by Colorado Central Staff
The year was 1895 and the city of Leadville had fallen on hard times. Since 1881, production had declined at its largest and most profitable mines. The repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893, first enacted to increase the amount of silver the government was required to purchase every month, had a crippling effect on the local economy. By 1895 the population had dwindled to 14,477 residents from nearly 40,000 only two years previous.
by Michael J. Perullo
Just after Christmas 2006, I decided to drive my 1990 Nissan Stanza from Atlanta to Silver Cliff, Colorado to stay in my cabin over New Years’ Eve. What a trip this turned out to be! I love to travel by car or Jeep, and this road trip was to be my 169th since 1991 when I first moved to Atlanta. Usually, I make an overnight stop between Georgia and Colorado in Yukon, Oklahoma, staying in a cheap motel and having some local Mexican food after this first 871 mile leg of the journey I’ve made many times.
In the Tabor correspondence, no one uses the name Baby Doe. Her family calls her Lizzie, and Horace, after opening his letters with “My Darling Wife,” calls her Babe. In the Tabor collection at the Historical Society, she appears, for brevity’s sake, as EBT, for Elizabeth Bonduel Tabor, which will come in handy for her later, as she plays off this name to create aliases for herself. This series will refer to her as EBT or Mrs. Tabor and reserve the name Baby Doe for her early years in Leadville.
In one of Horace’s letters to EBT, he told her that he had done as she had instructed him with regard to her letters. Her instructions to Horace may have been to destroy her letters or to return them to her so that she could dispose of them. In any case, and knowing how extremely private EBT was, it’s not surprising that we don’t have more of her love letters to him. She may not have written that many anyway. In fact, Horace chides her in one letter her for not writing to him for six months.
by Jennifer Dempsey
When Moffat High School offered a swine flu shot clinic this fall, Jerry Bergstrom decided not to have her two children get the vaccination.
Bergstrom said she isn’t entirely against the vaccine, but that she’s “been told positive and negative things about it. I feel that the shot hasn’t been tested enough,” she said. “In the past, everyone I knew personally who had gotten the flu shot got really sick afterwards and also got the flu. That’s the main reason I didn’t want my kids to get the shot.”
By Ed Quillen
Before the sun came up on the morning of Oct. 1, I got into my pickup to drive to the Salida Café & Roastery (the establishment formerly known as Bongo Billy’s Salida Café) for breakfast followed by the monthly business meeting of the Salida Business Alliance (formerly known as the Salida Merchants Association). I’m not much of a businessman – especially since selling this magazine to Mike Rosso – but I was re-elected secretary of the SBA last winter, and it behooves me to attend meetings.
by George Sibley
I have a friend here in the Upper Gunnison with whom I argue politics a lot, mostly electronically. We are always sending each other e-mails with editorials, news stories, and essays attached, mostly focused on aspects of the political economy – which should be distinguished from the real economy, the miraculous helter-skelter whereby most of us manage to find enough food, energy, shelter, and other necessaries to stay alive and fairly healthy. A political economy, on the other hand, is the paste-up of philosophies, ideas, ideologies, and religion we each hold about how the real economy ought to work. A political economy always seems to fit some aspect of the real economy well enough (if beaten into shape with a bigger hammer) so that we can continue to believe in it.
by Marcia Darnell
Election First
Alamosa will have its first woman mayor, following Kathy Rogers’ election Nov. 3. Alamosa voters also voted no on a new aquatic center, raises for city council members, and opening city boards to non-residents.
Saguache County voters voted to take on more debt to get a BEST grant for the Crestone Charter School, while Mineral County said no to a tax increase for its community center.
In Monte Vista, Art Medina will be the new mayor, while Conejos County voted down increased funds for its hospital.
by John Orr
Creede hydroelectric project
It makes sense to generate electricity with water and gravity where possible. Hydroelectric power is clean and as reliable as the water supply. Near Creede the A.E. Humphrey Ranch is going to get a shiny new hydroelectric plant for the dam there. Owner Ruthie Brown is ponying up over $900,000 in loans and federal stimulus dough to retrofit the dam her great grandfather constructed 90 years ago, according to a report from The Aspen Times.
This is the first article in a six-part series dedicated to renewable energies.
by Aaron Mandelkorn
Solar energy is not a new concept. For years, civilizations utilized the power of the sun’s rays to warm their homes and dry their food and clothes. Today, we know so much more about what the sun can do. No better example of this is found than in Photovoltaic electricity, or PV for short. This term refers to the electrical current that is generated when light reacts with a solar cell, which is generally made from silicate.
by John Mattingly
Out a narrow window I see my new center pivot on the loose, crossing Highway 17. Cars and trucks are jammed and honking as the machine spreads out like a praying mantis on the warpath, pulling its electric line out of the ground like a giant umbilical cord. It runs roughshod over a fence and three power poles, causing flares of flame as the main wire cracks and arcs to ground. The pivot collides with a house and the end tower starts to ascend to the roof. I wake up in a cold sweat.
By: David Knibb
Eastern Washington University Press: 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59766-037-2
Reviewed by Eduardo Rey Brummel
Grizzlies, like wolves, are “NIMBY” critters. They are iconic to our images of “the wild west,” and our lands seem a sham in their absence; yet it seems the majority want them, “out there,” away from their own backyards and stomping grounds. Grizzlies can also, like wolves, be elusive and wary of humans, making their existence, and their numbers, difficult to prove.
For over fifty years the W Cafe has been feeding its share of hungry Western State students, alumni, locals and tourists.
With its vinyl tablecloths and booths, yard-sale wall art and hectic but friendly and efficient staff, one can’t help but hearken back to roadside cafes from endless road trips through America’s midsection.
This is no shi-shi breakfast joint, it’s the real deal. You want stick-to-your-ribs biscuits and gravy to help ward off the cold Gunnison winter? This is your place. A smothered breakfast burrito served with sides of guacamole and sour cream? They’ve got it.
Text and Captions by Ed Rains
2009 – Turner Publishing Company
ISBN:978-1-59652-535-1
Reviewed by Mike Rosso
Having spent several years as a photo restorist in Durango, working with museums in Durango, Cortez, Dolores and Silverton, I was eager to obtain a copy of Historic Photos of Colorado Mining when it was offered for review.
These are tough times: the economy tanked last year, the stock market took a corresponding dive, unemployment is up more than in a decade or more, and jobs are not easy to come by. All of which makes it a great time to cultivate generosity and help each other.
Remember the movie “Pay It Forward”? In the screen version of Catherine Ryan Hyde’s novel, the hero, 12-year-old, Trevor, responds to a social studies assignment to think of and implement an idea for changing the world with this suggestion:
“I do something real good for three people. And when they ask how they can pay it back, I say they have to Pay It Forward. To three more people. Each. So nine people get helped. Then those people have to do twenty-seven.”
Long before I learned my son Harrison has autism, or what the word “hippotherapy” means, I had this idea he should ride our burros. For me this was a way to incorporate fatherhood into my lifestyle.
For three decades I have trained burros for pack-burro racing, including six world championships, as well as for packing and riding. It seemed only natural I would want to share that with my son, and it would also help provide a vehicle to the backcountry.
