By Virginia McConnell Simmons
The Roaring Twenties, the Charleston, and the speakeasies never happened as far as folks in the San Luis Valley could tell, but on the whole, this high valley was not dry.
In the 1920s, the agricultural economy was limping everywhere and mining was severely crippled at places like Creede; and that was before the market crashed and the mines shut down completely in 1929. As if that were not bad enough, this was the era of Prohibition. In fact, it had already begun in 1916 in some of Colorado’s cities and towns, where reformers outnumbered rugged individualists.
