, Rusty Hector, went to visit him in Akron. We spent the day going over some of our mutual history and things were pretty normal with him. He remembered with great clarity events in Dolores 20 years hence but seemed to slip a few gears when it came to recalling things he had told us that morning. By the end of August, a few weeks from his 35th birthday, he was dead.
That was more than 20 years ago. I learned a million things over the years with Lynn and from him. There are really two main lessons that I think standout. Life is short — and winning isn’t everything, but trying to win, makes it interesting. I never really thanked him.
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Three presidents lost in less than 40 years

Comparing and contrasting now to 100 years ago is an interesting exercise. But context is the difficult variable.
Turn of Century characters today can point to a collective memory of Viet Nam, completion of interstate highway system, the assassination of President John Kennedy, The Civil Rights movement, increased reliance on computers, cell phones and assorted other technology.
But 100 years ago, at the turn of that century, of course they had their struggles as well.
After all, that generation had experienced the American Civil War — pitting brother against brother — the coming of the railroads, the opening of the West, the invention of the electric light, telephone, and automobile, and the implementation of running water.
Through out much of this time, the relatively young nation thrashed about in the violence that was a big part of the America of that time.
As evidence of this violence, the public witnessed was the first assassination of a President of the United States, then the second, and the third, all in a span of less than forty years.
Just five days after the end of the Civil War, actor John Wilkes Booth took President Abraham Lincoln’s life as he attended a play at Ford’s Theater In Washington, D.C. with his wife.
Then, in 1881, after just four months into his presidency, James Garfield was shot by one of his own supporters because he reportedly did not receive a patronage position he felt he was entitled to. The former teacher and college president that could write in Greek with one hand, while at the same time, write in Latin with the other, lay dying in the White House for 11 weeks after being shot.
Then again, on Sept. 6, 1901, William McKinley, sporting his traditional red carnation on his suit coat, offered the carnation (his own personal lucky charm) to little girl in the crowd when, an anarchist produced the fatal shot just as he bent to give the child the flower. He died eight days later.
Today, when we consider how much the world has changed in our life span, and when we evaluate how much it is likely to change by the next turn of the century, I think it is important that we keep some sense of context in perspective. It seems we are relatively civilized in comparison to 100 years hence. Let’s hope the trend continues.
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Longhorns on the Goodnight-Loving Trail

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

Chivington put his harsh words into action

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

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

Murphy lived and walked all over Colorado for many years

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

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

Old stories become new again

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


By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

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