Fay Golson

The Facts

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Compiled by Fay Golson and Mike Rosso The Tallest Building in Colorado The Republic Plaza, constructed in 1984 and located at 302 17th Street in Denver, is the tallest building in Colorado. Building materials include concrete and Sardinian granite. It stands 714 feet tall and stacks 56 stories. Considering that the 1931 Empire State Building …

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The Buena Vista Rodeo Grounds

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By Fay Golson

Rodeos are a window into the past and an indelible part of our American culture. Evidance of this can still be found at the Buena Vista Rodeo Grounds, located on 27.2 acres, 1.8 miles southwest of town.
As is well known, the rodeo was not developed as a sporting event, but arose from the performance of utilitarian tasks. These tasks were an integral part of cattle-ranching in areas of Spanish influence in the west, where skills learned from the vaqueros set the stage for an enduring sport.

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The Frantzhurst Rainbow Trout Hatchery

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Chaffee County Historic Resources Survey Series
By Fay Golson for The Chaffee County Heritage Area Advisory Board

The Frantzhurst Rainbow Trout Hatchery is the ninth property featured from the Chaffee County Historic Resources Survey. The trout farm, once labeled the “largest trout operation in the world,” continues to operate as a state-run fish hatchery. It is located approximately a half-mile northwest of Salida off Colo. 291. The hatchery’s annual production is about two million trout, which are used to stock Colorado’s many streams and lakes.

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The St. Julien Livery and Feed Stable

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By Fay Golson for The Chaffee County Heritage Area Advisory Board

The St. Julien Livery in downtown Buena Vista is the eighth property featured from the Chaffee County Historic Resources Survey. The 0.39-acre property is located at the southwest corner of Chestnut Street and Railroad Avenue. The building not only served as a livery but also, a few years after opening, as an ice and coal store. During their time, livery stables were vital to towns throughout America.

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Granite Stage Stop and Livery Stable

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By Fay Golson for The Chaffee County Heritage Area Advisory Board

This Granite stage stop and Livery Stable is the fifth property featured from the Chaffee County Historic Resources Survey completed this summer. Granite was spawned by the stampede of prospectors struck by gold fever. The initial gold discovery in 1860 by G.A. Kelley along the Arkansas River – about four miles south of the present day town of Granite – was on a gravel bar later to take the name Kelley’s Bar. Just to the north, Cache Creek became an even more profitable site. Virginia McConnell Simmons in The Upper Arkansas, A Mountain River Valley states it precisely: “Granite’s role in the life of this area went back to 1860, when the entire section along the Arkansas from Kelley’s Bar on the south to Cache Creek on the north was lined with prospectors’ tents. But Granite was simply a suburb of the placer camps, particularly of Cache Creek.”

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Poncha Springs Fire Station

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The Poncha Springs Fire Station, located at the intersection of U.S. Hwy. 50 and U.S. Hwy. 285, is the fourth property featured from the Chaffee County Historic Resources Survey. As stated by Virginia McConnell Simmons in The Upper Arkansas, A Mountain River Valley, Poncha Pass was part of a hub of trails leading in and out of the southern end of the San Luis Valley. The pass, at an altitude of 8,945 feet, is one of the lowest in the state. In 1779, Comanches retreated over Poncha Pass with stolen horses while being pursued by 600 Spanish dragoons. Arizona Governor Juan Bautista de Anza led the soldiers in a chase ending just south of Pueblo, where the Comnache leader, Cuerno Verde, and other high-ranking tribe members were killed. The hot springs area just a mile from the present town was a favorite campsite for the Ute tribe.

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Rocky Mountain Livestock Sales

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One of Chaffee County’s Historic Resources

By Fay Golson for The Chaffee County Heritage Area Advisory Board

“Although farming preceded ranching in Colorado and has long since surpassed it in importance, the great cattle ranches of the seventies and eighties first gave agriculture any considerable weight in the State’s economy,” according Colorado, A Guide to the Highest State by Federal Writers’ Project, first published in 1941. This refers to the 1870s and 1880s.

In 1858 the idea of raising livestock in Colorado began when a prospector discovered his loose oxen could survive on the grassy plains where the city of Denver now stands. The oxen not only survived on the grasses but put weight on doing so. With this discovery, Texas cattle were driven northward to the lower Arkansas River Valley and into other sections of the state. The advance of the railroads soon opened new grazing land in the mountain parks and on the Western Slope.

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Surveying Chaffee County’s Historic Resources

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By Fay Golson for The Chaffee County Heritage Area Advisory Board

Driving along the Collegiate Peaks Scenic and Historic Byway (Salida to Poncha Springs and Buena Vista to Granite), buildings and structures come into view that have many stories to tell. Some of these buildings and structures are not visible from the Byway but instead are nestled within the towns.

In 2010, on behalf of the Chaffee County Heritage Area Advisory Board (CCHAAB), the Greater Arkansas River Nature Association (GARNA) received a Colorado State Historic Fund Grant (SHF) to have 65 properties in Chaffee County included in a Historic Resources Survey. GARNA selected Tom and Laurie Simmons of Front Range Research Associates (FRRA) to perform this work. After two years of work by volunteers, Colorado Mountain College students, the CCHAAB and the FRRA, the project is now complete. Documents will soon be available to the public at the Salida Regional Library and the Buena Vista Public Library.

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