Welcome to Eagle County Local History

Welcome to the Eagle County Local History blog: You Can’t Use it if You Don’t Preserve It!  I will be sharing interesting bits of Eagle County history for your edification and enjoyment.  Sign up, stay tuned!

Art is Where You Find It

A picture is worth a thousand words.  Whether or not Napoleon Bonaparte was actually the first person to coin this adage, newspapers certainly took it to heart.  When digging through microfilm of older newspapers, I have always been happy to find great drawings included with stories, adding to the enjoyment of the topic at hand.  Even advertisements in earlier times carried drawings that were entertaining as well as illustrative.  [Remember to click on the images to get a larger view.]

Advertisement in the Eagle Valley Enterprise, January 1898

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,900 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Another Year of Local History

We’re now in that week preceding a new year.  It’s time to make those resolutions.  [Please do remember that one of last year’s resolutions was to label all your photos appropriately; that’s still applicable this year.]  It’s time to visit with family and friends during a time of school vacations.  It’s time to take advantage of those after-holiday sales…

In the Eagle Valley Enterprise, December 29, 1911, we find life in Eagle progressing at a different pace, perhaps, but certainly similar to life in 2011.

 

Broadway in Eagle 1918. The building on the right was built by the First National Bank of Eagle County. The two story half of the building was occupied by general merchandise stores (F. Hugus and Co.; later, the Lewis store); the one story side was the bank.

Ten Mile Mercantile Co.

We find all sorts of interesting things when walking in Eagle County.  Many people are amazed at how much mining equipment is still out there, abandoned, for example.  John Martinez, a resident of Red Cliff, found a metal sign for “The Ten Mile Mercantile Co.” while walking along the railroad tracks some years ago now.

John Martinez in Red Cliff

Lou Clark Layman

I met Lou Layman in 2009.  Born Mary Lou Clark at Derby Mesa in 1933, Lou spent her last years living in Rifle with her dog, Norman.  Not able to get around without difficulty, Lou invited me to her place to look at her photo albums and talk about her parents, both teachers in Eagle County and ranchers at Edwards.  She shared her photos with us digitally, in addition to a history of her parents and some of her poetry.  Lou graduated from the University of Colorado, School of Journalism and was hired by the National Park Service as a writer/editor in 1975.  Writing was her passion and she graciously corrected my captions if I didn’t get something just right.

Lou passed away in October.  She is missed and I am grateful she took the time to share her family’s stories, our local history, in the following photographs.

Lou Clark Layman with County Fair projects: registered bull, Cran-Clay Roland, and registered heifer, Bar-Gay Anne. The Clark ranch house is in the background.

Thank you, Charley Vail

It’s that time of year when those of us on the Western Slope of Colorado take bets about reaching Denver due to weather conditions, accidents and traffic on I-70.  While these considerations are valid, especially given the large number of travelers every day on I-70, the route to Denver was even longer in 1936.  At that time, “…the most popular road from Denver to Grand Junction is through Fairplay, Buena Vista and Leadville,” according to Colorado Highway Engineer Charles D. Vail [Eagle Valley Enterprise June 19, 1936 p.1].   It then continued over Tennessee Pass and through Minturn.

The search to shorten that route and find one less difficult to manage during winter conditions began with Charley Vail.  He had proposed a cutoff that passed through a saddle 1,000 feet lower than Shrine Pass, following Gore Creek down to Minturn.  In 1936, it was called a pipe dream.

Top of Vail Pass looking east toward Summit County with Squaw Peak in the background.

Unidentified but Eye-Catching

The cache of unidentified photos from the Nogal/Ping Hotel continue to attract attention.  We have four albums available to the public and have even had a few people come in and put names to faces and give context to events.  Since these are all local photos, identifying a person in one photograph means that a person has a name should he or she turn up in another.  At this point, some of the faces are beginning to feel like relatives.

Eagle High School Seniors at Redstone on April 29, 1925 for Sneak Day

“Here’s the Church, here’s the steeple…”

Red Cliff, Colorado, has two extant churches, both built over a hundred years ago. Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church on Pine Street above the town continues to hold worship services on Sundays.

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church circa 1940

The building itself has seen many changes since its construction in 1889.

Going, going, gone 1892-2011

Deconstruction of the Nogal-Ping Hotel [built in 1892] at the corner of Capitol St. and Hwy 6 in Eagle is done.  Claude DeGraw took it down, piece by piece.  Some of the pieces will be used elsewhere and some pieces are headed to landfill.

The Nogal Hotel circa 1895. It could accomodate up to 26 boarders.

During this process, Eagle County Historical Society member, Sandy Van Campen, took some great photographs of the building and some of the items found inside.  Thanks to Sandy for this documentation which is shared below.

Caption Challenge

As previously noted, logging  in the 1930s and 1940s in eastern Eagle County was done in rough terrain at a high altitude.  Horses and skids were used to move trimmed logs to the point where tractors could take over. The logs then went to the mills for trimming.  Moving trimmed timbers to the railroad for transport  in steep areas was difficult.  At Peterson Gulch, this was accomplished by a surface tram.  Rails (about .25 the size of railroad rails) carried two cars using cables  on which timbers could be guided from the top to the bottom of the gulch.

Peterson Creek from the Champion Mine

The remains of the Peterson Creek gulch tram are visible in the Beck Family photo above as a line cleared of timber running from the top of the photo to midfield.  The shot was taken from the Champion Mine at Bell’s Camp, across the Eagle River.  Some remnants of mine structures are present in the foreground and left side.  Due to the camera angle, the terminus of the tram and the railroad pickup point are hidden from view.  It does document the terrain in the Eagle River Canyon which can certainly be described as “rough.”  To our knowledge, this was the only Peterson Creek tram photo in the Eagle County Historical Society’s collection.