Virginia Simmons Archives - Colorado Central Magazine

Early Colorado Newspapers

July 1, 2019 by Mike Rosso

By Virginia Simmons In Colorado’s younger days, publishing a newspaper often simply involved hauling a printing press, a case of lead type, and some newsprint in a wagon across the prairie to a new town or mining camp, printing the current local news, and selling it to any eager soul who could read and had …

Across Marshall Pass

July 16, 2020March 16, 2019 by Mike Rosso

By Virginia Simmons The story of this mountain pass really begins a few hundred years before any Europeans entered North America. Until the U.S. Government and pioneers pushed the Ute Tribe onto the reservations on the Western Slope in 1868, the nomadic Ute Indian hunter-gatherers of the Tabeguache Band often used this route as they …

Q&A with author, Virginia Simmons

May 1, 2018 by Mike Rosso

CCM: Did you attend college? If so, where? VS: After attending school in New England, where regional history is pretty hard to escape, I headed west to Oberlin College, where I majored in history and discovered the fun of examining the often misleading minutiae that reveal what really happened. When I moved to Colorado in …

Book Reviews

September 11, 2012May 1, 2012 by Mike Rosso

Topic of Capricorn
By John C. Mattingly
Illustrations by Judith Penrose Mattingly
Published in 2011 by Mirage Publishing
ISBN 978-0-9710430-4-6

Reviewed by Ed Quillen

There’s an old saying that “Goats can live on nothing and a man can live on goats.” Given that observation and the dismal income level of certain portions of Central Colorado, it’s kind of surprising that we don’t see more goats around these parts.

The critters do have remarkable appetites. A couple of years ago, the Jumpin’ Good Goat Dairy in Buena Vista entered a float in Salida’s boat-race parade. It was a long flat-bed trailer with a corral full of goats. The corral was decorated with plastic flowers. The goats kept jumping to eat the polyethylene blooms.

Rio Grande Railroad, by James R. Giffin

July 9, 2014March 1, 2004 by Staff

Review by Virginia Simmons

Railroads – March 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

Rio Grande Railroad
by James R. Griffin
Published in 2003 by MBI Publishing Co.
ISBN 0-7603-1442-X

Whence some place names?

December 6, 2009January 1, 2003 by Staff

Letter from Virginia Simmons

Place Names – January 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine

Ed:

You mentioned in your review of a new book, San Luis Valley Place Names by Ron Kessler, that you would like to know the source of the name for Mishak Lakes. A ranch family from Oklahoma and their descendants owned land around the lakes west of Moffat in the 1900s. Actually, the “lakes” are playas, comprising Colorado’s largest natural shallow-water wetland system, so “Mishak Playas” might have been a more appropriate name. These playas offer habitat for migrating shorebirds and waterfowl in the spring but normally dry up during the summer. Since The Nature Conservancy acquired the site in the 1990s, it has been designated the Mishak Lakes Preserve.

Utes and Wildfire

December 5, 2009August 1, 2002 by Staff

Letter from Virginia Simmons

Wildfire – August 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine

Editors:

Your July issue included a timely article by Allen Best, with a mix of facts and opinions about the history of wildfire in Colorado. Whereas some of the opinions seemed well supported, I wish to point out one which set off some sparks in my head.

When Opportunity Knocked on Saguache’s Door

November 25, 2009May 1, 2000 by Staff

Article by Virginia Simmons

Local History – May 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

THE WORD AMBITION is defined as “an eager and sometimes inordinate desire for something, as preferment, honor, superiority, power, fame, wealth, etc .,” according to Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary.