Sidebar by Dick Dixon
Local History – May 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Bibliography
Bauer, William H.; Ozment, James L. and Willard, John H. Colorado Postal History — The Post Offices. J.B. Publishing Co. , 1970.
Cañon City Daily Record. Aug. 12, 1897; Aug. 7, 1902.
Sidebar by Dick Dixon
Local History – May 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
After 16 years in a variety of public offices — and being editorially assaulted because of his 1897 political campaign — Joseph W. Milsom sought a less volatile career in the business world.
Article by Dick Dixon
Local History – May 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
ONCE UPON A TIME, the American West was a contentious place: rough and tumble, violent and lawless and given to brawls and worse. There was the Texas War of Independence, the Mexican War, the Indian Wars, the Grange wars. And some of those early disputes were between counties.
Chaffee, Park, and Frémont counties didn’t take up arms in the 1880s and ’90s, but they did struggle to take and keep territory — employing surveyors and attorneys, rather than soldiers.
Article by Dick Dixon
Local History – February 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
VISITORS TO THE Salida Granite Co. Federal Quarry today must walk or ride horseback because the road is closed. Once there, they find elaborate concrete foundations and a few small cabins still standing.
A concrete powder house is badly battered by vandals. A 4,000-gallon oak water tank, hidden in trees on a hillside, remained until someone carried it away in 1980. Dozens of “boulder quarry holes” pock the countryside and the main quarry is partly filled with water.
Article by Dick Dixon
Local Artists – January 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
JOHN EARL HERSHBERGER of Salida was one of the stonecutters who prepared granite for the Mormon Battalion Monument. In addition, he carved more than 1,000 gravestones in his 58 years in the profession — but he never got around to making one for himself or his family.
But Hershberger’s skills went past carving tombstones. His most famous work was the sundial that still tells time in Cranmer Park in Denver. He also carved the pair of gargoyle-faced lions, slightly larger than life-size, that guard the entrance to Salida’s Alpine Park.
Article by Dick Dixon
Quarries – January 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
STONE FROM THE UTE TRAIL AREA via Salida Granite Co. received national acclaim May 30, 1927, when the Mormon Battalion Monument in Salt Lake City, Utah, was unveiled before a crowd of 15,000 people.
Located on the southeast corner of the Capitol Building grounds in Salt Lake, the monument commemorates a 2,000 mile march that began in May of 1846 and lasted until July 16, 1847.
Article by Dick Dixon
Mining – December 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine
FEW MINERS in the Turret Mountain Mining District in 1897 realized the immortality they sought for their tiny towns would come in pink granite piled on the Capitol grounds in Salt Lake City, Utah, rather than gold deposits in bank ledgers and history books.
Men who founded towns and camps such as Turret, Minneapolis, Manoa, Whitehorn, Nelson, Cameron, Badger, Minnman, Kraft, and others in the Ute Trail country northeast of Salida were after gold. They took granite for granted. It was everywhere.
Article by Dick Dixon
Local History – August 1996 – Colorado Central Magazine
The Jasper mine, near the hopeful gold camp of Turret, was about five years old and headed for its heyday when tragedy struck shortly after the turn of the century. Miner Frank Carpenter frantically tried to climb the greasy cable of a stalled mine bucket and fell about 70 feet down the shaft to be “blown to pieces by the explosion of seven shots.”
