by Nancy Christofferson
LA VETA — The word came down – no more styrofoam peaking peanuts.
This pronouncement is the end of an era, presumably. Once upon a time, La Veta had the answer to a lack of styrofoam, although it had not yet been invented. La Veta made its own –out of aspen. The product was instead called excelsior, which is simply wood shavings used for packing material. The idea was popular enough that excelsior was produced from 1907 until 1955.
La Veta’s first excelsior mill was opened in February 1907. Its address was West Ryus Avenue, thought the mill and all its additions eventually stretched two blocks south on the hillside west of town. Its remains can be discerned by seeing its beautiful stone retaining wall still standing just west of Cherry Street between Ryus and Francisco, west of the Cucharas.
The factory was owned and operated by S.J. Davis and Frank [Frantz] Davis, father and brother respectively of Southern Colorado’s favorite pioneer photographer, O.T. Davis.
At that time, aspen trees were hauled out of the forests to the sawmill here and run through the saws and mill until the shavings could be compacted into bales. The finished excelsior was used to pack tender vegetables and fruits for shipment by the raisers or a coop.
That first factory was running “full blast” according to the La Veta Advertiser of April 20, 1907.
As time went on, the mill became an integral part of a sawmill and box factory, employing a dozen or so men. Some were timbermen, harvesting the trees from the National Forest and private lands by contract, some were truckers hauling the wood to the factory, and most of the rest were engaged creating excelsior and wooden crates for shipping purposes. At least one man was assigned to deliver the finished product to its buyer or to the railroad for its journey farther afield.
By 1937, the plant had become a standard feature in La Veta. That summer, two mills were churning out the product. Western Wood Excelsior employed 11 men in three eight-hour shifts and the Columbia company employed about a dozen on the same shifts. The latter had obtained a contract for a large stand of aspen near Ojo Springs and expected to ship out six tons daily (that’s a lot of shaving!) from its mil. Western Wood seems to have an agreement with the San Isabel National Forest for a suppy of aspen from around Blue Lake. It was headquartered in the old railroad roundhouse, by then abandoned.
By September, the Advertiser noted the two mills were “rolling out 10 tons of the curly white stuff each day”. Most of it was destined for fruit packing, especially the lower Arkansas Valley.
Because the company was getting most of its lumber from the Blue Lake area, Western Wood became known as Blue Lakes Excelsior. Soon, one Ed Simon was manager. In 1939, under his supervision, the mill expanded and became Aspen Excelsior Company. Production was about 350 bales a day by two shifts of 15 men each. The mill’s capacity was doubled so when the Great Depression settled in to stay a while, employment at the mill was providing employment for both skilled and unskilled laborers of La Veta.
In July 1940, two local men, Fred Willis and Clayton Hern, began making weekly trips to Los Angeles to deliver excelsior, and returned with loads of fresh fruit. Alas, these loads were destined for Pueblo and Denver markets. In September, the mill “turned out 500,000 packing pads of waste paper” as a sideline. At that time, the factory was employing eight.
This level of activity continued until World War II. After December 7, 1941, the product was used for packing ammunition and armaments. Excelsior pads, once used principally for chicken and livestock, was now employed in shipping all types of defense and food materials heading for the theatres of war.
In the midst of important production in May 1942, a fire almost totally destroyed the premises, which had no insurance, along with stacks of lumber though some were saved, as was the sawmill and equipment. Nevertheless, rebuilding began immediately and by the following January, was making crates for the Colorado Cheese Company, also in La Veta.
In April 1943, the business was sold to La Luna Excelsior. It then began the production of “shook”, a wood material for making boxes and even barrels. La Luna expanded the premises to the east, and added a large new building, of some 30 by 150 feet. It even had a whistle that was blown five times a day for shift changes, and the town, to the local editor, sounded like a real industrial area. Forty-six people were employed, including “office girls”.
The main office moved into the stone building at the corner of Francisco and Oak. The excelsior mill went unused as the focus turned to boxes and crates, of which it could make 1,500 to 2,000 per day. Excelsior went back into production on July 1, 1945.
Ed Simon had bought back La Luna company, and in March 1943 was paying $17 per 1,000 feet of aspen or white or yellow pine, from eight and a half to twelve and a half feet long. In 1942, approximately 150,000 board feet of lumber were used each month, and employment was up to 55.
In 1944, with a shipment of “shook” destined for Cuba, Simon hit upon the concept of hiring some of the German prisoners of war from the Trinidad camp being “rented” out to various approved businesses. It would fill a need, but the authorities declined to send its prisoners to a place without ample housing or security.
The excelsior mill was destroyed in a second fire that spared the sawmill and box factory. Excelsior had not been made since the first fire, and now the plant had a new factory and resumed production.
By July 1945, defense contracts were dwindling. As a result, the business was sold to Colorado Cheese, which would produce its own crates and shipping boxes. At the time, the cheese factory was using goat cheese to make the products so loved by southern European countries which had been unable to obtain them. Their cheese went out to 32 states and Canada, so they needed lots of boxes. It was operating under the name of Colorado Excelsior and Mill Company.
The cheese factory soon learned lumber was no longer a hot commodity, so gave it all away and left the lumber business. Then in 1949 it sold the excelsor plant and kept the sawmill and box factory.
The new proprietors faced heavy damage their first year not by fire, but by wind. A heavy windstorm flattened some of the buildings and put them out of business. And then came the deep snow and extreme cold that shut the plant down. Because of the drifts and winds, crews could not go into the forests to cut trees or haul them. Logs were often unavailable and then so were employees.
A fire in July 1955 took the dryer shed, box factory and a large quantity of finished lumber.
Colorado Cheese had suffered a marked decrease in orders once the European cheese factories had gone back into business in the later ’40s and early ’50s. The factory was making Ricotti and Romano, among lesser popular types, and began losing sales to those who had clamored for these previously unavailable cheeses. The factory went through a number of closures, both long and short, and then in 1952, with postwar shortages combined with the Korean War, the factory was having trouble obtaining metal, especially copper for its milk vats. Between a serious shortage of orders and equipment failures demanding replacement parts, Colorado Cheese was having as many setbacks as the excelsior and sawmill.
The cheese factory was forced out of business, as was its sawmill and box factory, and they went on the block, selling at auction for just $7,000 in September ’55.
It was the end of an era for La Vetans.
