The Way We Really Were

By Virginia McConnell Simmons Identifying “Our President” will be a mystery if you believe the inked script. In fact, only after President McKinley’s assassination, with no living vice president to fill the office, was T.R. catapulted into the presidency in September 1903. Some sharp-eyed Central Coloradans will note that the locomotive should have borne the …

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The Way We Really Were

By Virginia McConnell Simmons Using native materials, early-day miners constructed arrastras at several remote, streamside locations in Colorado. First introduced to the New World by Spaniards, arrastras pulverized ore while a burro or horse dragged a grinding stone around and around over an existing large rock. Surviving evidence may be a very flat, wide rock …

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The Way We Really Were

mirage_webBy Virginia McConnell Simmons

School’s out. Summer’s sightseers in Central Colorado will enjoy photographing and painting picturesque one-room schoolhouses that now stand empty or have taken on new roles such as community centers or museums – Mirage (pictured here), Alma, Jefferson, Malta, Sargents, Twin Lakes, Valley View, Westcliffe, and many more. But before we get too nostalgic, let’s picture that one-room with pupils too large and too small, a young teacher with maybe one year of training, frayed readers instead of computers, desks too close to the hot stove or at a frigid distance from it, galoshes, and no school bus.

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