October 2011 Archives

Dot. Dot. Da-dot-dot-dot! 

Pretend this is Morse code for: "Drop everything right now and come to our Sopris Sun fundraising party tonight, Thursday, November 3, 5-7 p.m. at Dos Gringos Restaurant.

 Nice use of dots, you say? Indeed! Come celebrate our community-based weekly newspaper about life in and around Carbondale with photos and features (such as "Memoirs of a River!") and pertinent political, social, sports and business news by way and grace of that rare breed of dedicated idealists I call "indie newsheads."  

Earliest evidence

Ever since Indians scratched deep (!) messages on patina-covered rock walls all over the West, there has obviously been a committed human need to "get the news out." There's even a couple huge boulders in Utah and Arizona called "Newspaper Rock."  

Some might even call it an itch that can't quite be reached; because, no matter how difficult the efforts,   especially in our pre-tech world, independent newspapers seem to attract people who have one thing in common;  they just never give up scratching out that urge to pass on information, with little, if any, measureable remunerative return on their time investment.   Rare breed indeed!

An Empire's Paper

At our beloved Mt. Sopris Historical Museum treasure-trove, one can still read (just barely) Carbondale's finest journalistic endeavors in Volume 1 of the "Crystal River Empire" newspaper circa 1924.  

 Isn't it nice to still be able to connect the dots, if you will, that 90-some years ago a ladies study group was "delightfully entertained" at the lovely home of Hattie Thompson Holland while across the front page, Carbondale exhorts other neighboring towns to "follow suit" with its first Pioneer Society social club?

While Aspen and Glenwood Springs have had newspapers that have birthed and lived beyond an old person's lifetime in this Valley, there was a big hole in the news-reporting business between the late 1920's and the '70's in Carbondale. The pool of neurotic newsheads was dust.

Basic reason was that during those desperate Depression-era years, most folks were hardput and scrambling for the paying kind of work. Probably no one cared whether this or that society story got told, let alone figuring out how to pay for printing the mostly bad news no one wanted to read anyway.

'Morning, Folks!

However, by the early mid-70s, with a ski-based economy ramping upvalley in Aspen, Carbondale started "waking up," so's to speak.  Business was making booming noises and Carbondale felt the beat. 

Even though Carbondale would get a blurb here and there in the news stalwarts, "The Aspen Times" and "The Glenwood Post" newspapers, there was a desire and need now for a Carbondale community newspaper. One that would focus specifically on Carbondale's issues, people, business, events.

[ITALICS]"Good Morning, Carbondale" [END ITALICS]was the front page headline of Volume 1 Number 1 of "The Roaring Fork Review" in April of 1974 produced by newly -hired editor, Patrick Noel and photographer, Rebecca  (Young) Tucker, both recent grads of CSU where they had worked together on their college newspaper, "The Collegian."  

Turns out Becky--now Young again and Pat still Noel cut their journalistic wisdom teeth with this big break provided by Denver newspaper man, Bob Sweeney, to provide Carbondale some hometown news.

With a year or so of the "The Review" under their belts when it sold, they went on to begin Carbondale's longest-running newspaper; first as the "The Roaring Fork Valley Journal" in 1975 that later became "The Valley Journal" until, as varied stories go, it ran red ink for too long.

I got to visit a bit with Becky who's first words after introductions, were, "I can't adequately tell you enough how much work it was to publish [the paper}."

We laughed long at similarly shared memories of publishing life 'back in the day. Becky confirmed my earlier itchy theory, "We couldn't help ourselves."    

See a Pattern?  

Becky went on to tell about 60 to 70-hour weeks to produce what became a 36-page (!) weekly. In a world of Underwriter manual typewriters. Page layouts by hand. "It had to be done by young people," Becky said, "for 5 years, I never, [BOLD ITALICS]ever{END BOLD ITALICS] slept on a Wednesday night."

Lynn Burton, our Sopris Sun editor remembers those early days of the VJ. "Before long, the Valley Journal became known for its outstanding photography, sometimes quirky coverage of Carbondale and its denizens, and independent attitude."

And don't forget the Valley Journal's famous Mother's Day issues that started in 1984. "I remember because my first son was born and we were one of the ones on the cover," said Becky. "Brenda Buchanan came up with that idea and Patti Barry Levy was the photographer."

While their pay was peanuts minus the nuts, their riches were evident. "The walls of the VJ office were covered in Colorado Press Awards," Becky said. 

Today Becky is in a different but still-related field. She helped with the initial start-up of The Sopris Sun's "indie" effort 3 years ago but has a full-time job and family that has kept her out of the loop on the day-to-day grind since.

 She noted that it is good to have a locally-owned newspaper because, by their nature, corporations can't be sensitive to the individuality of communities.  

One editor's name shows up on a pretty consistent thread as I leaf through random VJ copies at the Museum. Again, that is Pat Noel.  His writing style His long-time co-editor, Becky described him thus, "Pat had an amazing way of dealing with people...Ghandi-like."  

I caught up with Pat at his home in Collbran via phone to talk about his recollections. "I was editor off and on for about 15 years," he anwered of my question.  "The big stories of those days were the Marble Ski Area, the West Divide-Placita Dam and Mid-Continent Mine."

"Old-timers like Mary Ferguson welcomed the new blood," Pat said.  "I enjoyed listening to and sharing their oral histories." Becky said the same, "It was our great good fortune to meet all the old-timers."

After a number of owners' names changed on the masthead; both private and corporate, the VJ was shut down in 2008. The last owner sitting in the proverbial chair when the music stopped was Swift Communications, a Reno, Nevada media corporation that owns nearly every other newspaper in Western Colorado. 

The VJ's demise raised a hue and cry from this community. A new generation of young "indie newsheads" stepped forth, hence, the birth of "The Sopris Sun" 3 years ago.

Beat Goes On

Another scratch-that-itch-aholic is John Colson, who has seen our newspaper history evolve from his "journalistic home" the past 33 years here in the valley. John has worked for a number of Valley papers over those years, including a turn wearing the editor's hat at The VJ a couple times, from '81-85 and then again from 2001-2005.   

"There was the 'Roaring Fork Sunday' for awhile," John said, "headquartered in Basalt.  It was basically a government watchdog. It never made money.  It got bought out by Morris Communication and they killed 'Sunday.'"

Going forward, this oh-so-rare, not-for-profit journalistic service depends heavily on support and backing of its readership, community and advertisers.  As do feature columns like "Memoirs."  We want to stay. The Sun wants to shine and grow in the footsteps of the best newsheads who came before us. Will you help?

If you want to keep local news journalism alive where YOU have a VOICE, we'll see you tonight at Dos Gringos!

What with those phenomenal black-and-white units flashing all around at the National Sheepdog Finals at Strang Ranch and those cutie-pie stuffed lambs, Agnes and Baa popping up here, there and everywhere, no wonder I'd been asked to woolie-up some local sheep stories.

There's one name in Carbondale that is synonymous with Baaaaaa and that is Bair.

 This month, "Memoirs" honors Carbondale sheepherder, Elmer Bair.  My source's lineage curls right back around to my Memoirs story from this July. http://issuu.com/soprissun/docs/sun_063011. Who knew? Not I. Hint: In-Laws, In-laws , In-laws.  

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

I got to visit with Jeri Farnum Alberts, daughter of Laura Bair Farnum Melton, who was daughter of Jeri's grandfather Elmer and grandmother  Ida; who was daughter of now-FaceBook icons, "Black" Bill and Nettie Smith, (July story) who was daughter of notorious and mountain-of-a-man, Jasper Ward.  Whew!

Think it might have been hard for these poor sons-in-laws to stand in the shadow of the ultimate tough guy "in-law" in this lineage?  Elmer Owen Bair, at 4 inches taller than a 5 foot post, never flinched, I bet. A diminutive person, Elmer sure was an extraordinarily accomplished giant in every endeavor of his 103-year life. 

And forget Louis L'Amour stories. Hands down, Elmer Bair is the name that is most associated with telling a colorful Western Slope story.  Unless, as I hear it, you were around to hear Ida's skills! Like Fred and Ginger, I'm told there was many a tale-telling tango put on by these two. "Only Grandma didn't tell the naughty ones!" Jeri said.

                If you don't have his book, go to the library or MSHS museum to read Elmer's fist-thick autobiography, "Elmer Bair's Story, 1899-1987." It is chock-full of real-life western drama and gallows humor from a man whose life had stretched across 3 centuries when he died in 2002. 

Getting along as they "git" along!

While hard in every way, Life was pretty simple for sheepherders and cattlemen alike around here.  Some even did both. Fortunately, Carbondale did not experience as much, if any, of the violent cattle/sheep grazing wars as over further west and south, around Moab in Utah and surrounds. Elmer tells of some hair-raising, neck-stretching confrontations when in that part of the country.   

And even not [BOLD ]SO[END BOLD] long ago, when there were still more of them than us; local herders of sheep and cattle trailed [BOLD ITALICS]thousands [END BOLD ITALICS]of 4-leggeds right through Carbondale and up the Crystal River Valley.

Sometime go stand in front of the Hendricks Ranch subdivision sign on Highway 133 in south Carbondale. Then look at this photo of young Jeri Farnum sitting on "Old Red" and her grandpa, Elmer astride "Paint" just barely fifty years ago.  Somewhere in between, if you still could, without getting shot, that is, you'd be looking at Mt. Sopris from about their same spot.  

Imagine! For a hundred years through what is now senior housing, soccer fields, golf course, grocery store, new, modern high school and a multi-housing culture, tons of meat on-the-hoof have thundered onto train, then truck trailers at Carbondale's stockyards, now Town Hall. (ahhh, no wonder...nah, don't go there with that thought, folks!)

Life in Full Color- sometimes pretty 

...such as when Jeri shared her childhood memories of spending her youth with Grandpa Elmer's sheep. Like when they'd trail 2 or 3 sheep bands, a thousand head per band, to different grazing pastures on the Flat Tops. They'd come down through Cattle Creek up towards our Crystal River hinterlands on the mid-valley corridor adjacent to today's Highway 82.

                Jeri sure remembers her April birthdays. "I got to pull all the new baby lambs. It was a treat," Jeri said. "One time there were quadruplets."  Jeri smiled at that memory.  "And [every year] Grandpa told me my lambs never went to market."

                "That's what Grandpa said!" she reiterated firmly.  Yes, what grandpas say, you must believe.

Then Jeri proceeded to tell me a bit more about the world of sheep, of which I know dip. Except that sheep dip stinks. There were lots of new interesting words like "docking" --not a yacht--and "dingleberries."

In the case of sheep shifting, remember now, we're talking thousands upon thousands and thousands more of those dumb woolies, every season. Was falling asleep counting sheep a real job hazard? Jeri said no.

 "We counted them by the number of all-black or black-faced sheep. One per flock meant so many."

...sometimes not-ugh!

Since I really wanted to know more of the 3-D reality in a day-in-the-life of docking and "dingleberries," Jeri made a little scrunched facial expression that looked like "yuck" to me and she started like this:

"Docking the tails was necessary because of all the wool around the anus and potential for 'fly bloat.' Maggots get inside. We'd just go around and snip their tails off. We didn't bandage them or anything, blood would be squirting all over," she said.

 I gulped and visualized a thousand of them-there "uranusus" jumping all around, red spray everywhere, probably not "quiet-as-a..." either.

 You'd HAVE to be a kid to enjoy this, right? Kinda takes the bloom off the romanticized rosy lambie-pie picture right there, doesn't it? That's what I thought anyway, until I asked Lew Ron Thompson about the "dingleberry" part.

"[With sheep castration], they're so small and you are using both hands to hold and cut so you had to grab'em [pregnant pause]...by your teeth."  His eyes looked straight at me and then shifted away... just a touch.  Sign of a good story-teller. 

" Grab whaaaaatt?" I cried!

TMI!

Aiieee, Lew Ron!  TMI! TOO MUCH INFORMATION! How gullible I am or not, I'm not sure I want to know more. But now that story's told and passed on! I laugh and celebrate a local liquor store quote, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."  Or was it?

 Most of us will NEVER have any idea. Leave it be said, raising sheep--and cattle--makes for burning hot, freezing cold, dripping wet, bone dry, always dirty, forever long, hard labors--was and still is. Same with independent farmers-they just smell better. HA!

It is good to honor these folks who still love what they do and for carrying on this Crystal Valley heritage. This October, let's wish them abundant harvests all.   

Carpe autumn diem!

~Charr

This "Memoirs" column first began with a tag line that says, "Honoring people and places in the Crystal River Valley."   A dear octogenarian friend said, "Charlotte, if that's your goal, you'll never run out of stories about this valley."  Truer words never spoken, Shirley Thomson.

Time DOES fly somewhere.

 Certainly up the Crystal! Fast forward five years.  My first twenty "Memoirs" columns seeded chapters for Volume 1 and are on a few bookshelves here and there.  Another 20 or so columns have been printed in The Sopris Sun and insist on their own soft-back book debut--Volume 2 in 2012.   

Covering more of the belly or bottom lands down the Crystal River into Carbondale, Volume 2's cover jacket has been already been decided.  Chapters are all are lined up under an internet dot com "out there," telling me to get some binding glue because some folks still like to read books in-hand.  Just like this newspaper you are holding.  And due to a recent Marble community center project called "The Marble Hub" located in the Marble City State Bank building, even more fascinating as-yet unheard stories surface nearly every day.  

It's amazing how many generational connections between Crystal, Marble and Redstone to Carbondale to the infinite beyond. Someone smarter than me could probably figure out the comparative square miles of the above and its' population of "relateds."  Kinda reminds me of what Ute elder, Clifford Duncan always says when he comes back to visit his mother's homeland-- "We're all related." 

 The Marble Hub's National Historic locale and coffee popularity draws in folks from all over the world its first couple months so far. Area descendants drop in where they've likely to meet other descendents who just stopped in as well.  And the stories I hear! Stay tuned. The Hub is rolling along, "Memoirs" Volume 3 right behind. 

Therefore, it's only appropriate that I sorta-officially start Volume 3 with the story background about this hundred and one-year-old building, and the community's new hub of activity and socialization spurred by the revitalization of The Marble City State Bank building.

This Bank Keeps on Giving

.

Oscar McCollum's book, "Marble, A Town Built on Dreams, Volume 1" shows a couple newspaper ads that appeared in "The Marble Booster" in 1913 and 1917 that gives a good idea of the times. The first thing that popped out at me were the names of the Bank Board President and one of the Directors. It's a historical fact that Carbondale's William Dinkel and Oscar Holland were astute businessmen 'back in the day. They also were the President and Vice President respectively of the First National Bank in Carbondale, that later consolidated with the First National Bank of Glenwood Springs.

One bank message-- "Money in the bank insures you a welcome"--made sense.  To give a perspective of the times, Wikipedia gives the short version: [ITALICS]"Thanks to an outburst of entrepreneurship in the North and the arrival of millions of immigrant workers from Europe, the U.S. became the leading industrialized power by 1900."  Jobs, jobs everywhere, especially in the Crystal Valley what with marble in Marble and coal operations booming in Redstone.  

Four years later--a different bank message,  "How you can help your Country."  Again, per Wikipedia; "Disgust with corruption, waste, and traditional politics stimulated the Progressive movement, 1890s-1920s, which pushed for reform in industry and politics and put into the Constitution women's suffraget.[END ITALICS].  Uh-oh. I don't know how this quite set with those gentlemen but who said History doesn't repeat Itself?

Easy come, Easy Go

Such was the Marble City State Bank business.  Its doors closed in 19--, after the U.S. declared war on Germany and Italy.  That put a crimp in the marble quarry business. It shut down soon after.  Most of Marble's Italian immigrants went back home to fight against the guys they had probably been working with still in Marble probably NOT buying Liberty bonds with their very hard-earned "surplus." 

The bank's history doesn't speak much for itself over the decades. It survived the floods of the 40s that took out most of the rest of Marble's commercial core. Eventually, the building was absorbed by Gunnison County and used as a road maintenance shop. 

Based on photos hanging in the Bank, its dilapidated condition was apparently more conducive to changing motor oil instead of making change for cash. Marlene Crosby, Director of Public Works in Gunnison tells of a photo over there that shows flatten oil cans used as roof repairs. 

A Ghost Story too.  

John Darien became the county's road maintenance driver. I've always heard stories about how John would conscientiously-- and solely-- clear massive snow loads during hard winters between Marble and Crystal and down to Hwy. 133 when there would be but only one or a few residents crazy enough to brave the elements in the remote ghost town Marble had become.

His expertise and job well done was lauded as much as his hermit's temperament.  John kept to himself.  There is still evidence of his solitary life in his tiny upstairs apartment above the bank vault. A cookstove, wooden ironing board and a chair or two are all that is left. Well, except for county employees who still tell of sounds of footsteps and slamming doors heard when they've stayed overnight. I'm not going to find out for myself.

Today, John is honored with a photo next to what is now the original refurbished wood stove behind the counter of The Marble Hub, the aforementioned community center and coffeebar the Bank has become a scant hundred years later. Viva la Marble Bank, once again the center of Marble.

William Alton Smith and Nettie Laura Ward became "I thee wed's" in 1891.Their would-have-been 120th anniversary was honored recently as  "faces" on a brand new FaceBook page for the recently formed Four Rivers Historical Alliance (FRHA).  (FaceBook/Four Rivers Historical Alliance)

"That was the idea," said Cindy Hines, Director of the Frontier Historical Society and one of the founders of FRHA," when we thought of what ancestral family's lineage most encompassed the communities represented, it was Bill and Nettie."

 Frontier Historical Society is, as our own Mt. Sopris Historical Society, a participant of the Four Rivers Historical Alliance, a composite of 8-10 historical societies from New Castle, Rifle, Eagle, Glenwood Springs, Cardiff, Carbondale, Aspen, Redstone and Marble.  

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

As Cindy explained, which all our historical groups in this area have learned, many of our early pioneer families crisscrossed all over the Western Slope and especially our Roaring Fork/Crystal Valleys. 

Turns out Bill and Nettie have an interesting tale--and trail--to follow. 

At Cindy's invitation, I settled into a research desk in the basement of the Frontier Museum, to find out the Smith family life and connections around here. They began circa 1880.

First thing I learned is that Bill's childhood was pretty rough, much like my own great grand dad's.  Born in 1860 in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Bill was a runaway child at age 11 after shooting at his tyrant stepfather.  Young Billy didn't look back to see where the lead landed.  He kept running 'til he got to Dodge City. He may have invented the saying "time to get outta Dodge" because he ended up tagging along on a cattle drive on the Chisholm Trail that expanded his horizons from Abilene, Kansas through Oklahoma and Texas.

At the age of 20 in 1880, and by then "hard as flint", Bill became a freighter, driving 4 and 6-horse teams. He ended up one day in Schofield at the headwaters of the Crystal River. Bill helped build the Schofield Mining and Smelter Industries and was eventually lured downstream to Crystal City and then into Marble and on down to Ashcroft. 

First comes Love

            Bill's true love was horses and cattle and wide open spaces. That roaming life eventually lead to Bill becoming the pool boss for the Divide Creek Cattlemen and pretty soon,  he settled down, more or less, on Mamm Creek down on the Grand River.  He put down roots in the Pioneer Society and became the favorite caller for the dance quadrilles in the New Castle area where a beautiful young teenager named Nettie played the mandolin tunes at these country dances.  Not that all that dance and music had had softened Bill up any.  He was still a frontiersman; a force yet untamed.  Until he met his match-and his past came back to haunt him.

Then comes jail bars

Here in the story enters one Jasper Ward who resided in Garfield County. He was the first settler to file on the land that became New Castle.

Weighing in at "a tenth of a ton," over 6-foot tall and lean as a rail, Jasper (Jack) Ward was a famous frontiersman of the day, an Indian fighter and guide who was fearless and aggressive, especially during his drinking spells.  

Jasper's reputation as a "bad-man" gunman put fear in the hearts of the meek and mild, especially when they heard stories floating around about a big gunfight in TinCup that Ward had been in the middle of one night.  A hundred shots were fired before he was captured and paid his fine. Yes, just a fine. 

Turning over some hard-earned cash in those days must have had a sobering effect on Jasper. For awhile, about 4 years, he became a preacher, got married and had 3 daughters and 3 sons, one of whom was our aforementioned Nettie.

Poetically, Jasper also became a Justice of the Peace and was all too happy to catch a young ruffian who was a darn good shot but had been irritating the heck out of Jasper for shooting out those brand new street lights all over town.  He tossed his young antagonist in the pokie, where little Nettie delivered meals to her future husband.  

Jasper Ward died in 1887 trying to quell the Ute Wars. He had become a good friend of Colorow, a Ute Indian leader.  Later, Nettie became close with a Ute woman who gave a birth blanket for her first baby, Annie Elsie in the fall of 1893. Annie Elsie became a Fenton of Glenwood Springs.  The youngest, Ida, became the wife of another legendary pioneer, Elmer Bair.

                Why the Smiths became FB icons

By 1890, Bill was hired on as the Ward's wagon master and became one of the family when he and Nettie married in 1891. He was famous for his "Black Bill's Base Camp" and must have been the inspiration for Western movies of the day because he was known for his habit of whistling songs on the open range.

Bill and Nettie settled on Ashley Creek, north of Vernal , smack in the middle of the Hole-In-The Wall gang headquarters. When their family grew to four girls, Bill figured it was time to return to New Castle and had a job waiting for him as Pool Boss for Garfield Creek Cattlemen's Association.

In 1912, Bill went to work at the Sunlight Coal Mine as a boiler master.  After the Ludlow Massacre in 1914 (a previous Memoir story) Sunlight closed and the Smiths moved up to Marble. 

Bill worked in the mill and had a blacksmith shop. He carried mail from Marble to Crystal which must be where son-in-law Elmer Bair got the idea, as I have shared before a story about his mail carrier days in Volume 1 of Memoirs of A River.

Ironically, Bill soon ended back up where he started at the headwaters of the Crystal where he operated the old sawmill he had helped build some twenty years earlier.  After a couple tough winters, shoveling massive snow slides over the Devils Punchbowl, Bill decided to buy a retirement home for Nettie on Eighth Street in Glenwood Springs.

When Nettie died in 1928 at the age of 53, Bill returned to Marble where he operated his blacksmith shop, carried mail and operated a dray and freight service until he died in 1936 at the age of 76.  His Marble home was destroyed in the 1941 Carbonate Creek flood. 

This month we get a glimpse at HattieThompson Holland's version of being an independent Carbondale pioneer woman.  There's more than a few independent women around here. Who can relate?

                We will soon know the outcome for the 130-year-old Holland-Thompson House in the Thompson Park development. While I'm not excited about seeing Carbondale become a predictably-developed "everytown;" this particular development project bears attention for anyone who loves learning and expanding education of local history for themselves and future generations here.

 Aspen to Basalt, Carbondale, Redstone, Marble, Crystal City and Gothic to Glenwood Springs, Rifle, Silt, NewCastle and DeBeque--all have significant connection within this one historic home.

Mt. Sopris Historical Society and Four Rivers Historical Association are to be commended for working to preserve this historic treasure and turn it into a very important asset to Carbondale and region. 

Maybe I'm just an incurable idealist, but, as far as earliest, original documentation of history in this greater Roaring Fork and Crystal River watersheds,  I see the Holland-Thompson House's physical, artistic, and tangible historic value just as monumental as Snowmass's prehistoric mastodons.

True, those woolly mammoth skeletons may have gotten a bit more press and sense of urgency to preserve. Thousand-year-old bones are an incredible find and of immeasurable importance for this area.

But let's not be too quick to sell short or be apathetic to what is right under our nose; the extremely rare century-old human cultural contents-of massive proportions -still stored in their original form and place within these bricked walls--this one family's home. Not to mention getting a peek into the closets and dresser drawers of the first lady of the House, Hattie Thompson-Jones-Holland-Tiffin-Holland!

 Betcha' didn't know that, huh?

Let's just say Hattie knew all about being an independent woman... and, as the saying goes...a lady of substantial means.   

On a recent visit with grand-nephew Lew Ron Thompson, I sat in front of a coffee table covered with a "smattering" of his family's records of life in this historic Carbondale home. "It is really neat to have hands-on actual documents to support our history, " Lew Ron said. 

One paper atop the pile was the original 1883 Pre-Emption document filed by Oscar Holland for one of the nearby quarter sections (160 acres) that he homesteaded.  Another was a divorce decree and wedding license dated within 2 weeks of each other in 1887, newspaper obituaries from 1920 and '44; then in '48, a public sales notice of Hattie's 1938 Buick.  More about "smattering" later.

The short story of "Aunt"

"Aunt," as Lew Ron says their family called Hattie, "...at least the printable name,"  was born June 9, 1866 in Dresden, Missouri, the youngest girl in a family of 4 daughters together with 4 sons. Lew Ron's tone and one arched eyebrow exponentially ratcheted my curiosity of Hattie and her siblings. Any chance she was spoiled?

"After their mother Almeria died, Myron moved his 8 children here in 1876. Hattie moved into the House with Oscar when they married in 1887 and died in her bedroom on August 14, 1944 at age 78," Lew Ron said.  Her chosen caretaker-nephew Lewis (Louie), Lew Ron's dad, was at her side.  

To get a sense of timing, Hattie's arrival in this valley was the year Colorado became the Centennial state.  All this was still Ute land, as far and high and wide as the eye could see.

From dirt floor to ballroom society

Between probably playing with Ute kids as a 9-year-old child in 1875 to becoming the wealthiest local woman ranch owner of the day by 1944 when she died, what was Hattie's life?

Call me nosy, I just had to ask. What about Hattie's multi-surnames?   

"In 1886, Hattie's first marriage was at a Justice of the Peace in Aspen to a Kansas lawyer by the name of Charles W. Jones," Lew Ron answered.  As if that was all I wanted to know!

I surmised from the documents before me that it was barely more than a year before Jones was history, so's to speak. A scant two weeks after the divorce decree, she married Oscar Holland.

Having never had children, Hattie became a seasoned world traveler after Oscar's suicide in 1920. On an MSHS tour of the Holland-Thompson House last year, I remember seeing her travel trunk and passport covered with exotic destination stamps. I want another look now. The House must be preserved.

From this same "smattering" of papers is an original annulment paper; apparently there's another marriage for Hattie to man named Tiffin in '27-28, albeit briefly, between years of the single-girl life.  

Girlfriends' Road Trips!

I eyeball a 4-inch thick packet of yellowed letters, 2-cent stamps in the corner.  Be it stone, bone or pulp, I know there's something incredibly rare and significant here.  I have to sit on my hands.

"These [ranch reports] were written between 1923 and 1931 by 'Aunt's' ranch manager, Mr. James Legget," Lew Ron explained as he removed rubber bands around the bunch.

 My eyes pop as he thumbed through the envelopes addressed to Hattie at any number of vacation addresses dû jour those eight exciting years during the Roaring Twenties. Many of which, I note, are to the famous Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York.  Was there sex in the City back then?

How many stories ARE there here?

I look out Lew Ron's cabin window towards Mt. Sopris. I close my eyes. When I open them again, I'm still here, it's still early spring...but it's the Roaring Twenties.

Hattie's just asked if I want to go on a road trip in her new 1922 Buick 45 Roadster.

As I look at these girls' trip travel photos, I imagine myself being Hattie's friend, looking out the red-brick second-story window of the most beautiful home in this valley. Nothing but mud for miles from here to Sopris. Hattie's in her bedroom packing! Can't help but wonder--are those clothes of Hattie's in the photos some of the same attire hanging in the closets today? "Probably," Lew Ron nods.

How many stories?

 'Til next time,

Charr