Stage & Freight Lines

Ninety Four Winters So Far

January, 1911. Five years ago they were teenagers in Torsby, Sweden, oblivious to the sweeping changes that history and hope would bring to their lives.   Now they’re in a mountain valley halfway around the world from their Scandinavian homeland, marveling at the tiny bundle of flesh and spirit who has just joined their family. It’s the coldest week of the year in one of the coldest spots in America, but there’s a fire crackling in the woodstove, and their hearts are warm with love for each other and their firstborn child.   For the next few days, a parade of fellow Swedes stop by to pay their respects to the newest resident of the town of Fraser: Elsie Josephine Goranson.

February, 1918. It’s barely dawn, and a blizzard is howling across the valley, piling snow against the sturdy wooden house. George Goranson puts on his boots and woolen overcoat and trudges towards the barn. There are cows to milk and horses to feed. There are no days off. Meanwhile, in the house, 7-year old Elsie stokes the perpetual fire in the cook stove, while her mother grinds the beans for a second pot of strong coffee. Later they will make sour cream cookies.   Her younger brother Hill is sick in bed with influenza. He will survive. Many others will not.

March, 1925. The logging camps are humming, the Moffat Tunnel is under construction, and the valley is brimming with workers and their hard earned pay. Fraser merchants and boarding houses are doing a brisk business, as are the local bootleggers. Elsie is waiting tables at the “Victory Café”, named for its proximity to the new coast-to-coast “Victory Highway” that passes through town, and each morning she serves breakfast to the nice looking (if scantily clad) girls from the corner house of ill repute. Soon the local vigilante committee will force these ladies of the night to leave town, but for now it’s business as usual, and Fraser is hopping.   In fact, “Russell’s Riot Squad” is playing at a dance tonight at the Thomas Hotel.

April, 1927. Sleigh bells jangle as a team of horses pulls four young couples down valley to a dance in Tabernash, the most happening town in the county. The roundhouse is there, as are the wages of engineers and brakemen who guide the trains over Rollins Pass. There is even a movie house, where Elsie saw her first moving picture, “Jackie Coogan”. As the sleigh glides across the moonlit snow, Elsie feels a mix of excitement and nervousness. This is her first date with Chuck Clayton, a hardworking man from Oklahoma. Chuck is handsome as he steals glances through the cold night air, but her Dad doesn’t approve of his drinking and gambling. Other dates will follow: motor trips in a Model A Roadster to Garden of the Gods, picnics in Rocky Mountain National Park, and plenty of dancing. “I’ll never marry you,” she tells him everyday. “Yes you will,” he insists.

May, 1933. One child underfoot and another in the belly, and Elsie Clayton is tired. Chuck bought a house for 20 dollars and used the lumber to build a hamburger stand (soon café and bar) right along the newly paved Highway 40, the main route from Denver to San Francisco. For the next 38 years, their lives will be a blur of ham and eggs, New Year’s Eve parties, and a long medley of songs on the jukebox. The school bus will stop there, as will the “Steamboat Stagecoach” bus line, and three generations of folks looking for a home cooked meal or glass of beer. There will be marathon cribbage games, war stories, and “Friday Night Fights” watched live on the first television in town. Despite the booze and boxing, Clayton’s Café and Bar will be known as a family establishment, especially compared to the “Fraser Bar”, a.k.a. the “Bloody Bucket”, where a love triangle will one day lead to murder.

June, 1945. It’s 4:30 a.m. Elsie tiptoes downstairs and into the café. She brews coffee, warms up the grill, then sits and enjoys a rare moment of relaxation before her workday begins. In the distance, a steam locomotive blows its whistle as it chugs towards town. Before her life is over, nearly a half million trains will pass through Fraser, an endless stream of rumbling horsepower that conjures up different images as the years pass by: trains bringing home soldiers from the Great War; trains loading up ranchers’ fattened cattle in the fall; trains delivering newspapers and mail; trains colliding head on in the Fraser flats; a train’s whistle frantically blowing to alert sleeping townspeople to a midnight fire; streamlined diesel trains ushering in a new era, and countless coal trains, hauling the carbon wealth of Western Colorado to the factories and power plants of far off cities.

July, 1950. Summer’s here, and all are invited to the town picnic down by the Fraser River. Aging Swedish bachelors will be there, sipping steel cans of Coors and swapping stories of crosscut saws and the rowdy “Lapland” logging camps up St. Louis Creek. Young men will dance with young women. Young men will start fistfights with other young men. Navajo railroad workers will perform a rain dance. Children will play Audie Murphy in the riverside willows and drink Coca Cola from thick glass bottles. Meanwhile, the deluxe brick barbecue will sizzle as Elsie spreads mayonnaise on buns and Chuck flips burgers and jokes with friends.

August, 1953. President Dwight D. Eisenhower is coming to town to fish and relax. “We come Ike” banners wave in the breeze as the motorcade turns off Highway 40 and onto the dusty gravel of Main Street. Cheers erupt and flashbulbs pop as a smiling Ike emerges from his limo and waves to the crowd of 300. It is the biggest day in Fraser history, but Elsie sees none of it, for even as her husband, the Mayor of Fraser, is welcoming the leader of the free world to town, she’s in the cafe tending to the crush of reporters and tourists who’ve come to see an American hero.   Tomorrow, after the excitement dies down, she’ll personally deliver two of her homemade pies to the President, who will rave about the perfect crust.

September, 1971. Retired. Chuck and Elsie sit on the porch of their new home on the edge of town, watching cows graze just beyond the fence, and taking in the unobstructed view of Byers Peak. Labor Day has come and gone, and now town is peaceful, the highway quiet. Freed from the busy schedule she’s kept for decades, Elsie will soon embark on a reading frenzy and will begin to keep a modest journal of the days’ events: A Grandchild born, an illness in the family, an exceptionally cold morning. Chuck busies himself planting trees, tending a garden, and mowing his spacious lawn. Tomorrow they will pack a picnic lunch and drive the Denver Water Board roads in search of raspberry bushes.

October, 1978. Today is Chuck and Elsie’s 50th wedding anniversary. It’s a perfect day, sunny and warm, Indian summer if there ever was such a thing. The mountains shimmer beneath a blanket of fresh snow. Hay meadows glow golden beneath the cloudless sky. Family and friends gather in the yard for photos before heading to the Crooked Creek Saloon, formerly Clayton’s Cafe and Bar, for a long afternoon of celebration and reminiscing.

November, 1999. After 71 years of marriage, Chuck has passed on, and Elsie is suddenly alone. She sits at her dining room table, peering out the frost fringed window at the town she was born in, the town she has lived in her whole life. The ridge she once sledded down is covered with condominiums. The willowed wetland where her brother trapped muskrats has become a large parking lot. Her father’s horse pasture is now a shopping center. Everything has changed, yet memories remain, taking on a life of their own. Horses still pull wagonloads of hay up the highway. Loggers come in from the woods every Saturday night for revelry and roulette. A young couple poses for a photo in front of their new cafe. A sharp axe splits a chunk of pine. Life goes on.

December, 2004. Christmas Eve. There is plenty of food, including the homemade potato sausage that’s been served at every family Christmas for centuries, and plenty of gifts stacked beneath the brightly lit tree. Elsie sits at the head of the table, quietly marveling at this clan she has wrought. Her surviving children are here, as are her grandchildren, some of who have grandchildren of their own. Five generations of family pour gravy on potatoes and crack jokes. As she looks at their faces, she remembers her own parents, her grandparents, and her husband. Everyone is here.   In a few minutes, in a ritual as old as Elsie can remember, her great-great grandkids will hand out presents, and the house will resound with laughter.

Winner of the “One Grand Essay” contest 2005

Religion

Topic: Community Life

Religion

Article contributed by Betty Jo Woods

The first known white settlers came to Grand County about 1874 but there were no established churches for many years. The area even lacked circuit riders and camp meetings so typical of many other parts of the West.

The first building used exclusively for a church was probably an Episcopal church in Grand Lake, erected in 1896, but used sporadically during summers only. An Arapahoe Indian who was an Episcopal priest held occasional services in that town.

The First Congregational Church of Hot Sulphur Springs was dedicated in 1904 and other churches were also established about the same time in Kremmling and Fraser.

Sunday School activities along with special holiday services and women’s activities seemed to be what provided continuity to worship efforts. Curiously, at one time a local newspaper carried weekly Sunday School lessons.

A Greek Orthodox church was built in Hot Sulphur Springs for the many of that faith who visit there. A major growth spurt developed during the last quarter of the 1900’s when older buildings became overcrowded and residents, long-term and recent, decided to commit time and money to new church buildings. In 2004, 28 churches were listed in the telephone directory.

Sources:
R.C. Black, Island in the Rockies. Pruett Publishing Company, 1969
Grand County Historical Association, Volume XV, Old Time Religion Early Churches, Grand County. Egan Printing Company, 2000

Moffat Road

Topic: Railroads

Moffat Road

"I shall never forget it as long as I live. Nor do I ever expect to experience anything comparable to it again. Civilization had found its way across the mountains into Middle Park," reflected Mrs. Josephine Button in 1955 on her 91^st birthday, as she recalled seeing smoke from the first Denver Northwestern and Pacific work-train on Rollins Pass, high above the Fraser Valley and Middle Park. Once those rails made it over the Continental Divide all the way to Hot Sulphur Springs, "changes came thick and fast." Many men, many dollars, many routes and many dreams tried to bring a railroad over the Continental Divide into Northwest Colorado, and the "Hill Route" over Rollins Pass that finally accomplished it a century ago has retained its allure ever since.

The Moffat Railroad built a cafeteria, telegraph station, living quarters for Moffat's "Hill Men" (as the railroad crews up there were known) and a fine hotel - all collectively called Corona Station. Soot-filled snow sheds protected over a mile of this windblown section of track. And where today silence is the most powerful sense, colorful locomotives pulled passenger and freight cars, filling the rare atmosphere with black smoke and mechanical clatter.

Decades of men's dreams lay behind the once massive snow shed that cut the bitter winds from the north and west, behind that fine hotel that offered some of the most spectacular scenery in America, behind the hopeful Town of Arrow nestled below tree-line ten or twelve miles west of Rollins Pass, and behind that first work-train that Josephine Button watched from her hay ranch along the Cottonwood Pass Wagon Road to Hot Sulphur Springs. Competent, often powerful, men in the 1860's through the 1890's filed surveys, graded road beds, and even began drilling before being stopped by severe storms that foiled the best laid plans or their inability to fund the ambitious projects.

Dreams to penetrate the high mountains along the Divide in central Colorado began when the Front Range was flooded with miners during the Gold Rush of 1859. Even before Colorado became a territory in 1861, Golden City, just west of Denver along Clear Creek, recognized its potential as a gateway to the rich mineral resources of mountain towns like Central City, Black Hawk, and Georgetown. Golden City's ambitions went beyond becoming a mountain transportation hub, believing that with the right incentives, enthusiasms, and leadership, its location supported a future as a national commerce center.

Golden City certainly had men of vision, ambition, and wealth among its ranks. William Loveland and George Vest, both young and feverishly ambitious to see Golden City reach its potential, vigorously pursued their dreams for a powerful commercial center in Golden City. From Missouri River towns like Leavenworth in Eastern Kansas, leading town founders also recognized the benefits of linking their water and rail routes to the east with the resources of the west. Finally, as if destiny had demanded it, Edward L. Berthoud, a young civil engineer and surveyor with energy and ability, arrived in Golden City from Leavenworth in April of 1860 to unite the similar passions of leading citizens from both locations.

From 1861 until 1866, Berthoud, Loveland and Vest focused on bringing a direct transcontinental railroad route through Golden City. First, Edward Berthoud, along with Jim Bridger and a capable young cartographer named Redwood Fisher, blazed a trail across Berthoud Pass through Middle Park all the way to Salt Lake City. Returning to Golden City on May 28, 1861, Berthoud reported "a good wagon road could be ?quickly' built" from Denver to Salt Lake City over Berthoud Pass for about $100,000.00. According to the local hyperbole, a railroad would surely follow.

In spite of considerable enthusiasm, disappointment plagued early efforts to put a rail line over the mountains in Colorado Territory. In 1862, Territorial Governor John Evans sent the Surveyor General for Colorado and Territories along Berthoud's route and others to confirm or deny the potential of a railroad line. About the same time, the Union Pacific Railroad Company sent an independent reconnaissance to examine potential routes over the divide that included Berthoud and Boulder Passes (Boulder Pass became Rollins Pass in the early 1870's, when John Quincy Adams Rollins built a toll road over it, and then Corona Pass when the Railroad crossed it). Surveyor General Case and the UP agreed that neither route offered much hope for a standard gauge railroad. The dream of a transcontinental line over the Continental Divide through central Colorado seemed to die with the UP surveyor's words, "I learned enough to satisfy myself that no railroad would - at least in our day - cross the mountains south of the Cache la Poudre..."

Multiple failed attempts to bring a rail line over the Divide through Middle Park during the following decades strengthened the UP's "death sentence." Against the odds, Berthoud and Loveland continued to solicit support for a railroad west over or through the Continental Divide, using improved surveys and maps to support their requests. In the 1880's, survey crews from a variety of railway incorporations were scattered over the high country on or near Rollins Pass. Over Berthoud, Rollins and other passes, they marked potential railroad lines with their wooden stakes. It was during this stretch of strenuous surveying activity that David Moffat, a highly successful Denver capitalist, got involved with an unsuccessful effort to bring through the mountains instead of over the top.

In the early 1880's, Mr. Moffat invested in the Denver, Utah and Pacific Railroad, which intended to tunnel through the mountains near Rollins Pass. Like the other efforts, though, the Denver, Utah and Pacific vanished in a few short years. Unlike many other lines that accomplished little more than surveys and maps, the DU&PRR completed significant grading and began tunneling before reaching the "end of its resources."

Money, power and success supported Moffat's dream to put Denver on a direct transcontinental railroad line. Doctor Robert C. Black, III, wrote that David Moffat's failed efforts in the early 1880's converted him to the idea that Denver needed to be on a direct transcontinental rail line. Moffat considered the route over Rollins Pass valuable enough to have surveying and grading crews working on it throughout the winter in 1902. The Denver Rocky Mountain News claimed that Moffat's route through Northwestern Colorado included "the largest strip of fertile land as yet undeveloped in the United States..." With his Denver, Northwestern and Pacific Railroad, David Moffat planned to make good his intentions to put Denver on direct transcontinental railroad line.

Moffat's original plan called for the "Hill Route" over Corona Pass ? the name changed from Rollins Pass in honor of Corona Station at the top ? to last for only a few short years. While the "temporary" route over the top generated resources by extracting the resources of Northwestern Colorado, a tunnel was to be bored through the Continental Divide. Even the wealth and power of Moffat, though, failed to adequately finance the tunnel before he died in 1911. The temporary line, therefore, lasted for nearly of a quarter century, from 1904 until 1928.

Its obstacles proved as enormous as the mountains it crossed. Work crews had to cease operations because of snow for most of April in 1920. The road was closed from late January until May in 1921. In December of 1924, engine number 210 busted "a main reservoir pipe," causing the train to fly down the hill out of control until it jumped the tracks and crashed into the valley below. Clearly, the Denver and Salt Lake Railroad, which took over Moffat's DNW&P after his death, needed a tunnel to replace the expensive effort over the "Devil's Backbone."

As Denver and Salt Lake Locomotive Number 120 came through the tunnel in early 1928, it represented the culmination of a massive undertaking through wet, unstable rocks which required considerable engineering ingenuity and caused six deaths in a 1926 cave-in. It also took an enormous amount of coordination and effort to secure the necessary funding. Through local bond issues, private investors and other means, the project was completed. And through a connection at Dotsero, a railroad station less than 30 minutes west of Vail on I-70, freight and passengers could make a direct Pacific connection from Denver. Posthumously, David Moffat's dream became a reality.

For significant periods of time since the trains stopped operations over Rollins Pass in the late 1920's with the opening of the Moffat Tunnel, on-road vehicles crept along its relatively easy grades and wide curves from Rollinsville on the east slope to Winter Park on the west side of the Divide. Like now, the road ran through an area attractive to backcountry campers and sport enthusiasts. On September 1, 1956, local officials and private citizens met on Rollins Pass to celebrate a "joint state-federal-county project to convert the old D. & S. L. railroad right of way over Corona Pass into an access road for sportsmen." According to the Denver Post, the game and fish department's construction division reconstructed the road during the summer of 1955 for about $20,000. The following year, the road became a scenic route over the Continental Divide for family cars and jeep caravans alike. And after it was built, or at least reconstructed, they did come. Intrepid tourists into Middle Park.

Spider House Tragedy

Topic: True Crime

Spider House Tragedy

Nestled on a quiet lane in Old Grand Lake City sits the intricately crafted home of Warren C. and Mary O’Brien Gregg, known today as the Spider House – a testament to a remarkable woodcraftsman and his tormented wife.

Warren (Watt to his friends) was a dreamer and in the 1870s he left his first wife and a young son in Wisconsin and headed for the Colorado Territory seeking his fortune in the mines of Gilpin County. Upon returning to Wisconsin his first wife died of fever, leaving Warren a widower with a small son. Holding tight to his dreams of the west, Warren eventually ended up in his native Indiana where he met and married 20 year-old Mary O’Brien, in 1884. By 1888 Warren packed his new family into a prairie schooner and headed west. Like so many other pioneer women before her, Mary bore a child along the trail, a second son whose short life would send Mary down a dark and tortured path.

The family arrived in Middle Park late in the summer of 1888, built a small homestead on the eastern slope of the Stillwater drainage and the newborn died shortly thereafter. Though the years would bring more children, Mary would never quite recover from the loss of her second son. They continued to scratch out a living in this harsh and isolated land, where winters were long and supplies were meager.

Warren spent much of his time searching for game and exploring this new country. The Gregg’s moved numerous times, finally purchasing a plot of land from Old Judge Wescott on the west side of the lake. Warren built his family an admirable house, with intricate detail and spider-like webs of wooden elements. Despite the warmth and comfort of this new home, and the close proximity of neighbors, Mary’s depression deepened.

Then on a sunny Sunday in 1904, while Warren was working in his woodshop and oldest son Lloyd was having Sunday dinner at Judge Westcott’s, Mary took a gun to her four remaining children and then turned the weapon on herself. The children died instantly while Mary lingered on for four days. The five victims of this tragedy, one girl, three boys and Mary herself are buried together in one grave in the Grand Lake Cemetery.

Warren lived in the Spider House for another 29 years. With his son Lloyd, he continued building homes and stone fireplaces. He succumbed to heart failure in 1933. Mary O’Brien Gregg finally found peace in the quiet grace of the little town cemetery surrounded by her children. Almost a century later, as the tall pines whisper their mournful winter song, the Spider House still sits nestled on that quiet little lane.

Nathaniel "Nathan" Shore

Topic: Biographies

Nathaniel "Nathan" Shore

Nathaniel "Nathan" Shore was born in Cottonwood Harbor Canada in 1856. When he was about 16 years old he had visited and then worked as a freighter hauling groceries to different towns in western Colorado. He saved enough money to purchase his own wagons and 2 yoke of oxen for each wagon to continue freighting.

Nathan became famous as a man who carried his Bible in one hand and a gun in the other. Nathan returned to visit his family and met Sarah Jones in Springfield Missouri. They were married in 1885. Their trip to Colorado and the Williams Fork was undertaken with Sarah driving a team of horses pulling a covered wagon and Nathan herding their few cows.

The cows helped start a homestead ranch east of the Williams Fork river. In 1907 they sold the homestead ranch to the Curtis Family. They had purchased the Anders Anderson ranch close to Williams Peak and the Joseph Jackson ranch on Bull Run Creek.

They lived on the Anderson place until the forest fire that burned along the Williams Fork Mountains. Nathan told Sarah to hitch the horses to the hay rack, load the furniture that it would carry, take all the children and move to the Jackson place while he helped fight the fire. Nathan's team of horses were stolen so he broke 3 heifers and a steer to work in the yoke.

He still did a lot of freighting to make a living for his family. He freighted to Hot Sulphur Springs and also from Georgetown. He returned home to the ranch about once a week. He sold butter, that Sarah had made and hung down in the well to keep cold, in the mining town of Breckenridge.

Nathan Shore died June, 1928 when his pickup stalled on a railroad crossing in Utah. He was trying to find the trouble under the hood and didn't hear the train as it whistled and whistled. He was headed for a trip to Hawaii.

Sheriff

Topic:

Sheriff

Article contributed by Abbott Fay

One of the oldest brands in Colorado still in use by the same family is the Bar Double S brand of the Sheriff Ranch near Hot Sulphur Springs. The current owners of the ranch are John Brice and Ida Sheriff.

In 1863, Matthew Sheriff of Keithsburg, Illinois came to Colorado to search for gold in the California Gulch, near where Leadville would be established. Mathew was dismayed by the gray mineral which consistently clogged the gold sluice, and gave up on his dreams of instant wealth to return to Illinois. Many other miners also gave up mining for this reason, never realizing that the gray mineral was carbonite of lead, which was rich in silver. Mathew died in 1863 at the age of 40, leaving behind his wife Marietta and their 3 surviving sons, Burt, Glenn and Mark.

In 1878, Marietta was inspired to return to Colorado in search of security and stability for her family. She spent some time in Leadville running a boarding house. Her sister was the wife of William Byers who was developing the Hot Sulphur Springs area so Marietta moved to the area to settle with her sons. In 1882 the family homesteaded three ranches of 160 acres each, proving them up and added a preemption right to another 160 acres.

Bert later moved to Denver and established a livery stable and Mark and his mother moved into Hot Sulphur Springs, while Glenn continued to work the ranch. Glenn married Alice Cleora Smith in 1886 and they had two surviving sons, Brice and Glenn Jr. Glenn Jr. was only 6 weeks old when his father died at the age of 33 of "brain fever" or diphtheria. Alice took the children back to her family in Iowa to raise them, but the boys returned to their Colorado ranch in 1910.

Brice, who suffered from a back injury as a child, bought an abstract business in Hot Sulphur Springs and lived there with his mother for the rest of their lives. Glenn Jr. continued to expand and develop the ranch and married Adaline Morgan in 1923. They had four children; Nona, John, Robert and Catherine. Glenn Jr. served Grand County as a Commissioner for 24 years and also as the County Assessor for 4 years.

Glenn Jr.s, son John, took over the ranch and married Ida Marte in 1949. Ida's family had homesteaded their own ranch near Cottonwood Pass. They have two children and continue to work the ranch to this day.

Source:

Interview with John and Ida Sheriff, at the Sheriff Ranch, July 14, 2004

Transportation

Topic:

Transportation

How did people travel to Grand County? How did they get around? Click on the drop-down menus and take a little trip through history...

Ute Bill Thompson

Topic: Biographies

Ute Bill Thompson

William Jefferson (Wm./W.J./Bill) Thompson was born on March 26, 1849 in Aurora Township, Preston County, Virginia (1863-West Virginia). The 8th child of 9 children of Wm. & Mary Anne (Wotring) Thompson. His father was a shoemaker at the Wotring Tannery and died in 1853. Mrs. Thompson left Preston County in September 1859 with her children on a covered wagon for Oregon. They arrived at St. Charles, Iowa around Christmas, settling at New Virginia, joining other relatives.

Wm. may have been taken captive by Native Americans prior to entering Colorado Territory. Via ox cart he came to Central City to start mining in 1865. He ventured into adjacent Middle Park, seeking gold in the Troublesome Valley, supplied with 1 ton of flour. He spent four years as a postal carrier from Hot Sulphur Springs to Steamboat Springs, using the Gore Pass route.

Once, the Ute Indians saw him baking biscuits and they enjoyed the “beescuts” until the flour ran out. An altercation left Wm. severely beaten. He made his way to Georgetown and the miners denied him entry, thinking he was a crazy man. One kind miner gave Wm. canvas for clothing, and took him to Idaho Springs. He recovered and was employed as a shoemaker.

Wm. re-entered Middle Park, built a hunting cabin on Muddy Creek ready for the 1867 winter. Chief Yarmonite led 40 Ute men, women and children to Wm’s cabin explaining to him that the Gore Range was covered with snow, and they were in need of food. This time Wm. refused. A rifle match was agreed upon with the loser put to death. Wm. threw his sombrero to the ground as his hair fell to his shoulders. A cry of the Ute went up as they recognized Wm. from the Troublesome. Sub-chief Piah told Wm. they could not fight a Ute brother, and braided Wm’s hair and applied face paint as they were at war with the Arapahoes. A hunt for bison began. Shooting was heard with the thought the Arapahoes arrived. Len Pollard & Sandy Mellon were chasing buffalo, which Wm. shot and killed. Len & Sandy confronted the supposed Ute with Len asking, “Where did you get Bill Thompson’s Winchester rifle?” Wm. played along until Sandy aimed his rifle on Wm. who wisely said, “Don’t over reach yourself, Sandy.” Sandy demanded, “Who in the hell are you!” Bill laughed and told them he was Bill Thompson. The sobriquet of “Ute Bill” was given. Wm. preferred his nick name over his legal name.

Ute Bill carried on as a mountaineer. Hunting and trapping, taking wild game to the Georgetown & Denver markets selling the meat, until laws prohibited the practice. A new career began of driving stagecoaches and freight wagons for the Colorado Stage Company on the Georgetown, Empire & Middle Park Wagon Road, over Berthoud Pass to Grand Lake, Hot Sulphur Springs, Gore Pass, and occasionally Steamboat Springs. One day on Cottonwood Pass, Ute Bill stopped and hiked over a ridge to find 400 Ute tipis on a meadow, imaging this could be a ranch. He homesteaded acreage, bought the home ranch from Al Honscome, and through marriage owned 4000 acres.

The T Lazy S brand was patented. The Thompson Ranch was the 1st in Middle Park allowed to receive water from the Grand (Colorado) River for irrigation. Ute Bill Creek and Ute Bill Ditch 1 & 2 were also patented. Middle Park became Grand County of February 2, 1874. Ute Bill was on the first jury, appointed Road Supervisor, and a delegate to the state Democrat Party Convention. In 1879 he owned Thompson’s Billiard Hall, bought a store from John Kinsey and expanded it into Ute Bill’s Saloon in Hot Sulphur Springs. He also had a game park of tame antelope, deer, and elk.

The “Texas Charley” incident of December 5, 1884 began at the saloon when Texas Charley forced Ute Bill to hand over his prized Winchester rifle. His future father in law played a role in the coroner’s inquest. January 30, 1889 The Middle Park Times listed the sale of the saloon to Billy Pharo with the quote of, “We don’t reach Denver yet but were getting there you see.” An ad in Hot Sulphur Springs complemented the sale.

On December 25, 1893 Ute Bill Tompson was united in marriage to Mabel Smith. The first recorded marriage in the Hot Sulphur Springs Congregational Community Church. Mabel was the eldest daughter of Preston Henry & the late Mary Smith. Ute Bill & Mabel had 6 children Fred Charles, William Preston, John Henry, Otto Woodring, Marion Loman, and Mary Ellen. W.J. Thompson advertised in the Grand County News, January 8, 1904 Sulphur Springs and Kremmling Stage Carries Mail & Express Stage Fare, One Way $1.50 Round Trip, $2.75 In 1903-1904 The Denver, Northwestern & Pacific Railroad (D.N.P.R.R.) was buying ranchers land. Ute Bill refused to sell his for $500 and lost on appeal in District Court receiving $300. However, it was “matter of principal” that he won on, as E.A. Meredith the railroad surveyor diverted the rail bed to be placed on the other side of the Colorado River below the cliffs.

As the excursion trains were passing by the Thompson Ranch on their way to the Railroad Days celebration in Hot Sulphur Springs on September 15, 1905 Ute Bill danced with joy knowing that the “Iron Horse” was NOT allowed to disturb the sacred tipi grounds of the Utes! Ute Bill forgot his grievances and presided over a vast fish fry and barbeque of elk on July 4, 1906. The last cattle trail drive out of Grand County was conducted by 2 aged pioneers, Sam Martin of Muddy Creek, and Ute Bill in 1923. Another matter of principal to avoid paying railroad costs, but of great sentimental value of all the past cattle trail drives. Ute Bill & Mabel both entered St. Luke’s Hospital in Denver for surgery in late February 1926. Ute Bill’s first surgery went well, the second did not. Mabel was not able to be with him as she was recovering from her own.

Many Middle Park pioneers visited them to wish them well. Old friend Charles Nines Sr. who retired in Denver from Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota a Sioux language interpreter and Trading Post owner was with Ute Bill when he passed away on March 19, 1926, one week shy of his 77th birthday. William Jefferson “Ute Bill” Thompson is buried in the Hot Sulphur Springs Cemetery off of Cottonwood Pass, Looking at Elk Mountain and the original homestead.

This article is dedicated to Lorna Marie Gowen; September 6, 1954-April 14, 2006

Grand Lake's First Fireboat

Topic: Volunteer Fire Departments

Grand Lake's First Fireboat

During the summer of 1960, Jeff E. Fuller and Don Drake formed Mountain Services Inc. to offer Grand Lake shore owners protection by patrolling the properties. In May of 1961, Don Drake promoted the idea of a fireboat and with donations, a 1960 18 foot Buehler Turbocraft Jet 56 was purchased and equipped to fight fires. Don tested the water jet and found that it would pump enough water to reach the fourth story of the five story-14 bedroom Oscar Malo home.

Ironically, on September 10, 1961, that very home caught on fire. The home was completely engulfed by the time Don got the fireboat to the location but, with the help of Elmer Badger and Jerry Gruber, they concentrated on the 4-slip boathouse. The heat was so intense it melted the plastic trim on the fireboat but the boathouse was saved and still stands today.

Milton "Green" McQueary

Topic: Biographies

Milton "Green" McQueary

"One Grand Essay" contest 2005

It is a strange feeling one gets as you realize you are breathing your last breaths. You start to remember some of the wonderful and not so wonderful things that have happened in your life. As I am lying on this cold ground in Phoenix, Arizona instead of my beloved land in Dexter Colorado, I start to think of my family. I miss my sweet and beautiful wife Anna whom I have had to live without for so long and realize suddenly that is has been 20 lonely years. We had an interesting life together: she and I and our 10 children.

I remember many years ago before I met Anna, when I was only 11 on the day of April 27, 1873. My family had decided to head out of Missouri with our covered wagon. It was pulled by mules and oxen and filled with all of our precious possessions, along with boxes of shot and black powder for muzzle-loading guns. Potatoes, flour, beans, coffee, salt pork, fish hooks, and of course my dog Ranger accompanied us. My father and mother, Walker Barron and Mary, my younger brothers John H., Walker Emery and my little sister Maud who was only 3 at the time were all ready as we started out early in the morning with my Uncle James Allen "Polk" and his family. We traveled until we met up with a train of about 100 other wagons heading west in search of a new home, and possibly some gold.

We had traversed across the country over the plains, streams and mountain ranges from Johnson Country Missouri to Denver, Colorado arriving on June 5^th where we made camp the first night near Sloan's Lake. Then we continued moving west until my father and uncle found work at a sawmill between Golden and Idaho Springs in the town of Beaverbrook.

With the completion of the Berthoud Pass stagecoach road in 1874, my father and some friends went over the Gore Range to explore Middle Park. Then two years later on July 9, 1876, our family moved to Middle Park just two weeks after General Custer's defeat on the Little Bighorn River in Montana.

My father decided to claim squatter's rights by building a one room cabin on the bank of the Grand River near Kremmling a mere two years before we had the Ute Indian scare. After the scare my mother wanted to move to Hot Sulphur Springs where there was and established school and more people. It was there that my father purchased the Springs Hotel renaming it the McQueary House. Shortly after some success with the hotel, my father purchased a home along the Willow Creek near Windy Gap.

I remember the day I had met my love, Anna Rebecca Kemmerer. She was so sweet that we married quickly on May 6 1884. In February of 1885 my first son Frederick was born followed by Clayton Henry two year later, and Harry Senator two years after that. However, Harry was not to be with us long and we lost him in August of 1892. Nevertheless, life goes on we were blessed with another son Ralph Grant who was born in August of 1892, followed by Myrtle Grace in 1894 and Chester William in 1896.

With our ever-increasing family, Anna and I purchased the 160-acre Frank Adam's homestead adjoining my father's home on Willow Creek where we would have room to grow and my children could enjoy the company of my parents. Just before Chester was born, I applied for a coveted appointment as postmaster and wanted to locate a post office on Gold Run, naming it the "Willows Post Office." On September 25, 1896, the US postal department did let us open a post but decided but renamed it Dexter instead. We had expected a mining boom along the Willow Creek and thought a town would be built around our post office and homes.

I remember when Ike Alden had found gold along the creek and sent it down to Georgetown to have it assayed. He found out that it was estimated to be worth about $1,700.00 to the ton, which is where the name Gold Run came from. But our peaceful valley did not prosper as we had hoped and the town was never built so we turned to ranching instead. We had four more children Gertrude Mildred, Robert Melvin, Mary Frances and lastly Ada Rebecca who was born in 1904.

During those years in my blacksmiths shop, I made wagons, repaired some of my neighbor's equipment and farm machinery. We had thought that a stagecoach line would bring the mail on a regular basis but it was really just a freight line. Anyone who wanted to could ride it and some of the passengers who used it were welcome to stay for a meal at the Dexter Ranch. There were two cabins across the road, which used for guest or tourists, mostly fisherman, but a place for anyone to sleep.

In 1905, the first train reached Granby and many of the ranchers of North Park would travel to the depot via Dexter and stay, purchase hay and join us for some meals. I was somewhat handy with carpentry and had built a large round table, which was a little unusual but very practical. I had fashioned it with pegs around a lazy Susan. I remember now at supper one time a guest of ours was helping himself to some food from a dish when someone asked him what the matter was. He was holding the dish in his hand and looked befuddled. He answered, "I forgot where I got this," We all laughed at his little dilemma. It makes me smile now thinking how wonderful the food was and how lovely my Anna looked when she laughed.

We built a schoolhouse made out of log in Dexter. Using our horses we created a log skid trail, dragging log after log until we had enough for a 16, or was it 18 by 20 foot building. Years later the children would still climb the skid trail with their skis and ski down during their recess.

Sometimes we would have dances at the schoolhouse and we would push all of the desks back against the wall and play old-time pieces. I liked to play my fiddle with a few of my other friends. Roy Curtis, and Andy Eairheart and sometimes my cousin Dick would call out square dances.

I also remember what a great time everyone would have as they danced when we played at the Grand County Winter Sports Carnival Grand Ball. Although the Carnival was held in Hot Sulphur Springs the last two days of December, we all headed over to participate and watch the skating, tobogganing and skiing. One year my son Robert who was a member of the Commercial Club went to Denver to represent us in the National Ski Association meet there and the following year he went to Steamboat.

As time went, on my daughter, Myrtle Grace met and married Charles Everhart and I had my first granddaughter Violet. I remember that as Violet became older she loved to play in my Blacksmith shop. I told her "If you play with my tools put them back where you got them". She was an obedient child and did as I asked so I never minded her coming in and playing with the bellows. She would get some scrap iron and place it in the fire until it was red-hot and then put it into the tempering barrel. She just loved to hear that sizzling sound. It makes me smile to think about that now as I start to shiver in this darkness and evening begins to approach.

I am struggling to stay awake hoping someone will help me get out of this place as memories of my other granddaughter Gertrude Jane come to my mind. She did not like the name Gertrude Jane because her mothers name was Gertrude Mildred, and everyone called her mother Gertie. She did not want to be called Gertie too; she preferred to be called by her middle name Jane instead. She would tell me what an interesting man I was and that she loved my blue eyes.

My little Jane is 17 years old already. But I guess I won't be celebrating her eighteenth birthday or the birthdays of any of other grandchildren now. I feel myself falling deeper and deeper into darkness and know that my Anna is waiting for me. I see a light now and my blue eyes are starting to tear. As I walk towards the light I see my Anna is holding out her had for me to grasp. How wonderful my life has been and how I have enjoyed my journey. Now it is time for us to go home.

Grand County History Stories

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