Larimer County, Colorado - The whole text, 1911 (part 8 of 22)

As already stated, the Express, founded by Joseph S. McClelland in April, 1873, was the first newspaper printed and published in Larimer county. It was started as a Republican paper and remained as such until 1896, when it espoused the politics of the Colorado Silver Republican party and continued to advocate those policies until 1900, when it returned to the Republican fold and became, and still continues to be an able and influential exponent of the principles of that party. It has passed through several changes of ownership and is now owned, controlled, edited and published by George C. and J. G. McCormick under the firm name of McCormick Brothers. In 1881 the Express, then owned by H. A. Crafts, began issuing an afternoon daily edition, which was continued until 1884, when the daily was suspended. On May 28th, 1907, McCormick Brothers began issuing a morning daily edition of the Express in connection with their weekly, and the publications have been important factors in the upbuilding of the home of its adoption. The next newspaper venture was the Standard, founded in March, 1874, by Clark Boughton, who died a few months later. After his death the Standard was published by H. L. Myrick and W. W. Sullivan until 1876, when it suspended, and the press and material was sold to John Oliver of Black Hawk.

The Fort Collins Courier was founded in June, 1878, by Ansel Watrous and Elmer M. Pelton and the paper is still being published. It was started as a Democratic paper and at once became the organ of the Democratic party of Larimer county, but after a change of ownership, in February, 1899, it became an advocate of the principles and policies of the Republican party and is still a rigid adherent of those principles and policies. In May, 1882, the Courier began issuing an evening daily edition, which, however, was suspended in June, 1883, after a little more than a year's experience. The publishers found the field too narrow to support such a daily as they were circulating and, after sinking more than a thousand dollars in the venture, decided to quit. The effort to establish a daily newspaper on a profitable basis was renewed in March, 1902, and this was successful. The Evening Courier is now nearing its ninth volume and is in a flourishing condition. It has been prosperous from the very start and is now considered one of the soild, substantial institutions of the city.

The Reporter, the first newspaper published in Loveland, was founded by G. N. Udell on August 7th, 1880. Two months later the Reporter passed under the control and management of Frank A. McClelland, eldest son of the founder of the Larimer County Express, and he sold the plant and subscription list to George W. Bailey and John Smart early in 1882. Since then the Reporter has had several owners, editors and publishers. At present it is owned and ably edited by Ira O. Knapp, who has established for it a reputation for reliability and a high regard for the right in all things, as well as in the manner of dealing with all subjects treated in its columns, which has given the Reporter a high standing among the best people of the county. The Reporter is Republican in politics.

The Loveland Leader was started in 1883 by Horace P. Crafts, who discontinued its publication after a few months' experience in a field already well filled.

In 1885 S. W. Teagarden started the Larimer Count Bee in Fort Collins. Two years later the Bee disappeared from the Fort Collins newspaper field. It was Republican in politics and was started for the purpose of driving the Express to the wall, but failed in its mission. Then came two other newspaper ventures, which had short but ill-fared lives. The Larimer County Republican started in 1889 and the Fort Collins Gazette, which made its appearance in 1892. They came upon the stage of action to "fill a long felt want" and that want proved to be a newspaper grave. The Argus was started in 1899, and after passing through several mutations and changes of owners and name finally became known as the Fort Collins Review, under which title it is still being published daily and weekly. The Review is the leading Democratic paper in the county. It is ably edited by Edward D. Foster and is published by the Review Publishing company.

In 1903 the Evening Star appeared in the Fort Collins newspaper firmament under the editorial management of I. C. Bradley. It was small in size, but bright and snappy and its daily appearance was looked forward to with considerable interest for ten months, when it dropped below the horizon and passed out of sight.

Along sometime in the 90's, the exact date I am unable to give. Earl Harbaugh started the Loveland Register, which had a somewhat checkered career, finally passing off the stage of action in 1908. The Loveland Herald, Democratic, daily and weekly, was founded in 1907, and is still preaching the doctrines espoused and promulgated by Jefferson and Jackson in a sprightly and interesting manner. It has a large number of readers, an extra good advertising patronage and is steadily making money for its active, energetic and enterprising editor, Mark A. Ellison.

Two newspapers had their birth in Berthoud, the Bulletin and the News, only the first named surviving. The Bulletin is independent in politics and is a well edited and well managed local newspaper and is rendering excellent service in exploiting the resources, advantages and attractions of the Little Thompson valley, one of the richest and most prosperous agricultural sections of Colorado. J. S. Bailey is the name of the present editor and proprietor.

Though young in years, Wellington has given birth to two newspapers, the News and the Sun, the latter alone surviving. The Sun has changed hands several times, but is now owned and conducted by John E. Pope, an experienced newspaper man and practical printer, who is serving his clientage ably and well. It was founded in 1907, and has done much to advance the material, social and moral welfare of the far-famed Boxelder valley, of which Wellington is the commercial center.

to proclaim to the world the golden resources of its chosen home. The Prospector was published by the Manhattan Publishing company, of which Dr. M. A. Baker was president; I. R. Blevin, secretary, and F. A. McCarty, treasurer. The paper was short lived and passed out of existence within a year and the printing material was moved to Denver.

In 19d6 Mr. and Mrs. B. F. Evans of Fort Collins launched the Beacon, a bright and sparkling literary weekly, which they continued to publish until 1909, when it was suspended. This completes the list of newspaper ventures in Larimer county, from which it appears that many were called and few chosen. The surviving papers are the Daily and Weekly Express; the Daily and Weekly Courier, and the Daily and Weekly Review, all of Fort Collins; the Weekly Reporter and the Daily and Weekly Herald of Loveland; the Weekly Bulletin of Berthoud, and the Weekly Sun of Wellington.

The first settlers in Larimer county remained without a postoffice and mail facilities until 1862, when the Overland Stage line was transferred from the North Platte route to the South Platte, the line following the latter stream from Julesburg to Denver, thence north through Larimer county via Little Thompson, Big Thompson, Laporte, Virginia Dale to the Laramie Plains, and thence west to a junction with the old North Platte route. That year postoffices were established at Mariana's, on the Big Thompson, and at Laporte. The office at Mariana's was called Namaqua. A Spaniard with an Indian wife was postmaster. G. R. Sanderson, who kept a store at Laporte, was the first postmaster at that place. Before that date settlers had to go to Denver or Fort Laramie for their mail. In 1864 a postoffice was established at Washburn's Crossing of the Big Thompson, and John E. Washburn was postmaster. It was known as the Big Thompson postoffice and retained that name until the Colorado Central Railroad was built in 1877, when it was changed to Loveland, which name it still bears. Soon after the soldiers established a military post at Fort Collins, in the fall of 1864, the troops were given mail facilities and a postoffice called Camp Collins. Joseph Mason was the first postmaster, the office being kept in his store, which stood where the City Drug store now stands. As the population increased and a demand grew up for them, other postoffices were established in different parts of the county where they would accommodate the greatest

Bellvue, Berthoud, Boxelder, Bulger, Drake, Elkhorn, Estes Park, Fort Collins, Glendevey, Gleneyre, Home, Laporte, Livermore, Logcabin. Long's Peak, Loveland, Masonville, Moraine Park, Pinewood, St. Cloud, Timnath, Virginia Dale, Waverly and Wellington. One of these. Fort Collins, is a second-class office, and two others, Loveland and Berthoud, are third-class offices. All the others are in the fourth class. There are five Rural free delivery routes radiating from Fort Collins, two from Loveland, two from Berthoud, two from Wellington and one from Bellvue. The annual receipts at the Fort Collins office for stamps, stamped envelopes, postal cards sold and for box rents exceeds $30,000. The government has appropriated $135,000 for a federal building containing a postoffice, work on which is expected to be started in 1911.

I have devoted much time and energy to an effort to ascertain, if possible, the origin of the names given to localities, streams, mountains, lakes, passes, etc., with greater or less success. In some instances I have been unable, after considerable research, to get the desired information, even from the oldest inhabitants, as in the case of Namaqua. No one living in the county has been able to tell me how that name originated, nor what it signifies. It is unquestionably of Indian origin, but how, when and by whom it was bestowed and what it means are among things which have escaped the memory (if they ever knew) of all the surviving pioneers. In several instances the origin of the names given to localities is indicated in the historical sketches of those localities, as in the case of Fort Collins, Loveland, Big Thom.pson, Livermore, Laporte, Virginia Dale, Stove Prairie and Buckhorn. In addition to these, the following list of names under separate captions, is presented in the belief that the history of their origin should be preserved for the benefit of future generations :

The true story of how the Cache la Poudre river got its name was told me by the late Abner Loomis and printed in the Fort Collins Courier of February 8th, 1883. This story came to Mr. Loomis from first hand, having been told to him by his long time personal friend, the late Antoine Janis, the first white settler in Larimer county, who was a member of a party of freighters that was snow-bound near the present town of Bellvue, in November,. 1836. The story as it was printed in the Courier more than a quarter of a century ago, is substantially as follows:

"A few rods distant from where the Bellvue school house now stands there is, or was, a deep artificial depression covering several feet each way in extent. From this hole in the ground the Cache la Poudre river, one of Colorado's largest and finest mountain streams, derives its name. The circumstances connected with the origin of the name are as follows :

"In November, 1836, a large party of trappers and employes in the service of the American Fur company, while on their way from St. Louis to Green River, Wyoming, with a heavily loaded wagon-train, camped for the night on the bank of the river near the locality mentioned. Antoine Janis, who was well known to all the early settlers of Northern Colorado, then a boy twelve years of age, was with the party, his father being captain of the caravan.

"During the night a severe snow storm set in and continued for several days, covering the ground with an immense body of snow, which, for the time being, prevented the further progress of the caravan. Finally, after the storm had abated and the snow had settled some, the order was given to lighten the wagons and get ready to proceed. A large, deep pit, like a house cellar only much deeper, was dug a few rods south of the camp, and all that could be spared from each wagon was stored away in it. The pit was then skillfully filled and covered over with a pile of brush, which was set on fire and burned, giving the spot the appearance of having been a camping ground. This was done to deceive the prying eyes of thieving Indians.

"The train, considerably lightened, then pursued its way over the mountains to its destination. Some of the teams returned later in the season, reopened the pit and loading the goods that had been safely cached, departed with them for Green River without the loss of a pound of freight.

"Included in the stores buried in the pit were several hundred pounds of powder. From this circumstance comes the name Cache la Poudre, a French phrase signifying 'where the powder was hidden.' "

In Chittenden's American Fur Trade, Volume I., page 41, we find the following lucid definition of the term "Cache," which possesses a local significance because of the name given to the principal river which rises in and flows eastward through Larimer county. The stream derives its name from an incident, the nature of and reason for which are so clearly described by the author. He says:

"Of the many terms peculiar to the fur trade no one was of more common use than the 'cache.' It frequently happens that parties had to abandon temporarily the property they were carrying, with the intention of returning for it at a more convenient time, the property so abandoned being cached or concealed so as to prevent its loss or injury. The use of the word in this specific meaning is very old and, of course, came through the French, to whose language it belongs. The cache, as ordinarily prepared, consisted of a deep pit in the ground, in the construction of which the point of paramount importance was to avoid any trace of the work which might attract attention after it was completed. The size of the pit depended upon the quantity it was to hold and sometimes it was very spacious and contained wagons and other bulky material. The best site was in a dry soil, easily excavated, and in a situation that afiforded good facilities for concealment. The pit was lined with sticks and dry leaves, after which the goods were carefully disposed therein, and all perishable articles, such as provisions or fur, were protected with the utmost care. This was a vital matter, for it frequently happened that valuable articles were found spoiled.

"The greatest diflficulty in the preparation of a cache was the concealment after completion. From the sharp eyes of the sons of the prairie no trace however minute would escape. * * * The concealment consisted simply in removing all evidence of the cache - never by any sort of covering. The point was to leave the ground looking just as it did before. If in turf, the sod was scrupulously replaced. In other places it was usual to build a camp-fire over the cache and thus not only obliterate all evidence of the work, but divert attention as well. With all this care, caches were often discovered and 'raised' or 'lifted' by those who had no right to them. Wolves often dug them out and their

"These caches," continues the writer, "sometimes attained notoriety and have left their names in various localities. Cache Valley, Utah, is an example. There are also numerous 'Cache Creeks' scattered throughout the West."

On Monday, August 1st, 1910, "Colorado Day," Cache la Poudre Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, unveiled and dedicated a large granite tablet to mark the spot where trappers, in 1836, cached a quantity of powder, from which incident the Cache la Poudre river takes its name. The ceremonies took place on the lawn of the home of D. D. Doty, in Pleasant valley, on whose farm the powder was buried 74 years ago, and were interesting, instructive and impressive. Appropriate introductory addresses were delivered by Hon. Fred W. Stover, judge of the county court, himself a son of a pioneer, and Mrs. Frank Wheaton of Denver, Colorado, Regent of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The tablet was then unveiled by the Misses Florence and Esther Gillette, daughters of Mrs. C. P. Gillette, Chaplain of the Colorado Chapter. The presentation address was delivered by Mrs. P. J. McHugh, and the address of acceptance on behalf of Larimer county by John J. Herring, county attorney. The tablet, suitably engraved, stands at the roadside, a few rods north of where the pit was dug, in Mr. Doty's field.

In Major Stephen H. Long's report of his noted expedition to the Rocky Mountains, made in 1820, we find the following reference to what is believed to have been the Cache la Poudre river. He says: "On the 3rd of July we passed the mouths of three large creeks heading in the mountains and entering the Platte from the northwest. One of these, nearly opposite to where we were encamped, is called 'Pateros creek,' from a Frenchman of that name who is said to have been bewildered upon it, wandering about for twenty days almost without food. He was found by a band of Kiowas who frequented this part of the country, and restored to his companions, a party of hunters at that time camping on the Arkansas."

probable that the one he called Pateros is now known . as the Cache la Poudre. How long the stream had been known as Pateros creek before Maj. Long noticed it we have no means of determining, as we are unable to find any other reference to it in reports of either former or subsequent expeditions. Neither does it appear how Long learned that it was called Pateros creek. The present name of Cache la Poudre was not bestowed upon the stream until some fifteen or sixteen years later. It appears, however, that the Cache la Poudre valley had been visited by white men hunters and trappers as much as one hundred years ago, and probably earlier than that period. The origin of the name Cache la Poudre is given elsewhere in this book.

The name Medicine Bow Mountains, a spur of the Continental Divide, and which forms the western boundary of Larimer county, is derived from the Indians. Tradition says that the Northern tribes repaired annually to these mountains for the purpose of procuring a variety of ash timber from which they made their bows. With the Indians anything that is excellent for the purpose for which it was intended is called Good Medicine ; hence this range of mountains came to be known as the place where they could get Good Medicine bows. Medicine Bow Mountains and Medicine Bow river naturally followed.

Cameron Pass, one of the notable depressions in the Medicine Bow range of mountains, was named in honor of Gen. R. A. Cam.eron, president of the Greeley Colony. Soon after locating the colony at Greeley, in 1870, General Cameron and Dr. Laws went up the Cache la Poudre river to Chamber's lake on a prospecting trip, and while in the mountains discovered the pass through the Medicine Bow Mountains which led into North Park, and afterwards named by the Union Pacific engineering department as Cameron Pass, in honor of General Cameron, and was entered on the map as such.

The Laramie river, perhaps the largest stream in Larimer county, heads in the Medicine Bow mountains, a short distance northwest of Chamber's lake. It flows almost directly north for about six miles and then bears northwesterly through one of the prettiest valleys in the state, crossing the state line into Wyoming nearly thirty miles northwest of its source. Thence it flows a northerly course and empties into the North Platte near Fort Laramie. The Laramie is fed by several important tributaries before it leaves Colorado, which have their sources in the Medicine Bow Mountains, among them being the West Branch, Spring Creek, Rawah, Mclntyre, Legarde, Grace and other creeks. The main stream derives its name from the Jacques Laramie, a French Canadian, who came into the country in the employ of the Northwest Fur company when that organization first extended its operations to the waters of the upper Missouri. Laramie gathered about him a number of reliable trappers and trapped on the headwaters of the North Platte. About the year 1820 Laramie decided to trap on the Laramie river and its tributaries, notwithstanding the fact that it was well known among trappers as a dangerous country, for the reason that it was the battle ground of the Northern and Southern tribes, who were continually at war with each other. Laram.ie's friends urged upon him the danger of penetrating the disputed country, but he calmed their fears by saying that he would go alone and throw himself upon the protection of the Indians, who were known to be friendly to him. At the next gathering at the rendezvous, Laramie, the heretofore central figure in the company, was absent. His friends, with forebodings of evil, organized a strong party and went up the Laramie river in search of a cabin which he informed them he would build. In two or three days they found the cabin and the lifeless body of their beloved partizan. There was every indication that he had met death at the hands of the Indians. From that time on they spoke of the river on the banks of which Laramie had been murdered as Laramie's river, and later trappers in the country called it Laramie river. This is the origin of the name of Laramie river, from which comes Laramie Plains, Laramie Range, Laramie Peak, Fort Laramie, Laramie county, Wyoming, Laramie City and Little Laramie river.

In the late fifties Robert Chambers and his son, Robert, came out from Iowa and built a cabin near the mouth of the Big Thompson canon. They engaged in trapping and hunting for a livlihood, operating on all the streams that head in the Medicine Bow Mountains. In the fall of 1858 they established a camp on the headwaters of the Cache la Poudre river and set about trapping for beaver and hunting bear for furs, meeting with good success. Their ammunition running low, Robert, the son, was dispatched to Laporte, then quite a settlement and trading point, for a supply of powder and lead. During his absence the Indians attacked the camp at the lake and succeeded in killing and scalping the lone occupant, but not until after a desperate fight. Chambers held the redskins in check while his supply of bullets held out and then he cut the ramrod of his gun into slugs and fired them at his assailants. But all in vain. He was at last overcome and cruelly slain and his body horribly mutilated. The Indians burned the cabin and, taking the furs that had been gathered, fled into North Park. When the son returned with a supply of ammunition he found his father cold in death and the camp destroyed. He was so affected by the scene which met his eyes that he vowed vengeance on the Indians and determined to kill on sight every redskin that crossed his path - a vow that he kept and made good. He abandoned the mountains and returned to his father's lonely cabin on the Thompson. This is substantially the story as he told it to former County Commissioner W. P. Bosworth, in 1872, who related it to the writer.

After the Union Pacific road had been completed to Cheyenne, in 1867, young Chambers, while in Cheyenne, told one of the tie contractors of the road of the vast amount of tie timber to be found on the Cache la Poudre in the vicinity of the lake where his father had been killed. The contractor went there with a camp and tie outfit and cut and floated down the Laramie more than one million railroad ties for the Union and Denver Pacific railroads. The camp was established on the shore of the lake, which was given the name of Chambers in honor of the old trapper who lost his life in a struggle with the savages. Since then the locality has been known as Chambers lake, one of the most picturesque mountain landmarks in Northern Colorado.

A beautiful trout stream derives its name from a symmetrically formed, low branched pine tree which stood solitary and alon'e near the banks of of the stream on the Emerson ranch, three miles west of Livermore postoffice. For years this tree was a familiar landmark to travelers going to and from the mountains. The Lone Pine is a tributary of the North fork of the Cache la Poudre river.

and heads high up among the timber and snows of Greenridge, a range of high hills which divide the waters of the Laramie river from those of the eastern slope. In places the stream flows through deep, dark canons and then widens out into beautiful valleys, in which are now a number of fine homes and stock ranches.

Hook & Moore canon is really a glade or narrow valley lying between two rows of hogbacks, and extends from a point a little north of Pleasant valley to Owl canon, a distance of about six miles. The county road from Fort Collins to Livermore and the mountain country beyond and also to the Laramie Plains follow this glade to Owl canon. It was named for H. M. Hook and James Moore, two stockmen who pastured cattle In the glade in 1864- 65. In 1867 Mr. Hook moved his cattle to Wyoming and was the first mayor of Cheyenne. In company with a man named French, he conducted a store at Laporte in 1864-65. He was drowned in Green River in 1878. Soon after that his widow, who was a sister of Mrs. H. C. Peterson, and her children came to Fort Collins and resided here several years. Her daughter. Miss Nettie Hook, married F. E. Gifford, a hardware merchant, in 1884.

The old Cherokee Trail, over which the Overland stage and emigrants passed in the early days, followed a glade southwest of and parallel with Hook & Moore glade, but in 1879 the road was

The long, steep hill leading from the bottom of the canon of the Cache la Poudre river to the uplands, up and down which all travel to and from Chambers lake and Cameron Pass must climb or descend, was named in honor of George W. Pingree, a hunter and trapper, who built a cabin on the river bank near where the Rustic hotel now stands, and spent his winters in the late 60's trapping beaver and hunting wild game. He cut a trail through the timber down the gulch from the summit to the river, a distance of three miles, and over it packed his supplies, furs and game. The descent from the summit to the river is 1,200 feet. Along late in the 60's, when the Union Pacific and Denver Pacific railroads were being built, tie contractors and lumbermen widened the trail and graded a road down the hill so that teams loaded with camp supplies could go over it, giving the name Pingree to the hill, by which name it has since been known.

Pingree, called "Ping" by the Indians, came West in 1846 and followed trapping and hunting. He was with Kit Carson for many years and during the Indian troubles of 1864-65 was with Col. John M. Chivington's command, participating in the battle of Sand Creek In November, 1864. The old scout and trapper is still living at Fort Lupton, well past four score years of age.

1A (behold) Porte (gate), "behold the gate," is properly named. It is the gateway to J all that mountainous region lying north of the South Platte river and extending from the Plains to the Continental Divide, embracing thousands of square miles of territory, and is counted as being among the localities where the very first white settlements were made in Colorado, and is also a point about which centers a great deal of historical interest. Indeed, it is claimed that Antoine Janis, who staked out a claim a little west of Laporte in 1844, and occupied it as a home until 1878, was the first permanent white settler in Colorado north of the Arkansas river. Trapping camps on the streams issuing from the eastern slope of the mountains had been established and occupied by white men during the trapping season thirty years before that time, but they were by no means permanent settlements. The occupants of these camps only lived in them but a few months during the year at best, and when trapping ceased to be profitable the camps were deserted and abandoned for all time. Away back in the early days, long before the gold hunters made their grand rush upon Colorado, a band of intrepid Canadian French mountaineers, hunters and trappers made Laporte headquarters for their fur catching and trading operations. They were here in 1847, when the Mormons, with their long trains, drawn by weary, footsore beasts, freighted with travelstained, yet hopeful men, women and children, passed through on their way to a new home in the deepest recesses of the Rocky Mountain region, where they sought freedom to worship God in their own peculiar manner ; they were here when the gold hunters came in 1858, and some of them and their half-breed descendants remained until years after Colorado was admitted into the Union as a sovereign state. Their neighbors were the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians, with whom they intermarried and with whom they maintained the utmost friendly and business relations. From 1858 to 1860 the community increased in numbers and in the latter year a town company was organized, known as the Colona Town company, whose object was to build a city on the banks of the Cache la Poudre at the entrance to the mountain region. This company was officered the first year by Enoch W. Raymond, president, and Arch P. Williams, secretary. The writer has in his possession stock certificate No. 3, issued by that company, which reads as follows :

The town grew rapidly, between fifty and sixty log dwellings being erected during that year, and it was the most important point for business north of Denver. The first cabin built in the new town was erected by the late John B. Provost. In 1862 Laporte was made headquarters of the Mountain division of the Overland Stage company, and for a time it flourished like a green bay tree. In 1861 it was named the county seat of Larimer county in the act passed by the first Territorial Legislature, setting off and creating the counties of the territory, and it aspired to be the capitol of the territory, but that honor went to Colorado City for the time being. Gardening and making hay, prospecting for silver and gold, and hunting were the principal occupations of the inhabitants. General farming had not then been entered upon. Game was plentiful and easily obtained and, though flour sometimes commanded $100 a sack, the settlers seldom suffered for food.

The first bridge over the Cache la Poudre river was a toll bridge built by private parties. It stood near where the present iron bridge now stands, and during the rush to California and Oregon as many as 2,000 wagons crossed on it in a single day. The toll charged ranged from $3 to $8. This bridge was carried away by the flood of 1864, and John B. Provost rigged up a ferry, which was used during high water for several years and until the county built a new bridge. In the early days the town was a bustling business and supply recruiting point for emigrants. There v/ere four saloons, a brewery, a butcher shop, a shoe shop, two blacksmith shops, a store and hotel. The first store was opened and conducted by Jerry Kershaw, who afterwards sold it to Chamberlin & Glenn. Preston Taft, still a resident of Laporte, and the late A. H. Patterson clerked in the store. The sales during the busy season often amounted to $1,000 per day. Everything kept in a store sold for what we would now call a big price. Sugar, 50 cents a pound ; oysters and sardines, from $1 to $1.50 per can; corn, 18 cents and 20 cents per pound by the sack; butter, from $1 to $1.50 per pound, and everything else in proportion. During the winter of 1864-65 hay brought $65 per ton. The brewery was owned by a German named Melanger. The building was afterwards moved to Pleasant valley and was occupied for years by James Shipp and family as a residence. The Western Union Telegraph opened an office in 1866, and the operator was a Mr. Mountuma.

The late William S. Taylor kept a stage station at Laporte for several years and had the pleasure of entertaining at his board several distinguished men, including General Grant, Vice-President Schuyler Colfax and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican. Horace Greeley stopped in Laporte over night in June, 1859. The house occupied by Mr. Taylor was moved to his farm, a short distance east of Laporte, and is now owned by Mr. M. L. Landes. The stage fare from Laporte to Denver was $20.

In 1864 the county bought a small log building of Henry Arrison at a cost of $150, which was used as a court house and county offices. That building now forms a part of the Preston Taft residence. W. D. W. and Louis Taft and H. W. Chamberlin conducted a dairy in what is now Preston Taft's barn. Judge James B. Belford, who was afterwards twice a member of congress from Colorado, held court in Laporte in 1866-7. Ed. A. Smith, now of Loveland, then a young man, was the Overland Stage company's blacksmith, stationed at Laporte. He shod the horses and repaired the coaches for the company until 1868, when the stage line was discontinued. Dr. T. M. Smith was the first physician to locate here, moving to Camp Collins in 1864 to serve as assistant surgeon for the soldiers. He went to Virginia in the early 80's and died there a few years ago at an advanced age. The first school house was built on the bluff south of the river, but was afterwards moved to near where Preston Taft now lives.

Old Laporte Brewery. Built In 1862

short time, acting as escort for the Overland stage. This detachment of troops was succeeded by Company B of the First Colorado, and this in turn by a battalion of the 11th Ohio volunteer cavalry, commanded by Captain Evans. The troops were camped on what is now known as the Jos. Ham.merly place, just west of Laporte. During the flood of 1864 the camp ground was covered with water and the soldiers had to suddenly flee to higher ground for safety. Many of their tents and much other government property were swept away by the angry waters and only a small portion of it was ever recovered. In August, 1864, Col. W. O. Collins, commanding the 11th Ohio cavalry, came down from Fort Laramie on an inspection trip, and while here decided to move the camp to the site of the present City of Fort Collins, as is elsewhere noted. In October of that year the camp was moved to the new site and given the name of Camp Collins, in honor of Colonel Collins.

Preston A. Taft came to Laporte in 1865 and still .resides there, being the only one remaining of the early settlers, all the others having moved away or died. Of those who settled in Laporte in 1858 it is not believed there Is a single one living.

This church was organized ' in 1901 and was served for several years by Rev. H. S. McCutcheon. A church building was erected that year at a cost from the San Luis valley with his Indian wife, Marie, whom he called "John," five children, servants, cattle and horses, and settled in the Big Thompson valley about three miles west of the present thriving City of Loveland. Modena was contemporary with Kit Carson, Jim Baker and other noted frontier scouts, hunters and trappers, and had scouted, hunted and trapped with them all over this western country. On one of his scouting trips up into what is now Wyoming and Montana in the early 50's, Modena camped one night in the of $3,600 and the organization has since received a large accession of members. Rev. J. N. Young is the present pastor. All the departments of the church are well organized and doing efficient work.

In the spring or early summer of 1858, more than sixty-two years ago, Mariana Modena, a man about fifty years of age, of Spanish-Indian descent, came

Big Thompson valley and was so charmed with the valley and its surroundings that he resolved to sometime make it his home. He wanted to get off by himself, so that he could raise cattle and horses and not be disturbed by neighbors. At the time he arrived at the site of his new home, his family consisted of a wife, one step-son and four children of his own. His wife was a Flathead squaw, whom he purchased in the San Luis valley in 1848 of a French trapper named Papa, paying for her in horses, taking a bill of sale as evidence of the transaction. Modena and the squaw were subsequently married by a Catholic priest. A child by Papa, born shortly after the marriage of Modena to Marie, was named Louis Papa, who now lives in Big Thompson canon, some fifteen miles west of Loveland. Four children were born to Modena and Marie, two of them dying in their infancy, the other two, Antonio and Lena, reaching maturity. Modena was devoted to his children and to his stepson, although Antonio, by his wild, wayward life, caused him a great deal of trouble. He gave his children as good an education as could be obtained in the Catholic schools in Denver. Antonio grew to be handsome, but a wild, and reckless man. At last his conduct became so bad that he was compelled to leave home, and it is reported that he was killed in a drunken row in New Mexico in 1888. Lena grew to a maiden of symmetrical figure, handsome, regular features, large, lustrous eyes and the Spanish type of litheness. She was the apple of her father's eye and he almost worshipped her. He provided her with the finest saddle horses he could find, fancy saddles and bridles and a riding blanket fringed with tiny silver bells, the handiwork of the Navajos of New Mexico, and she could ride with all the ease and grace of a princess. She died in 1872 and was buried near her father's cabin beside the two children who died in their infancy, in a graveyard inclosed by an adobe wall, with a Catholic emblem surmounting the gateway. The wife, Marie, died in 1874 and Modena followed her in June, 1878. Both were buried in the little graveyard beside their children.

Modena was the first white man to permanently locate in the Big Thompson valley. When he first came he built a log cabin for his family to live in and afterwards erected a larger stone building which he called his fort. An engraving of the group of buildings erected by him appears elsewhere in this volume. Modena named his home Namaqua. The writer has searched high and low for the origin and signification of the word "Namaqua" without success. The word is evidently a Pawnee proper noun, as Pawnee proper nouns generally end in "qua," but what it means translated into English no one of whom we have inquired seems to know. Namaqua was on the emigrant trail from the Arkansas to California and Oregon, and in 1 862 it became a station on the Overland stage line. A postoffice, one of the first established in the county, was opened here with Hiram Tadder as postmaster. Modena or Mariana, as he was best known, kept a store which contained supplies for emigrants, including frontier whiskey. Salt meats and flour were very dear, flour often selling as high as $30 per hundred pounds. They were freighted from the Missouri with ox teams, and sometimes the supply got very low before a loaded freight train arrived from the East. During these times flour often soared to $100 per hundred pounds.

Indians were troublesome in the early days, making frequent attacks upon the emigrants, and as affording a measure of protection from raids by the savages, several trains traveled together. Mariana built a bridge over the Big Thompson with a toll gate at each end and before a wagon was allowed to cross in either direction the driver must pay a dollar. There was a good ford just below the bridge, but there were times when the river was not fordable on account of high water, and it was during these times that Mariana reaped a rich harvest in tolls.

Game was plentiful when Mariana first settled at Namaqua - deer, grouse and bear in the mountains, antelope on the plains and fish in the streams. Buffaloes were in great number on the Plains in the eastern part of Colorado, but hunting them was dangerous on account of marauding bands of Indians, who stampeded the hunters' horses and often killed and scalped the hunters themselves. But little is known of the early history of Mariana and that little indefinite and unreliable, but there is no doubt but that he lead an adventurous and exciting life before he came to the Big Thompson. Namaqua postoffice was discontinued several years ago.

Rising mid the snow-capped peaks of the Continental Divide, flowing down through beautiful Estes Park and through deep, dark gorges and canons, past butting crags and meadows bespangled with wild flowers in their season, until it leaps onto the Plains, we find the Big Thompson, one of the prettiest streams in Colorado. Its valley, though not as wide as that of the Cache la Poudre, is of remarkable fertility and is wholly divided into farms, whose productiveness is the wonder of the Continent, and which bear unmistakable evidence of industry and prosperity, with their substantial and attractive farm homes, outbuildings, sleek live stock and the latest improved farm machinery.

ter section of waste land, all, or nearly all of it be- , ing under a high state of cultivation and yearly producing enormous crops of hay, grain, fruit, sugar ! beets, potatoes and other vegetables. '

But it w^as not always thus. Fifty years ago this) beautiful valley, which now charms the vision of the traveler, was an uninhabited wilderness, save as it became the temporary camping ground of migratory savages, or the home of the buffalo, the stately elk, the timid deer and the fleet-footed antelope. Though thousands of armed soldiers - Spanish and American troops - explorers, trappers and emigrants had crossed the valley, slaked their thirst and laved their weary limbs in the waters of the limpid Big Thompson in their movements from south to north and north to south, not a white man had then attempted to build himself a permanent home within the boundaries of this beautiful, sunkissed valley, save one. A lonely grave on the banks of the stream, three miles west of Loveland, bears witness that one adventurous young man had found a final resting place. A headstone at this grave still bears the inscription :

Nothing is known of his history or of the companions who accompanied him on his fatal trip, further than that gained from the inscription. He was probably an emigrant who left his eastern home, lured by the greed for gold to carve out a fortune among the golden sands of California. The first permanent human habitation erected in the Valley of the Big Thompson was built in 1858 by Mariana Modena, a three-quarter Castilian, whose boast it was in after years that he was the first "white man" to settle on the Big Thompson. He took up a squatter's claim to a tract of land situated three miles up the stream from the present City of Loveland. Here he built his cabin, which four years later became a stage station on the Overland route from the Missouri river to California, and here, twenty years later, he was gathered to his P'athers. Modena was merchant, saloon keeper and host, and his place became noted throughout the West for hospitality and good cheer. Modena was a squaw man, that is, his wife was an Indian whom Modena bought of a Frenchman. She had a son, Louis Papa, who is still living in a small park situated several miles up the canon above his step-father's old home. The log house and outbuildings erected by Modena are still standing as a monument to the memory of one of the most noted frontier characters of his day.

In 1859 William McGaa, better known in the pioneer days as "Jack Jones," who was also a squaw man, built a cabin on the land later owned by Abraham Rist, and became Modena's neighbor. He was the first real white man to settle in the Big Thompson valley, and his son, William, now of Pine Ridge, South Dakota, was the first child born in Denver.

In 1860 the settlement in the valley was greatly augmented by the arrival of a number of other settlers who filed on claims and built homes for themselves and families. Among these were John Hahn,

Osborn, James Boutwell, W. A. Bean, Jed Donefetter, Henry Dose, Samuel HafEner, Joseph Markley, Frank Prager, Foster brothers, John Miller, H. B. Chubbuck, W. C. Stover, J. J. Ryan, Adam Dick, Doc Allen and Ed Clark, and from that time on the population of the valley steadily increased until now it is one of the most densely populated valleys in Colorado.

There were many among the pioneer settlers in the Big Thompson, as there were also in the Cache la Poudre valley, who had much to do with shaping the policies and directing the destiny of Larimer county, including John Hahn, Thos. H. Johnson, William B. Osborn, W. A. Bean, H. B. Chubbuck and Lucas Brandt, of the Big Thompson; J. M. Sherwood, F. W. Sherwood, A. F. Howes, Abner Loomis, James B. Arthur, John G. Coy, Peter Anderson, Joseph Mason, N. C. Alford, Revilo Loveland, W. C. Stover and Harris Stratton, of the Cache la Poudre valley. These were all strong men, intellectually and physically, men of unblemished character, strict integrity and the courage of their convictions. They possessed the confidence and good will of their neighbors and all of them have since served the county in positions of honor and trust with fidelity and faithfulness. They were never found wanting in any crisis or tim.e of stress. They were a noble band of men, made up of the best blood and brawn t)f the nation - clearbrained, firm-willed and strong of heart. No marble shaft is needed to commemorate their virtues, for they are enshrined in the hearts of all who helped to subdue the wilderness and transform it into lawabiding and God-fearing communities. Some of these have helped to make the laws and frame the institutions of Colorado; others of those mentioned have been intrusted with authority to administer and execute the laws of the state. All were commonwealth builders. No public scandals arising from malfeasance in office or failure to perfom a duty has ever attached to any of them. They were not grafters; they were patriots.

place, which was called Namaqua, where the Overland stage changed horses and where there was a store, postofKce, blacksmith shop and other public conveniences. Later a trading point and business center grew up at Old St. Louis, one mile east of the present City of Loveland, where a flour mill was built in 1867.

Rapids, Big Thompson Canon

known as the "Chubbuck" ditch. The scheme at the time was called a foolhardy one and the proprietors found few to encourage them in their enterprise, but they persisted and proved the faith that was in them. The ditch demonstrated that the bluff lands were the very best for grain growing and general agriculture and the result was that other and larger ditches were soon after constructed to carry water to all the lands on both sides of the stream for many miles in each direction.

In the fall of 1877 the Colorado Central Railroad company completed its line of road from Golden to Cheyenne. The road crosses the Big Thompson about a mile west of Old St. Louis, and a station was established on the bluff lands north of the stream. Here, in September of that year, a townsite was laid out and platted in a wheat field on a farm owned by the late David Barnes. It was given the name of Loveland, in honor of Hon. W. A. H. Loveland, president of the railroad company.

which name the town, now a city of between 4,000 and 5,000 people, still bears. The town is beautifully located and occupies a position that commands a fine view of the valley up and down the stream and the mountains to the west. Many of the buildings erected at Old St. Louis were moved to the new town, and before winter set in Loveland occupied a commanding position on the rriap, with its business houses, offices, shops and other public conveniences needed for a thrifty and growing community. The name of the postoffice was changed from Big Thompson to Loveland, trees were planted along both sides of the streets, streets graded and the whole town began to take on a healthy, prosperous growth. At this time it numbers among its more important manufacturing enterprises a 1,200 ton beet sugar factory, built in 1901, which turns out an average of 40,000,000 -pounds of granulated sugar annually ; fruit and vegetable canning factories, flouring mill and grain elevator. It is also the junction point of the Colorado & Southern (formerly the Colorado Central) and the Great Western railroads, and is one of the most important shipping points in the state.

The principal irrigating systems of the Big Thompson valley are the Handy, the Home Supply, the Louden and the Greeley and Loveland canals, and these furnish water for domestic uses and manufacturing purposes in addition to a supply for irrigating all the land lying between, the Little Thompson creek on the south and the divide between the Cache la Poudre and Big Thompson on the north, embracing an area of about 150 square miles. In 1880 Loveland had a population of 600 souls.

After diligent search through all the authorities at command and consulting many of the pioneers, we have been unable to trace the origin of the names given the Big and Little Thompson streams. The books contain no mention of the origin and no one seems to know how, why, nor when the name was bestowed upon these streams. It is probable, however, that they were named by David Thompson, an English engineer and astronomer in the employ of the Northwest Fur company, who, in 1810, traversed and explored the country from the headwaters of the Missouri river to the! headwaters of the Arkansas in search of trapping grounds in the interest of the company he represented. In 1811 he continued his explorations, and on July 15 th arrived at Astoria, Oregon, and was the first white man to explore the Colum.bia river above the point where it was reached by Lewis and Clark in 1806. Thompson's name appears in the "History of the

Fur Trade of the Far West," by Chittenden, and he is the only Thompson mentioned in the work as an explorer. The streams were known as the 1 hompson creeks before Fremont crossed the Plains in 1843 on his second expedition, as he mentions them in his report to the War department. It is, therefore, fair and reasonable to assume that they were named in honor of the English scientist, David Thompson.

Trappers' camps were established by the Northwest Fur company, later known as the Hudson Bay company, on all the streams of Northern Colorado during the second decade of the nineteenth century, and it is quite possible that the camps on these two streams were known and designated as the Big and Little Thompson camps.

If we except the coming to the Cache la Poudre valley in 1858 of John B. Provost and his party of French Canadian trappers and mountaineers, and the location on the Big Thompson the same year of Mariana Modena and his Mexican helpers, the settlement of these valleys in 1860 by Anglo Saxons was contemporaneous. The Sherwoods, the Arthurs, the Davises, G. R. Strauss, Alfred F. Howes and others located in the Cache la Poudre Valley, and W. B. Osborn, Thos. H. Johnson, John Hahn, J. N. Hollowell, Samuel Hafiner and Joseph Markley and others settled in the Big Thompson valley, so that the beginning of civilization in Larimer county practically dates back to 1860. Some of these had crossed the Plains in the great gold rush of 1858-9 and '60, and being disappointed in their search for the precious metal, turned their attention to the production of hay, vegetables and beef to supply Denver and the mining camps in the mountains. They cam.e north from Denver and found locations suitable for their purposes in the valleys named and made settlements. Most of them were single men, young in years, strong of heart, sturdy of frame and ambitious. Nearly all of the few^ who had families had left them in their eastern homes to follow on later when the husbands and fathers had built and established homes for them. A few, very few, brought their wives and children to share the dangers, hardships and privations on the frontier with them.

That year nearly all of the land along the margin of the streams, from the mouth of Buckhorn creek on the Big Thompson to what is now the Weld county line, and from Laporte on the Cache la Poudre to the same line, was taken up for hay farms. The luxuriant grasses that were found growing on the bottom lands made excellent hay.

a commodity that was in great demand in the mining camps, often bringing from $100 to $150 per ton. The hay was hauled to Central City and Black Hawk by oxen and it required about ten days to make the round, trip. The road was long and for a part of the way the hills were steep and rough. A ton or ton and a half of hay made a big load for four yoke of oxen. Usually two or three men would make the trip together, so they could help each other in case of a breakdown or other trouble. On their return they brought home from Denver such supplies, provisions, clothing, etc., as were needed to last until another trip could be made, and would also execute errands for their neighbors. The return of the hay peddlers was always a welcome event, and those interested gathered at the cabins of the home-comers to get the news from the outside world and to retail the gossip of the community in exchange. The early day settlers in the two valleys had practically the same experiences and labored under the same adverse conditions for the first few years of their frontier life.

Of the settlers who came to the Big Thompson in 1860, but few remain. Some of them thought a tract of land several miles in extent was too small for a white man and when their holdings began to be restricted by newcomers, they moved on. The ranches were then located by the claimant stepping off a certain number of paces along the stream and then drawing an imaginary line from bluff to bluff at each end of the measured spaces, and calling his all the land thus enclosed. With the advent of the "Claim Club" squatters' claims were restricted to 160 acres. After the lands had been surveyed in 1864, locators made homestead filings and most of them subsequently proved up and secured title from the government - to their individual tracts. When the government survey was made some of the claims were found to be short, while others contained more acres than they were entitled to, one in particular having enclosed 320 acres for a quarter section.

All the bottom land was mowed or cultivated that year and the succeeding few years, that portion lying nearest the stream being used for raising vegetables, potatoes principally. Irrigation was not resorted to, onh' the grass that matured from rainfall being cut and cured for hay. This was cut with hand scythes and raked by hand. Mowers and horse rakes were unknown on the Plains in those days. The raising of grain was not attempted, the settlers depending on Denver for flour and other provisions. There were often times when bread was not to be had for days and when antelope meat was the main stay of life. Flour was hauled across the Plains from the Missouri river, a distance of 600 miles, with ox teams, and this staple at times of scarcity in Denver commanded fabulous prices. Sometimes it could not be obtained at all. Forty dollars a sack was the usual price for flour and on occasions as high as $100 per sack was paid for it. However, the pioneers made the best of the situation and enjoyed themselves with their dances and public gatherings. There was more of a community of interest in those days than exists now, and if one had a supply of provisions and his neighbor had none, a division was promptly made so that the neighbor should not go hungry. As fast as means permitted many of the first settlers began to buy cows and to accumulate herds of cattle. There was a wide extent of the finest kind of pasturage tor stoci; as all the bluff lands were open and unoccupied and cattle and horses thrived and grew fat on their rich, nutritious grasses.

In 1862, after the route of the Overland stage had been changed from the North Platte to the South Platte and the stages began making daily trips from Denver to the north and west, a postoffice was established at Mariana's crossing and called Namaqua, and James Boutwell was the first postmaster. In 1864 the route of the stage was changed and crossed the Big Thompson at the John Washburn place, about a mile south of the present City of Loveland.

A postoffice called the Big Thompson was opened at this crossing, with Mr. Washburn as postmaster. The stage station at Mariana's was opened by James Boutwell who is still living and is a resident of Denver. Later he sold the station to Ryan & Acker who conducted it until the stage route was changed to Washburn's crossing. In 1861 the settlers began to construct small ditches through which to conduct water from the stream to their gardens, potato patches and hay fields. That was the introduction in the Big Thompson valley of farming by irrigation. Ordinarily good crops of hay could be produced on the bottom lands without artificial aid, but there were years when the rainfall was insufficient and the tonnage of hay was light and in 1861, was one of those years. The partial failure of the crop that year, due to lack of jnoisture, is what stimulated ditch building. The result of the application of water to the fields by artificial means was so surprising and so encouraging that the settlers formed companies and com- binations and constructed larger ditches from which greater areas could be watered and bigger crops produced. Vegetables of all kinds were in good demand in Denver and the mining camps and brought high prices, potatoes at one time commanding 12 cents a pound, and settlers engaged largely in raising them, but not a bushel of grain was raised in the valley until 1865. That year William B. Osborn secured a half bushel each of seed wheat and barley and sowed the grain on his farm. He cut the grain with a cradle and threshed it with a flail. Taking part of his wheat he went to Douty's grist mill on South Boulder creek and had it made into flour. Douty's mill was a primitive affair, the burrs used having been chiseled out of granite found in the canon.

Mr. Osborns success at wheat growing stimulated others to engage in it and from that time on wheat has been one of the staple crops of the valley. So much wheat was grown in 1866-7 that a mill became indispensible and in the fall of 1867, Andrew Douty moved his mill to the Big Thompson valley and sat it up at a point on the stream about a mile east of the present City of Loveland. This was the first flouring mill put in operation in Larimer county. Mrs. Elizabeth Stone and H. C. Peterson began the erection of a mill at Fort Collins in 1867 but did not finish and get it in operation until a year later.

Douty's mill was 30x50 feet ground dimensions and three stories high. It had only one set of burrs and could grind but about 75 bushels of grain per day. The mill cost about $10,000 and proved ^ not only a good investment, but also a great convenience to the people of the county. About 10,000 bushels of wheat were raised in the Big Thompson valley in 1867, and one-half of it was made into flour at the White Rock mill on Boulder creek. The Big Thompson mill was operated by Andrew Douty, George W. Litle and J. A. Litle, first one and then another until Mr. Douty's death in 1874. After the settlement of the estate the mill was sold to A. Leonard & Son, who improved it and successfully operated it for several years.

The first settlers in the Big Thompson valley had their Indian scares in the early days when they gathered at some central point for mutual protection, but it does not appear that the savages ever killed any white people on that stream. The' Indians swooped down in the valley from the mountains now and then on horse stealing expeditions or on begging trips, but they never killed anybody on their raids, except in one instance and he was a Mexican. This was in the summer of 1864. A band of Utes came down from North Park on a horse stealing raid and as they emerged from the mountains they met a Mexican who was hauling stone for Mariana. They surrounded him and filled his body with arrows. His scalp was hung on a Cottonwood stump and the red-skins proceeded on down the valley scattering fear and consternation among the settlers. However, they made no attempts, upon the lives of any of the settlers, their object being to gather up and run o£E as many horses as they could. They secured several horses from Mariana and started for the hills. The story of their raid and what came of it, as told by Abner Loomis, one of the pursuers of the band and who helped to recover the horses, is related elsewhere in this book.

At another time during the same year a band of Utes took Mariana's horses and fled to the hills in the direction of Middle Park. With a couple of friends Mariana pursued them, coming up with the band early one morning just as the Indians were eating breakfast. Instructing his companions to be careful not to kill an Indian, but to keep out of sight and fire at the ground, Mariana rode toward the camp on the dead run, yelling and shooting as his horse bounded toward them. The Indians were taken by surprise and supposing a lot of white men were after them, mounted their ponies and went tearing away at full speed and without turning around to look back. Mariana and his friends gathered up the stolen horses and few things about the camp and returned to their homes. This is believed to be the last time the Indians raided the Big Thompson settlement.

As early as 1871 George W. Litle, for the purpose of solving the question whether fruit could be grown in the valley, planted an acre to apple trees. He had such good success with his experiment that others soon followed his example and now the farm without an orchard is an exception. Mr. Litle was the first man in the county to produce apples.

On November 1st, 1878, Frank Marvin, a half lunatic hermit who had been a county charge for a good many years, shot and killed John Matson, just as the latter was entering the Ritchie home about five miles west of Loveland. The tragedy resulted from a quarrel the two men got into a few days before over a mule belonging to one of Mat- son's neighbors, that Marvin had taken up and claimed as his own. From words the two men came to blows and in the fight Marvin got decidedly the worst of it. It was then thought that the trouble between Marvin and Matson was over after the drubbing the former received, but not so. Marvin "nursed his wrath to keep it warm" and borrowing a Winchester, watched his chance to get even with. Matson, following the latter to Mr. Richie's

Estes Park, one of the most important as it is perhaps the most beautiful scenic center in Colorado, is situated at the foot of Long's Peak in the southwest corner of Larimer county. The Park proper ranges from one to three miles in width and about twelve miles in length, and embraces some of the grandest and most inspiring mountain views to be found on the continent.

Entrance To Estes Park

house towards which the victim fled on seeing Marvin with a gun in his hand. Just as Matson was crossing the threshold in search of refuge, Marvin fired and Matson fell dead. Marvin then disappeared and was not seen or heard of again in Colorado until January, 1882, when he was apprehended in Denver by Sheriff James Sweeney who brought the murderer back to Fort Collins and lodged him in jail to await trial on the charge of murder. Marvin was convicted of lunacy and committed to the State Insane asylum where he died several years ago.

Nature seems to have reserved its best efforts in planning to beautify the earth for man's delight and concentrated them upon the forming of Estes Park. Perhaps the best description of this beautiful inter-mountainvale ever written is that contained in "Life in the Rocky Mountains", a book written by Miss Isabella L. Bird and published by G. P. Putman & Son in 1879-80. Miss Bird was an English lady and a thoroughly disciplined and observant traveler. She spent several weeks in Estes Park in the autumn and early winter of 1873, and her description of the manifold beauties of the Park has never been excelled. She says:

"Among the striking peculiarities of these mountains are hundreds of high-lying valleys, large and small at heights varying from 6,000 to 1 1 ,000 feet. The most important are North Park, held by hostile Indians; Middle Park, famous for hot springs and trout; South Park, rich in minerals, and San Luis Park. * « « But parks innumerable are scattered throughout the mountains, most of them unnamed and others nicknamed by the hunters and trappers who have made them their temporary resorts. They always lie within the flaming foot hills, their exquisite stretches of flowery pastures dotted artistically with clumps of trees sloping down-like to bright swift streams full of red waiscoated trout, or running up in soft glades into the dark forest, above which the snow peaks rise in their infinite majesty. * * * Estes Park combines the beauties of all. The Park is most irregularly shaped, and contains hardly any level grass. It is an aggregate of lawns, slopes and glades. * * * The Big Thompson, a bright j rapid trout stream, snow-born on Long's Peak a few miles higher, takes all sorts of -magical twists, vanishing and reappearing unexpectedly, glancing among lawns, rushing through romantic ravines, everywhere making music through the still, long nights. Here and there the lawns are so smooth, the trees so artistically grouped, a lake makes such an artistic foreground, or a waterfall comes tumbling down with such an apparent feeling for the picturesque, that I am almost angry with Nature for her close imitation of art. But in another hundred yards. Nature glorious unapproachable, inimitable is herself again, raising one's thoughts reverently upward to her Creator and owner. Grandeur and sub- Hmity, not softness, are the features of Estes Park. The glades which begin so softly are soon lost in the dark primeval forest, with their peaks of rosy granite and their stretches of granite blocks piled and poised by Nature in some mood of fury. The §treaxns.axe -lost in canons nearly or quite inaccessible, awful in their blackness and darkness; every valley ends in mystery; seven mountain ranges raise their frowning barriers between us and the

Plains, and at the south end of the Park, Long's Peak rises to a height of 14,700 (14,276) feet, with his bare granite head slashed with eternal snows. The lowest part of the Park is 7,500 feet at a height of 9,000 feet, we saw at last Estes Park, lying 1,500 feet below in the glory of the setting sun, an irregular basin, lighted up by the bright waters of the rushing Thompson, guarded by sentinel mountains of fantastic shape and monstrous size, with Long's Peak rising above them all in unapproachable grandeur, while the Snowy Range, with its outlying spires heavily timbered, come down upon the Park slashed by stupendous canons lying deep in purple gloom. The rushing water was blood-red. Long's Peak was aflame, the glory of the glowing heavens was given back to earth. Never, nowhere, have I seen anything to equal the view with Estes Park. The mountains 'of the land which is very far off' are very near now, but the near is more glorious than the far and reality than dreamland."

The name of the first white man to set foot in Estes Park is not disclosed by the records. He may have been an independent trapper and hunter, or an employe of either the Hudson Bay company or of the American Fur company. Certain it is, that agents of these companies explored and established trapping camps on all the streams flowing out of Ihe" eastern base of the mountains, from the British Possessions as far south as the Arkansas river, as early as 1810. It is therefore highly probable that some of them penetrated the hills to the sources of the Big Thompson and its affluents in search of fur bearing animals, in which event they must have explored Estes Park. The records do show, however, that Kit Carson and a band of trappers spent the winter of 1840-41 in Estes Park gathering furs. They went in with pack animals and probably followed the course of the Big Thompson as near as they could. From that time until in October, 1859, a period of nineteen years, Estes Park was an unknown land, so far as the records show.

For the following account of the early settlement of Estes Park, I am indebted to a charming little book called the "Story of Estes Park", written by Enos A. Mills, the noted mountaineer and guide, and published in 1905, from which I am kindly permitted to copy at will, many thanks to the author. In this book Mr. Mills says:

"The Park was named in honor of the first settler, Joel Estes, who visited it in October, 1859. It was named by W. N. Byers, founder of the Rocky Mountain News, in 1864. When Estes first came to the Park, he saw new lodge poles and other recent Indian signs, but so far as known, there never was an Indian in the Park since the white man came. In the summer of 1860, in a gulch about one-half mile south of Mary lake, Milton Estes captured a black Indian pony. Straggling arrow heads have been found over its Parks and not far from Sprague's is what is called the ruin of an old Indian fort.

Mr. and Mrs. Joel Estes moved into the Park early in 1860 and built their cabin on Fish creek, about a half block north of the "ranch house". Except while away on a visit to Arkansas in 1863, the Estes made the Park their home until the summer of 1866. In the spring of 1861 Milton Estes, then twenty-one, journeyed to Fort Lupton and wedded Miss Mary L. Flemming, who had come to Colorado in 1859, at the age of seventeen. They moved to the Park alone and on the birth of Charles F. Estes, February 10, 1865, became the parents of the first white child born in the Park. Mr. and Mrs. Estes still live, and from their lips I heard the story of their Estes Park life. * * *

Joel Estes, like Boone, enjoyed being far from neighbors, and one day while hunting, came to where he could look down into the Park, and being delighted with the view, at once moved into it for "hunting and prospecting." Supplies were packed in until 1861 when they were brought in a two-wheeled cart. The Estes families lived the simple life. Twice each year they went to the Denver postofKce for their mail. On these eventful trips, which were made during the spring and fall, they took a small quantity of fish, game or hides to market. Reviewing her pioneer life, from a distance of forty years, Mrs. Milton Estes said: "We kept well, enjoyed the climate, had plenty of fun, were monarchs of all we surveyed, had no taxes to pay, and were contented as long as we remained, but I wish I had pictures of ourselves in those old days; and clothes, how we must have looked."

Among the campers who came in during the summer of 1865, were Rev. and Mrs. Richardson and one August day of that summer he preached in the Estes cabin to <-en listeners. Rev. Richardson was a Methodist. The next religious services were by United Brethren, Revs. E. J. Lamb and Ross, in August, 1871. In the spring of 1866 the Estes sold their holdings in the Park and moved away, and none of them have ever been back. Joel Estes died in New Mexico in 1875, his wife in Iowa, in 1882. "At this date, January 1905" says Mr. Mills, "Mr. and Mrs. Milton Estes are alive and for the past few years have been dividing their time in their comfortable homes in Denver and El Paso, Texas." A few months later a Mr. Jacobs bought the Estes claim for $250.00, but in a short time it was acquired by Hank Farrar, known as "Buckskin". Mr. Farrar is a brother of Clinton and Martin Farrar of Fort Collins, and Laporte. Late in 1867 the Estes claim came under the control of Griffith Evans, and in due course, lost its identity by becoming a part of the Lord Dunraven estate. Mr. Evans founded the first permanent settlement by remaining in the Park for nearly twenty years. In 1868 "Rocky Mountain Jim", James Nugent, who five years later, met a tragic death at the hand of an assassin, built a cabin in Muggins' gulch and that same year Israel Rowe, hunter and discoverer of Gem lake, established a home a short distance southwest of the base of Mount Olympus. That year Charles W. Dennison, who was the unwilling victim of the first death in the Park, built a log house about midway between the cabins of Rowe and Evans, and George Hearst (Muggins) pastured his cattle that year in Muggins' gulch on the present Meadow Dale stock ranch. A flock of sheep was brought into the Park that year, but they did not remain long for mountain lions loved mutton too well to make the venture a safe and profitable one.

Long's Peak, that grim sentinel of the Continental Divide, which marks the southwestern corner of Larimer county, caught the eye of Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike one day in November, 1806, while on his exploring expedition which resulted in the discovery of the Peak that bears his name. The first mention of Long's Peak occurs in the report of Major Stephen H. Long who had been sent out by

President Madison to explore the great Plains and the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. He came in sight of it on June 30th, 1820, as his expedition slowly wended its way up the South Platte and while still far out on the Plains on July 3. Three days later, while his party was in camp at the mouth of the Cache la Poudre river the name the Peak now bears and will continue to bear while time shall last, was bestowed in honor of Major

Bear Lake, Estes Park

Long, the intrepid Commander of the expedition. Neither Major Long nor any of his party ever scaled the mountain that bears his name, nor did Lieutenant Pike ever climb Pike's Peak, but fourteen years later, E. James, a botanist in Major Long's party ascended that mountain and was the first man known to have reached a summit of the Colorado Mountains. He also measured it, giving it height as 11,500 feet. The Peak was named in his honor, a title it retained for several years and was then changed to Pike.

What is claimed to have been the first attempt to climb Long's Peak was made in August, 1864 by W. N. Byers, founder of the Rocky Mountain News. With three companions, Mr. Byers scaled Mount Meeker and went some distance through Keyhole on the trail now used. The attempt was unsuccessful. Four years later Mr. Byers led a have gazed out upon the wonders of the Rocky Mountain regions from the lofty summit of the noted mountain. Miss Anna E. Dickinson, the celebrated lecturer, was probably the first woman to make the ascent. She made the climb as the guest of Prof. E. Hayden of the United States Geological survey in 1871. In August, 1871, Rev.

Estes Park In Winter

party of climbers to the top. On August 23, 1868, the first ascent of Long's Peak was made. The persons who made it were, Major J. W. Powell, W. H. Powell, L. W. Replinger, Samuel Gorman, Ned E. Farrell, John C. Summer and William N. Byers. There was not the slightest indication that human foot had ever trod the summit before. This party, says Mr. Mills, made barometric and other observations and built a stone cairn on the southeast corner of the summit. It is safe to say that since then, thousands of people

E. J. Lamb, the first regular guide made his first ascent, and in coming down, descended the "east precipice" a feat but once repeated and then by Enos A. Mills in 1903. Early in October, 1873, the mountain was scaled by four persons, not unknown to fame. They were Miss Isabella L. Bird, the noted English traveler, Ex.-Mayor Piatt Rogers, of Denver, Judge S. S. Downer, of Boulder, with "Rocky Mountain Jim" as guide. On September 23rd, 1884, Miss Carrie J. Welton, a wealthy young lady from Massachusetts, perished at Keyhole on her way down from the summit. She gave out at the top of the trough, but the guide, Carlyle Lamb, succeeded in getting her as far down as Keyhole, when at her urgent request, he left her and went to the Long's Peak House for help to bring her down the mountain. He left her about 9 o'clock at night, making all possible haste, but it was almost morning before he could get back to her through the cold, windy night with help. He found her dead. . Over-exertion together with the cold, had cut short her life. The body was tenderly borne to the foot of the mountain and shipped thence to her former eastern home for burial. The first death in Estes Park appears to have been that of Charles D. Miller, for whom the Miller Ford was named, who was accidentally shot and killed by Charles W. Dennison. Later a climber of Mount Olympus accidentally shot and killed himself. He was buried on the south side of the Thompson, just below the mouth of Fall river.

"In the autumn and early winter of 1872, Earl Dunraven, with his guests. Sir William Cummings and Earl Fitzpatrick, shot big game in the Park. Dunraven was so delighted with the abundance of game and the beauty and grandeur of the scene, that he determined to have Estes Park as a game preserve. His agent set to work at once to secure the land. Men were hired to file on claims and ultimately about 14,000 acres were supposed to have been secured from the government. * » * * Many of Dunraven's land claims were contested. His agent had secured much of the land by loose or fraudulent methods and some by bullying the homeseekers. R. Q. McGregor and others contested the twentyrone original claims. The contestants claimed that "these twenty-one claims had been entered by not more than five or six men ; that the claimants had never lived on the land ; that there were neither house nor fence, nor any improvement on any of the land." There are three "old timers," still living in the park, who insist that the greater portion of Dunraven's land was fraudulently secured. Dunraven came out with about 8,000 acres, but his agent claimed something like 15,000, and for many years controlled that amount. In 1895 some one investigated, and since that time more than thirty homesteads have been taken within the boundaries of the Dunraven ranch.'' Since then Dunraven has sold all of his interests in the Park.

and Mrs. McGregor was appointed postmistress the following year. Mr. McGregor served Larimer county as county judge from 1882 to 1884, being elected to fill a vacancy in the office. In 1876 the postoffice was transferred to the ranch house and Mrs. Griff Evans became postmistress. John T. Cleave became postmaster in 1877, but did not move the office to its present location, at the junction of Fall river with the Big Thompson until ten years later. Many came to the Park to locate and stay during 1875. John Jones and John Hupp settled at Beaver Park; Abner Sprague and his parents in Moraine Park; H. W. Ferguson at the Highlands and Rev. and Mrs. E. J. Lamb chopped a wagon road through the timber to the present location of Long's Peak Inn. Mr. and Mrs. W. E. James started Elkhorn Lodge in 1877. The Estes Park hotel was built and opened in 1877. On the 20th of October, 1876, the first marriage was solemnized at the Ferguson cabin in the Park, the contracting parties being Richard M. Hubbell, now of Fort Collins, and Miss Anna Ferguson. Rev. J. F. Coffman performed the ceremony. The first term of a public school was held in one of the cottages at Elkhorn Lodge in the winter of 1881. Early in the eighties, Postmaster J. T. Cleave began to keep household supplies and a few articles for sale and in the early nineties, C. E. Lester opened a store at the present village of Estes Park for the accommodation of tourists and summer visitors. The telephone line was completed to the Park "-in 1900, an office being opened at that time. The population of Estes Park increased gradually until 1903, when the Big Thompson canon road from Loveland to the Park, one of the finest scenic roads in the state, was completed. Since then, thousands of people have visited the Park each summer, many to spend the heated term in comfort and amid the most charming of surroundings with not a few to become permanent residents. A pretty village, with its fine hotels, one, the Stanley, costing $250,000.00, its general stores, bank, shops and other public conveniences has been built up at the junction of Fall river and the Big Thompson, and the hillsides and small parks are dotted with neat cottages built to accommodate tourists and summer visitors. On Wind river, the Young Mens Christian Association of Colorado, has established permanent headquarters, where annual conferences of that organization are held. These conferences are attended every summer by hundreds of delegates. A fish hatchery, one of the best in Colorado is located on Fall river a few miles above the village of Estes Park. A daily line of automobile steamers, carrying the United States mail, connect Loveland' the nearest point on the Colorado & Southern railway, with Estes Park, and make the run between the two places in 2J hours. At the presidential election held in November, 1908, 173 votes were cast in the Park for president, which is an indication of the growth and importance of a community that has practically grown up in the past decade. More that 4,000 visitors and tourists spent from a few weeks to a few months in the Park during the summer of 1909, and Estes Park is now the summer playground for thousands of people.

In Miss Isabella L. Bird's charming book, "Life in the Rocky Mountains," I find the following graphic description of the ascent of Long's Peak which she made in September, 1873, in company with ex-Mayor Piatt Rogers, of Denver, and Judge S. S. Downer, of Boulder, with "Rocky Mountain Jim" as guide. Rogers and Downer were then young men, who had accompanied Miss Bird to Estes Park from Longmont. Since then not a year has passed that large numbers of tourists and explorers have ascended the Peak and drunk in the glories so enthusiastically portrayed by Miss Bird. Her story is as follows:

"As this account of the ascent of Long's Peak could not be written at the time, I am much disinclined to write it, especially as no sort of description within my powers could enable another to realize the glorious sublimity, the majestic solitude and the unspeakable awfulness and fascination of the scenes in which I spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

"Long's Peak, 14,700 feet high, blocks up one end of Estes Park, and dwarfs all the surrounding mountains. From it on this side rise, snow-born, the bright St. Vrain, and the Big and Little Thompson. By sunlight or moonlight its splintered grey crest is the one object which, in spite of wapiti and bighorn, skunk and grizzly, unfailingly arrests the eye. From it come all storms of snow and wind, and the forked lightnings play around its head like a glory. It is one of the noblest of mountains, but in one's imagination it grows to be much more than a mountain. It becomes invested with a personality. In its caverns and abysses one comes to fancy that it generates and chains the strong winds, to let them loose in its fury. The thunder becomes its voice, and the lightnings do it homage. Other summits blush under the morning kiss of the sun, and turn pale the next moment; but it detains the first sunlight and holds it round its head for an hour at least, till it pleases to change from rosy red to deep blue; and the sunset, as if spell-bound lingers latest on its crest. The soft winds which knife in his belt, his revolver in his waistcoat pocket, his saddle covered with an old beaver-skin, from which the paws hung down; his camping blankets behind him, his rifle laid across the saddle in front of him, and his axe, canteen and other hardly rustle the pine needles down here are raging gear hanging to the horn, he was as awful looking rudely up there round its motionless summit. The a ruffian as one could see. By way of contrast he mark of fire is upon it ; and though it has passed rode a small Arab mare, of exquisite beauty, skittish, into grim repose it tells of fire and upheaval as high-spirited, gentle, but altogether too light for truly, though not as eloquently, as the living him; and he fretted her incessantly to make her volcanoes of Hawaii. Here under its shadow one learns how naturally Nature worships and the propitiation of the forces of Nature arose in minds which had no better light.

"Long's Peak, the American Matterhorn, as some call it, was ascended five years ago for the first time. I thought I should like to attempt it, but up to Monday, when Evans left for Denver, cold water was thrown upon the project. It was too late in the season, the winds were likely to be strong, etc., but just before leaving, Evans said the weather was looking more settled, and if I did not get farther than the timber line it would be worth going. Soon after he left. 'Mountain Jim, came in, and said he would go up as guide, and the two youths, Piatt Rogers and S. S. Downer, who rode here with me from Longmont, and I caught at the proposal. Mrs. Edwards at once baked bread for three days, steaks were cut from the steer which hangs up conveniently, and tea, sugar and butter were benevolently added. Our picnic was not to be luxurious or 'well-found' one, for, in order to avoid the expense of a pack mule, we limited our luggage to what our saddle horses could carry. Behind my saddle I carried three pair of camping blankets and a quilt, which reached to my shoulders. My own boots were so much worn that it was painful to walk, even about the Park, in them, so Evans had lent me a pair of his hunting boots, which hung to the horn of my saddle. The horses of the two young men were equally loaded, for we had to prepare for many degrees of frost. 'Jim' was a shocking figure; he had on an old pair of high boots, with a baggy pair of old trousers made of deer hide, held on by an old scarf tucked into them ; a leather shirt, with three or four ragged unbuttoned waistcoats over it; an old smashed wideawake hat from under which his tawny, neglected ringlets display herself, Heavily loaded as all our horses were, 'Jim' started over the halfmile level grass at a hand-gallop, and then throwing his mare on her haunches, pulled up alongside of me, and with a grace of manner which soon made me forget his appearance, entered into a conservation which lasted for more than three hours, in spite of the manifold checks of fording streams, single file, abrupt ascents and descents, and other incidents of mountain travel. The ride was one series of glories and surprises of and glade, of lake and stream, of mountains on mountains, culminating in the rent pinnacles of Long's Peak, which looked yet grander and ghastlier as we crossed an attendant mountain 11,000 feet high. The slanting sun added fresh beauty every hour. There were dark pines against a lemon sky, grey peaks reddening and etherealizing, gorges of deep and infinite blue, floods of golden glory pouring through canons of enormous depth, an atmosphere of absolute purity, an occasional foreground of cotton-wood and aspen flaunting in red and gold to intensify the blue gloom of the pines, the trickle and the murmur of streams fringed with icicles, the strange sough of gusts moving among the pine tops - sights and sounds not of the lower earth, but of the solitary, beasthaunted, frozen, upper altitudes. From the dry, buff grass of Estes Park we turned off up a trail on the side of a pine-hung gorge, up a steep pineclothed hill, down to a small valley, rich in fine, sun-cured hay about eighteen inches high, and enclosed by high mountains whose deepest hollow contains a lily-covered lake, fitly named 'The Lake of the Lilies.' Ah, how magical its beauty was, as it slept in silence, while there the dark pines were mirrored motionless in its pale gold, and here the great white lily cups and dark green leaves rested on amethyst-colored water.

"From this we ascended into the purple gloom of great pine forests which clothe the skirts of the mountains up to a height of about 11,000 feet, and from their chill and solitary depths we had a glimpse of the golden atmosphere and rose-lit summits, not of 'the land very far off,' but of the land nearer now in all its grandeur, gaining in sublimity by nearness - glimses, too, through a broken vista of purple gorges, of the illimitable Plains lying idealized in the late sunlight, their baked, brown expanse transfigured into the likeness of a sunset sea rolling infinitely in waves of misty gold.