The C Lazy Three blog
‘There is a mystery and a lure about the lingering scent of mountain lilacs still blooming on a decaying threshold.'‘ Source unknown.
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Gold is where you find it. Nuggets gleaned after the 2nd edition of John Gregory Country went to press are displayed below:
~~~ “After next Saturday, Golden will practically be off the railroad map, at least so far as the Colorado & Southern is concerned. The company has decided to close the round house at this point, and this will mean that the mountain freight trains will no longer be made up here. As a result of the decline in mining, little freight is now sent to the mountain towns, and a considerable amount is transported in trucks. Automobiles have almost supplanted the steam cars in passenger traffic to the towns above.” (May 13, 1921)
(Editor’s note: The above is the latest post. When it is supplanted, it will be listed chronologically.)
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~~~ “Many of the mine owners cut down the wages for the miners on New Year’s Day 50 cents per day, and no resistance was made. The wages for common labor are $3 per day.…” (Register-Call, Jan. 8, 1868)
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~~~ “The coaches come loaded to their utmost capacity these days. Sunday evening’s arrival had passengers all over it, hanging on to the outside guards like leeches. Just think of the rush when our railroad gets to running.…” (Register-Call, Nov. 1872)
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~~~ “Mr. Miller, the affable gentleman who keeps the eating house at Forks Creek, has had an edition built to his already large quarters, and is having the same painted and fitted up in good shape. Landlord Miller expects a big trade during the coming summer, as the road has been advertised considerably of late.” (Register-Call, April 17, 1896)
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~~~ “A most fortunate accident happened in the shaft of the Hidden Treasure Mine in Nevadaville last week, which will be remembered by all parties concerned therewith. Four miners were ready to go down the shaft; two got in the bucket and the other two rode on the rim of the bucket, holding themselves steady with their hands around the hoisting rope.
When the bucket reached the 900-foot level, one of the men was missing. No sound of a falling body had been heard, and the men came to the conclusion that the man had been caught by a nail or piece of timber in the shaft, and was liable to drop down the shaft any moment.
Two men started climbing the ladders, and three hundred feet from the surface they found the missing miner hanging head down and unable to move. The bucket was brought up to that point, and the two men soon had their companion out of danger. The miner’s jacket had caught on a nail which protruded from the bed plan, tearing off all the buttons except one which held fast, and lifted him out of the bucket, and left him hanging in the shaft as when found.
The man was uninjured, and after recovering from fright and fear that the button or nail might give way any moment, to be followed by a drop of 600 feet, he was soon in condition to go to work again….” (Register-Call, Mar. 12, 1897)
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~~~ “Of the 145 tickets sold at the Black Hawk Station on Sunday last, 105 were for Boulder, the balance being for Denver. With those sold at Central, the train carried over 200 excursionists.…” (Register-Call, Aug. 12, 1898)
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~~~ “Mr. H. Goddard, agent of the Colorado & Southern Railroad in this city, received notice this week from headquarters that, commencing with Thursday, May 1, the train leaving this city for Forks of Creek will leave Central at 7:30; Black Hawk at 7:50; Smith Hill at 8:10; Cottonwood at 8:19, arriving at the Forks at 8:30. This schedule is for daily except on Sunday when normal operations will resume.” (Register-Call, April 25, 1924)
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~~~ “Although the snowstorm has held up work on the Guy Hill Road for the past two days, there is no lessening of effort to have the state highway commission appropriate some money for its completion. ~ Today or tomorrow one of the state engineers will be in Golden to examine the project and to hear of the county’s plans for the future. Few people realize the importance of this work, and probably fewer are aware of the progress that has been made on the job by the county commissioners. ~ The road, which will be built in Golden Gate Canyon, will be widened and made passable to the Gilpin County line. From Gilpin County to Rollinsville, the highway department has promised to construct a road to the Moffat Tunnel. The first mile of road at the foot of the canyon has been constructed and $10,000 has been expended there. ~ The road begins at the foot of the Golden Fire Brick Company on the same side of Tucker Gulch. It is planned to keep the road on this side of the gulch its entire distance to eliminate washouts. Although the snowstorm has held up work on the Guy Hill Road for the past two days, there is no lessening of effort to have the state highway commission appropriate some money for its completion.” (Register-Call, Dec. 12, 1924)
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~~~ Some Peas: “A solid carload of mountain peas are being shipped this week from Guy Hill. They are consigned to St. Joseph, Mo. They were grown and loaded by Ramstetter Bros., Ballinger and Noak, with the assistance of Crowell, Nankervis, and William. All are good ranchers of the Guy Hill district. This the first carload of mountain peas from this district and also the first from Denver. The shipment consisting of nine tons was thoroughly iced in a refrigerator before going east. Top prices were paid for the peas. It is predicted that peas will be grown in large quantities next year as there is a big demand for this mountain product.” (Register-Call, Aug. 20, 1926)
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~~~ “What is probably the world’s deepest telephone was recently installed at the bottom of a shaft over one mile in depth. The shaft is the property of the Calumet and Hecia Consolidated copper mines and the telephone, one of many others in the mine system, is used by a pump man at the bottom of the shaft to report water levels to the engineers at the surface. The connecting cable, which runs down the vertical shaft, is 5,300 feet long and weighs four tons. It is anchored to shaft timbers at regular intervals with special clamps that support the weight and prevent the line from sagging.” (Register-Call, Sept. 17, 1926)
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~~~ “James M. Seright left for Denver on Monday morning to attend a hearing before the Public Utilities Commission for a hearing in the case of the Colorado & Southern Railroad’s request to discontinue service of its passenger trains over the Clear Creek branch.…” (Register-Call, Dec. 16, 1927)
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~~~ “A carload of blister copper weighing 18 tons, from the Evergreen electric smelter at Apex, was being loaded at the depot on Wednesday for shipment to Denver. Each one of the ingots weighed from 100 to 120 pounds, and was the result of a test run at the smelter, after which the smelter closed down until May of next year.” (Register-Call, Nov., 1928)
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[The Belcher Hill Trail in the White Ranch Park was once an automobile road. The source for the following news item has been lost, but the incident itself is not isolated. There are numerous references to automobile accidents on this road.] ~~~ “A Denver party had a miraculous escape from serious injury Sunday night when the car in which they were riding refused to make Belcher hill, north of Golden. When the driver realized that his machine would not pull the steep incline, he started to back down and in doing so ran his car into a peculiar position with the wheels lifted off the ground and the entire weight of the car on the crank case. Only by good luck was the machine saved from going over the high embankment.”
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~~~ “Farmers in the Guy Hill District have sown 200 acres in peas so far this season, which with favorable weather should bring a yield of at least 400 tons. This district produces an excellent grade of peas, which find a ready sale on the Denver market. A high-grade of Mountain Iceberg lettuce, equal in quality and demand to the faros Granby product is also grown in Guy Hill. Most of the seed is purchased from the J.H. Linder Hardware Company of Golden. Although Guy Hill is a dairying district, the farmers in recent years have branched out into the growing of peas and lettuce with excellent success, each year increasing the acreage for these crops. Large crops of hay, oats, and barley are grown for the dairy stock. The milk is sold to the Coors Malted Milk plant. ” (Register-Call, April 19, 1929)
Photo Courtesy Mt. Tom Images
The El Dorado Trilogy is a story framed in historical events. It is a story easy to tell.
A 1979 proposal to mine gravel in Colorado’s Front Range prompted the story. Highlight the region’s past, I reasoned, and our 20th century inhabitants will protect it.
I gave the story to…
~ a Frenchman who stayed too long at a dance in the Pennsylvania hill country,
~ a fur trapper who hired on with a Mormon preacher outbound for the Willamette,
~ the preacher’s intended bride. Beautiful, of course.
I gave them Independence, Missouri. And the Oregon Trail as far as Fort Laramie. At the fort I separated them and headed south down the Taos Trail. Those left behind at the fort I whisked west, out of the way. So far, so good.
Alas, coming face to face with the mountains did nothing to inspire my runaways. Forget sterling descriptions. Mountains to them were nothing more than wheel locks. It was at this point that I realized my story no longer belonged to me. It belonged to history already written, to characters who did whatever it took to survive. Unlike the novelist, there was nothing for me to invent.
Clutching at recorded fact, jumping from one hypothesis to the next, I had but to hold on.
My friends came to a river, and I researched the crossings. That dirty old Platte, I discovered, is full of tricks. The Colorado River due east of the canyon lands has only one good crossing. The Indians knew where it was. The Mormons used Indian guides, as did my friends.
It’s all there in the history books. All I had to do was to search…and search…and search.
Poe’s Eldorado suggested the trilogy’s titles. Emigrant diaries bewail bare mountains in the moonlight, but it is Poe’s rhetoric that best frames the treeless expanses.
Poe’s “valley of the shadow” I am sure, is the western foot of the Wasatch Range. And the route our gallant knight must ride boldly? the emigrant trail south from Salt Lake City to Cedar City. Wallace Stegner wrote of that deadly trace. Of Brigham’s betrayal, of the tables loaded with food that wouldn’t be shared, of the brave souls who came after dark in unlighted wagons bringing potatoes to the starving Fancher party.
Mormon soldiers shot the women and older children in the massacre in the mountain meadows. Pawnee braves were promised emigrant horses to do the dirty deed. Instead, they decorated their horses with the emigrant goods and rode off.
I used the Pawnees' words, recorded in interviews conducted by the American Army, to write of that massacre. I could not bring myself to write of it through the victims’ eyes, nor those of the Mormon men.
It is here that yesterday’s events foreshadow today’s. Brigham saw the Pawnee refusal to kill the women and children as betrayal. And swore vengeance. Today the Pawnee remain the poorest of the native tribes.
The third novel brought my characters home, whining about the wind and the dry, home with their backs to the mountains where I live. My Cheyenne warrior counted coup on his grandson’s enemies here, right in the heart of the gravel pit proposed a century later. My Union soldier, now an old man, hauled the kid down Indian Gulch and put him to bed in a rock and mud cabin at the foot of North Table Mountain.
And by the way, a blind fiddler did indeed pay for his meal in the Guy House with music. Just as Loveland did indeed build his railroad into the mines. And there really was a festival on Argentine Street in Georgetown with lanterns swaying in the pines.
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Editor’s note: The gravel-pit fight which precipitated my narratives was settled in favor of the opponents in 1983. The trilogy was completed in 2006.
