12/22/03

Arrival in America. The trip across country to Colorado. My father discovered mineral springs at Manitou. A printer's "devil" in Pueblo. Celebration in Pueblo on entrance of Colorado to statehood. "San Juan or Bust!" To Lake City in a covered wagon. Into Ouray on foot. Banking in Ouray.

During my absence in the South Seas my father had taken the family to the United States, and I determined to join them. As soon as I had secured my discharge from the Navy, I lost no time in saying farewell to my relatives in London, purchased a ticket for New York, and took the train for Liverpool, where I boarded the S.S. Atlas, then about to sail for Boston.

After years of discipline on board a man-of-war, the passage on the Atlantic liner was one of luxurious contentment. Although we were thirteen days in crossing and had a gale in our teeth all the way. At Boston I was transferred to a Fall River boat, and eventually landed in the metropolis of the new world in the fall of 1875.

New York had nothing to hold me, and I continued my journey westward. At that time the gold excitement of the Black Hills of Dakota was in full swing. The train on which I came west was crowded to suffocation with the Argonauts, all armed to the teeth. The locomotive was a wood burner, and at intervals the passengers got out and helped to load the cordwood that was stacked along the track. On the plains, herds of bison would graze along the railroad, and the passengers were called upon to help drive them out of the train. On the Colorado Central, between Cheyenne and Denver, we had more trouble with the thousands of antelope that infested that region, and a few miles north of Greeley we lost an hour shooing them off the track. Some of the passengers took shots at them through the coach windows as we passed.

While I was in India, my father had contracted to establish a hotel at Colorado City, and soon after his arrival had discovered the soda water springs at Manitou. Father was in the throes of a lawsuit, which contested his right to the homestead, and its ramifications led to its being included in the fight instituted against President Grant in his candidacy for the third term. The house where the family lived was a wooden building on the top of a hill overlooking the road to Ute Pass at the foot Pike’s Peak. Directly below us flowed a creek, and Father had located the four springs at the water’s edge, each one having a different chemical content. The largest of the four was almost pure soda water. We invariably used a pitcher full of it at the midday meal, and its effervescence lasted to the last drop. Father took great pride in segregating the four springs from each other, and if his plans had not been disrupted by the lawsuit, these springs would eventually have proved to be a mine of wealth to him, as they have since to others.

Sometime before my arrival in Colorado, my brother Harry, being practical minded, had gone to Pueblo, where he was filling the position of foreman on a newspaper called the “Chieftain.” Later in the year I developed a desire to see my brother, and incidentally to get to work if I intended to realize my ambition to make a fortune in the new country, so I took the narrow gauge to Pueblo. Harry had already inveigled Captain Lambert to give me a job on his newspaper as generalissimo of the hellbox, otherwise known as the “devil.” It was there that I received my first lesson in the art of typesetting when not actuating the various presses of the plant.

Independence Day, 1876, was Pueblo’s time for rejoicing. The town was not only celebrating the Fourth of July, but also the entrance of Colorado into statehood and the advent of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. A small howitzer had been secured for the occasion, and I was given the honor of loading and firing the salutes that were continuous throughout the day. The howitzer, captured in the Mexican War, had been trundled to the summit of the hill just north of Sante Fe Avenue, and contributed to the din of the celebration. Gus Withers, who is still the editor of the Chieftain, led the parade on a beautiful white stallion and looked every inch the general that he was, while the ladies in their best bib and tucker lined the streets and gazed with the admiration as he pranced along in advance of the band.

That night I found myself in a hic-hic-hilarious condition in the old Troubadour Saloon, where a large and motley crowd of celebrants had gathered for the occasion. Perhaps I should not relate this incident, but since this story is the plain, unvarnished truth concerning my life, I have not set out to picture myself with a pair of wings. Two barrels of beer had been contributed by the local brewer, which was free, but with whiskey at five cents a drink it was not long before several first-class fights were instituted between the discordant elements. And then the crowed broke into song, which ranged from Hersygovinian ditties to “Donnybrooke Fair.” Someone called on me for a song, and that was where I made my mistake! With a muddled brain that placed me back on the old “Boscawen,” I led off with:

“The sea is England’s glory.

Her wealth the mighty main.

She is the world’s defender.

The feeble to sustain.

In war the first, the fearless,

Her banner leads the brave.

In peace she reigns as peerless,

The Empress of the waves!”

“Not by a damn sight!” yelled a voice, and pandemonium reigned. Everybody was on their feet and making a mad rush for me. Jake Palmer, a Pueblo contractor, and Ed Stone, a bricklayer, both fellow boarders with me, hustled me out of the door and shouted “Run like Hell!” I tore down the street and never stopped running until I reached the old Santa Fe bridge and hid under its sheltering abutment. My ardor for patriotism was very much dampened!

The following spring was a notable one in the history of Colorado, for it brought to the notice of the country the great potential wealth in metal mining throughout the western part of the state. Two great prospecting fields were open. California Gulch, in which is located the town of Leadville, Colorado, was at the height of its glory as a producer of the yellow metal. Tabor’s prospectors had just discovered the Little Pittsburgh on Fryer Hill, which changed the gulch from a gold placer into a silver camp and founded Leadville, which later was to become the scene of the greatest mining boom of modern times. Also, in the southwestern corner of the state there was a rush to the San Juan, where gold, silver, and lead were being found in vast true fissure veins.

My spirit of adventure had never been dulled since my fiasco of the diamond fields, and I watched for the chance to join some party going to the San Juan. In those days this was not merely a matter of buying a ticket and boarding a train, or driving at ease over a beautiful highway. It was necessary to cross several high mountain passes through country having a vertical topography equal to the Swiss Alps, heavily timbered, and with scarcely a road or trail to guide the way. My brother Harry, who has always been my best friend and helper, had married a lovely girl of Colorado Springs and was not willing to risk his bride’s home comforts for the hardships of a mining camp. This brought us to a parting of our ways, Harry going to Los Angeles to make a fortune as a publisher, while I, with a party of seven, in a covered wagon drawn by two mangy horses, with “San Juan or Bust!” painted on the head in Flamboyant letters, started from Pueblo on the long trail and became one of the pioneers.

We reached Lake City in the month of June, 1877, after a trek over roadless mountains and through swampy valleys, during which we pushed the wagon uphill because our horse power worked only on one cylinder, and pulled back going downhill for the reason that we had no brakes. Our “team” was composed of an old stallion and a sickly-looking mare, both of which we had acquired in consideration of their “keep.” We carried no feed for the horses, and it was necessary every night to find not only a suitable camp for ourselves but also pasture for the stock. As this was not always obtainable, the horses would wander through the night, and we would scour the country the next day for hours before they were found. In this way we more than earned our transportation for fourteen days, at the end of which we drew up before Olds House in Lake City and presented the contraption to the city, for we never saw it again.

Lake City was a lively town, and discoveries of rich ores were being made every day. The Ute and Ulay Mines were producing a great tonnage of lead and silver ores; the Crocke Brothers of New York had a smelter under construction; and the place was filled with prospectors, mine buyers, gamblers, and town lot speculators.

I secured a job on the “Silver World” as a compositor, but gave that up to join a bridge-building gang who were constructing a wagon road up Henson Creek, as I thought that would be a logical way to reach Silverton in Baker’s Park, which was on the side of the Continental Range of the Rockies. When the road crew reached Rose’s cabin at the head of Henson Creek, I shouldered my roll of blankets, took to the trail, and that night made my bed on a billiard table in the Old Lot Saloon in Animas Forks, five miles away.

The next day was the Fourth of July, and in company with three other pilgrims, we worked our way down the trail to the valley, at the end of which lies Howardsville. The snow slides of the previous winter still blocked the passage of wagons, but the season was opening up and the trail was lined with pack trains loaded with supplies for the surrounding mines.

Silverton was a camp of 2000 population at that time. It is situated in an open park at an altitude of 9300 feet, surrounded by mountains divided by four canyons, through the largest of which the Animas River flows, carrying with it the waters of Cement and Mineral Creeks. The camp appealed to me as one of the great possibilities, but I decided to push on and see the town of Ouray, which formed another corner of San Juan’s triangle.

My route lay up Cement Creek, as the Mineral Creek trail was not passable and the Red Mountain territory was as yet unexplored. Gladstone, a small camp on Cement Creek, was an active village where an English company was building a reduction plant for the treatment of the ores coming from the head of the creek. The trail over the range to the Uncompahgre was a mere track along the rocks, and every footstep was fraught with danger. A foot-log was the only bridge over the Bear Creek Falls, and one had to be a tightrope walker to negotiate the chasm where the water disappeared into smoke long before it reached the rive below.

Ouray, named after the Ute Chief who lived a few miles below the town, was then a village just aborning. It is situated in a most delightful spot, nestled in a small pocket surrounded by perpendicular walls of beautiful red sandstone and granite which rise in towering peaks on all sides, the rugged cliffs softened by the delicate green of the quaking aspens and deep forests of spruce. From the everlasting snow banks among the cliffs which tower above and the alpine lakes which are caught in pockets on the upper slopes, tumble sparkling streams, pure and cold from the melting snow, which cascade over the high walls surrounding the town. One of the greatest joys to a person coming from the hazy and diffused atmosphere of the sea coast is the clear and brilliant blue of the mountain skies, as blue which is as deep as a Chinese rug, through which float on summer days the billowy cumulus clouds like huge piles of whipped cream. Through the clear atmosphere the distant peaks stand out in sharp-cut beauty, as far as the eye can see.

The young town was very interesting. It was peopled by a few of the hardiest pioneers who could stand the buffetings of Nature in the primeval. A grocery, hardware, clothing store, and seven saloons were doing business on the main street. The Ouray Sentinel, edited by Doc McKinney, shouted the news from the hills in its columns. As Doc was editor, manager, printer, and devil, the arrival of an expert compositor, of at least two months’ experience at the case, was welcomed by a column write-up and credit at the boarding house for a full week.

The railroad was about three hundred miles away from us at Alamosa, and we had a bi-monthly mail with a tri monthly shipment of food supplies from the outside. The arrival of one of those prairie schooners with double trailers, hauled by ten yoke oxen, as it pulled up to Alling’s store, was the occasion for an outpouring of the populace, who formed a line for blocks waiting their turn to buy flour at $50.00 a sack and bacon for $1.50 a pound. Everybody seemed to have money, as the rich discoveries then being made were readily snapped up by Eastern investors, who had only to be shown a specimen of ruby silver or gray copper to reach for their check books, and the deal was made.

This condition of affairs soon attracted the attention of the banking fraternity, and a gentleman who sported the name of Fogg conceived the idea of starting the Bank of Ouray. Fogg was not long in sizing up the opportunities presented in such a speculative community. In 1877 the fractional currency of the country was represented by shinplasters, slips the size of the present-day cigar coupons, good for five, ten, twenty-five, and fifty cents. Ouray was shy of small change, having little use for it at the stores, but the banker was on to his job and soon inaugurated a fractional currency of his own to cover the shortage. To keep the new money in circulation, he printed on the bills: “Redeemable in amounts not less than twenty dollars.” Ouray found these plasters very convenient until one morning the bank did not open, and it was found that $80,000 of the fractional “money” was in circulation. The gentleman is still at large, so far as I know.