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The year was 1902

by Nancy Christofferson
HUERFANO — Shortly after the beginning of the 20th century, Walsenburg and Huerfano County took notice of the advantages offered by their natural resources. The town of Walsenburg had been county seat for nearly 30 years, and prided itself on its business and shopping opportunities.

The 1900 federal census showed Huerfano to have a population of 8,395, of which 1,033 were enumerated in Walsenburg and 254 in La Veta, indicating a large rural presence. The county was booming, with its lively mining and agricultural attractions. More coal mines were being opened, more livestock raised and more crops grown with each passing year, until in 1910 when the county boasted 13,320 residents, Walsenburg claimed 2,323 and La Veta 691.

In the spring of 1902, the Walsenburg World broke down the financial and business assets into dollars benefiting town and county. According to the issue of March 27, 1902, sheep raisers were producing 400,000 pounds of wool a year, and the total number of the animals was 46,800, evaluated at $71,176.  Cattle numbered 12,395 head and were worth $201,109, and this was after an epidemic of blackleg had killed many. There were 3,199 horses and 219 mules which accounted for more than $81,000 in valuation and enumerable hogs and goats.

The railroads, Denver and Rio Grande and Colorado and Southern, were constantly extending their lines to new mines, camps and settlements. In 1902 there were 152 miles of track in Huerfano County. Efforts to build a line up the Huerfano Valley to the gold and silver claims on the Sierra Blanca were being made, and those mines were producing while the camps just kept drawing new prospectors.  There was even a post office, commissioned in 1900, and in 1902 the telephone line was extended to the McMillan mine near timberline on the glacier itself. The year saw the addition of a $100,000 concentrating plant with a capacity of 50 tons and a 4,000 foot tramway connecting it to the mine. The Fourth of July in the mountain camp was made “special” by a snowfall, and the 13 women there were in great demand at a dance in the Hotel Henderson. Shortly after the music stopped, however, the company reduced wages and some of the miners called it quits.

Eight passenger trains ran through Walsenburg each day. The railroad companies were among the biggest employers as well as taxpayers.

The coal mines were the major employers. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company claimed it had about 300 miners in its Walsen mine, with 60 of them Italian, 47 “native American”, presumably meaning white U.S. citizens, “45 Negroes, 32 Japanese, 21 Slavs, 23 from Old Mexico, eight English, eight German, seven Irish, four Welsh, two French and one lone Swede.” The company had mines both south and west of Walsenburg, where several other companies also operated, plus a number of small ones and individuals. There were 12 mines operating within a 12-mile radius around Walsenburg. Among them, they produced around 900,000 tons a year and employed 1,200 men with an annual payroll of $864,000. The paper said these miners spent an average of $18,000 with Walsenburg merchants and service providers. This is why the city called itself “The Hub”.

An average 200 railroad cars of coal were being shipped from the Walsenburg yards daily, and these cars were said to carry 35 tons each.

The new Rouse mine had opened two years earlier in the old Santa Clara workings after the old Rouse mine had filled with water too copious to pump out. By 1902 New Rouse had 125 homes and some 900 residents and for years was the county’s largest camp.

Between farming communities and mining ones, the county had 33 school buildings in its 37 districts. Thirty-nine teachers, including but nine males, were employed and 3,242 school-age children were included in the annual “school census” of the county.

In District No. 4, Walsenburg, there were three public schools and 600 prospective students though just 470 were actually enrolled. Only one of those male teachers worked in these. The average monthly salary of a teacher was $60, and one of them had as many as 95 students in class, and four had 60 each. Hard work for 60 bucks a month. There was no St. Mary parochial school yet, but there was the high school with about 40 enrolled. Education in District No. 4 cost a taxpayer $23 a year per child.

In the Town of Walsenburg the paper said there were 42 business houses employing 100 clerks who earned an average $600 per year.  Most of these were on Main, Fifth and Sixth streets, with west Seventh beginning to draw attention and buildings because of its traffic between Walsen Camp and Walsenburg.

Among the professionals, there were about five doctors, three dentists, and at least three attorneys. There were undertakers, tailors, a Chinese laundryman, a tinner, a bookstore and stationer, insurance agents, a hide house, a bottling works, granary and numerous shoe and harness makers, groceries both  small and large, though no supermarkets, butchers, barbers and liveries. Saloons were extremely popular as were bakeries and confectioneries. There were no theaters, but there was one opera house, no filling stations or auto dealers. Two newspapers were printing, the World and the Yucca – the Independent was seven years in the future.

La Veta had the Advertiser newspaper and it was in its pages that people could keep up with the latest news about gold and silver mines, crop yields and any home improvements and daily doin’s of their neighbors.  It was a chatty paper, but also chronicled such things as a new fence built around the old public gathering spot, the Colonel’s Park, warning to keep the gates closed at all times and “in no way damage the trees”. During April of 1902, construction on one new home was begun and another receiving finishing touches.

There was no election that April in 1902 but, with the way La Vetans felt about their trees, Arbor Day was talked up, the time “when shade trees should be set out for the beautification of public and private property”. Advertisements no doubt were carefully scanned, such as those for Turkish Towels, 21 by 50 inches, on sale for a quarter at Smith’s store, or the availability of John Goemmer’s expensive work horse’s stud service in his big stone barn in town. Possibly the best news received at the time was the improvement of the telephone line and the drive to make the old narrow gauge railroad line over La Veta Pass a “county highway”.
Much of the news in the Walsenburg papers revolved around marriages, sales of ranches and other important real estate and the end of the school year in the rural districts. We learn veteran Joe Crittenden was a happy man after notification of a $4 raise on his $8 pension and his familial relation to the governor of Missouri at the time of Jesse James’ murder.

Gardner and the upper Huerfano Valley received a lot of press for various activities. There was new management at the “old hotel” in Gardner, a ranch home stocked up on general merchandise to sell at Badito. The old J.B. Hudson flour mill and ranch were sold to Joseph A. Murray and Graves Benson.
For 35 year old news, the World included an item from 1867, when the county assessment for the famed John Iliff for his large ranch on Santa Clara Creek had a value of $23,000.  Iliff “left without paying his taxes” and Huerfano County was left with a $4,000 shortfall.

The paper also noted “the only respectable looking public building in town is the jail”. This snide comment was part of the movement by many to have a new courthouse built to replace the existing low-slung and homely 22-year old building with something more presentable.

An individual named Jack Foley platted an addition to the town of Pictou.  Mr. A. Levy, one of early Walsenburg’s great success stories, had one of his railroad grading outfits all the way out  in Reno, NV assisting the Southern Pacific.

One wonders if anyone noted that the greatest natural resources in Huerfano County were its location and land.

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