Duane Vandenbusche

Q&A with Dr. Duane Vandenbusche

by

Duane Vandenbusche is a Professor of History at Western Colorado University in Gunnison since 1962 and has just been named Colorado’s State Historian, the first to be based outside of the Front Range in its 96-year history. He is the author of 11 books including: “The Gunnison Country,” “Around Monarch Pass,” “Lake City” (with Grant …

Read more

Cottonwood Pass: Yesterday and Today

by

By Duane Vandenbusche Dave Wood was tired. In 1877, the great freighter of Western Colorado and his 50-man crew had built the first rough road into Taylor Park and Gunnison County, one year after Colorado became a state. Trails existed from the Arkansas River on the Eastern Slope to Taylor Park on the Western Slope, but this was the first …

Read more

Boom and Bust: Monarch, Colorado

by

By Duane Vandenbusche The date was July 14, 1878, and Nicholas Creede was tired. The veteran miner from Indiana had been prospecting for two months in the South Arkansas River country and had found nothing. Then, about five miles east of a high pass, he hit a promising strike and named it Monarch. The discovery …

Read more

Doyleville, Colorado: Jumping-off point into the Gunnison Country

by

By Duane Vandenbusche

The little ranching community on Tomichi Creek preceded the great mining boom in the Gunnison country. Doyleville, located near the mouth of both Hot Springs and Razor Creeks, began in 1876 when 52-year-old Henry Doyle of northern Michigan, his wife and two youngest sons, crossed Marshall Pass and entered the Tomichi Valley. He settled next to the S.W. Davidson family, who had a dairy farm, as did Doyle.

Taking advantage of the 1862 Homestead Act signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln, Doyle acquired 160 acres for $1.25 an acre. He lived in a tent that first summer.

When the Gunnison country mining boom began in 1879, Doyleville became a stop for Barlow and Sanderson stages and for the many freighters en route to Gunnison and nearby silver camps.

Jesse and Frank James came to Doyleville in the 1870s and worked on the Coats ranch, where they hid from the law. Mrs. Coats was a relative of the James boys. Ike Thompson had known Jesse and Frank in Missouri. Jesse drew him aside. “Hello Ike, my name is Brown here. You understand?”

Read more

The Fantastic Eureka Mine

by

By Duane Vandenbusche

It was the most fantastic mine in the history of the Gunnison Country. Located by William Mansfield in July of 1879 on the west flank of Treasury Mountain at 13,440 feet, the Eureka defied description. The mine was located above Yule Pass and near the top of the mountain. Even getting to the Eureka was difficult. One way in followed Yule Creek from Marble. The other route came from the headwaters of the Slate River and over terrifying Yule Pass. Silver ore from the mine was at first brought down by burro teams over Yule Pass and then down the Slate River to the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad spur at Anthrocite, four miles north of Crested Butte. The burro trains made the round trip in two days, and it cost $3 per ton for haulage.

Read more

Pioneer Ski Area – Colorado’s First Chairlift

by

By Duane Vandenbusche

The Pioneer Ski Area began during the winter of 1939-40 and was located three miles up Cement Creek and eight miles south of Crested Butte on the side of spectacular Cement Mountain. Pioneer would become famous as the first ski area in Colorado to employ a chairlift.

The ski area was hatched in the minds of Gunnison skiers Rial Lake, Art Fordham, Chuck Sweitzer and Wes McDermott. All of these men had skied off Monarch and Marshall Passes in the 1930s, but they yearned for a ski area that could eliminate the long treks to the tops of mountains. The four men knew the region around Crested Butte to the north had everything needed for a great ski area – tremendous snow, high mountains, and a great ski tradition dating back to the early 1880s.

Read more

The Western State Ski Team: “The Little Engine That Could”

by

By Duane Vandenbusche

The Western State College ski team began innocently enough. Shortly after the end of World War II, veterans returned to the college. Some had been members of the famed 10th Mountain Ski Division, which trained at Pando near Tennessee Pass and had fought in the mountains of Italy. The idea for a ski team came from two veterans of the 10th Mountain: Crosby Perry-Smith from New York and Dick Wellington from Maine.

Read more

The Rise and Fall of White Pine, Colorado

by

by Duane Vandenbusche

The year was 1878 and prospectors R.E. McBride and the Boon brothers, unable to get good mining claims at Monarch, east of the Continental Divide, headed west. The three men went up a gulch past Waterdog Lakes, crossed the Divide and descended into the upper Tomichi drainage on the Western Slope. There, the men found good silver ore and filed claims. The following May, over 200 men swarmed into the area and uncovered the rich North Star, Eureka, Carbonate King and May-Mazeppa silver mines.

During 1879, all supplies had to come in via jack train from Monarch over Old, Old Monarch Pass. By May 1, 1880, the Monarch Toll Road was completed and a fledgling mining camp called White Pine was laid out along Tomichi Creek. The new camp was named for the dense growth of pines which covered the surrounding mountains. The two major routes into the camp were from Monarch on the Eastern Slope and Sargents on the Western Slope.

Read more

Excerpts from ‘Around Monarch Pass’

by

Author Duane Vandenbusche, a professor of history at Western State College in Gunnison since 1962, is the author of several books on the Gunnison Country and Western Colorado. Until 2007, he doubled as a cross-country coach at the college, where his men’s and women’s teams won 12 national championships and produced three Olympians. In this volume, photographs gathered from libraries, museums, private collections, and old-timers – many of them previously unpublished – bring the rich history of Monarch Country alive.

We have been given permission to publish excerpts from the book for you here. Dr. Vandenbusche will be giving a presentation about Monarch Pass at the Salida SteamPlant on December 11 at 6:00 p.m. All are welcome to attend.

Photos and text reprinted with permission from “Around Monarch Pass,” by Duane Vandenbusche. Available from the publisher online at www.arcadiapublishing.com or by calling (888) 313-2665.

Read more