Author’s note: To view the rare Red McClure potato as well as other local
heirloom vegetables, visit the Carbondale Heritage Garden Booth at Potato Day.

In the 1940s, schoolteacher and farm wife Edna Sweet compiled historical accounts of the first homesteaders. In her book, “Carbondale Pioneers 1879-1890,” Sweet tells a familiar tale of a miner turned farmer:

Thomas McClure came from Little Kenny, Donegal County, Ireland, son of a Presbyterian minister … Thomas wanted to come to America, but his father would not consent; so, he took a fine-brood sow to the county fair, disposing of her, he … sailed for America. He was 21 years old when he arrived in Philadelphia. Hearing of the gold strike in Gilpin County, he decided to take up mining [and] went to Leadville in 1876, and in 1882 located at Wheeler (Catherine), Colorado, on the Roaring Fork. He was the first to grow the red early rose potato and it was named the McClure potato in his honor.

While growing Peachblow potatoes on his Carbondale farm, McClure noticed an interesting mutation and decided to develop it into a new variety. The first mention of the “Red McClure” in Colorado newspapers was a sales ad in The Avalanche-Echo, March 13, 1902:

Seedling potatoes for sale … the famous Red McClure, the most vigorous grower and the heaviest cropper. Keeps later than any known sort. One of the most popular varieties of recent introduction. Price $1.35 per 100.

By 1910, the Red McClure was winning prizes at Carbondale’s Potato Day, where farmers and their families celebrated the harvest with games, contests and a barbeque beef and potatoes meal supplied and cooked by local ranchers and housewives.

Thomas McClure died in 1913, but his legacy potato continued to grow in popularity, as noted in The Hotchkiss Herald on Feb. 5, 1914:

J.S. Henderson, who … has been looking up markets for potatoes, has come to the conclusion that the Red McClure variety is about the most popular potato on the market … In his correspondence with the buyers[,] he finds that almost all of them want Red McClure’s. 

The highly desirable spud spread to farms and gardens all across the state, and was the hot potato from the 1920s through the 1940s, Colorado’s prime potato production period.

As potato prices dropped in the 1950s, and smaller areas of cultivation like the Roaring Fork Valley turned to raising cattle and hay, the San Luis Valley became the state’s commercial potato epicenter. In 1962, Red McClures grown there won prizes at the Colorado Pure Seed Show.

But while red potatoes were popular in Colorado, the rest of the country preferred white varieties, as one grower lamented in The Rocky Mountain News on Oct. 4, 1978:

If some advertising-wise grower had promoted the McClure as the folks over in Idaho had promoted the Burbank Russet, the San Luis Valley might be an entirely different kind of place … It was the McClure that put the San Luis Valley on the map … If we had advertised it right, it would be more popular than the Idaho Baker. 

Through the 1980s, Thomas McClure’s lucky mutation continued to be popular with home gardeners. It was among the suggested varieties for mountain gardens by the Eagle County Colorado State University Agricultural Extension.

By the 1990s, commercial potato production in Colorado had virtually ended. The Red McClure slowly disappeared from fields, gardens and seed catalogs. But some still longed for the red tuber, as expressed in a letter to The Valley Journal on Dec. 22, 1994:

Dear Editor: Is anyone out there still growing Red McClure potatoes? This tasty, good keeper potato was developed in Carbondale … and was widely grown in the 1930s through 1950s. We would love to buy some seed potatoes to start a hill of this local heirloom variety. Please call …  if you have any information on McClure’s.

In the early 2000s, local food enthusiasts launched a successful quest for the lost spud, as reported in the Aspen Daily News on March 22, 2009:

Carbondale was a great potato town, but as the potato fields vanished, so did a potato variety that was born here … Concerned that this heirloom variety had disappeared from its birthplace and was drifting into obscurity, the Roaring Fork chapter of the Slow Food movement conspired to track down the elusive tuber and bring it back. 

The group found the spud growing in the San Luis Valley, where the Red McClure once was king, being raised by Colorado State University. 

Seed potatoes were brought back to the Valley and distributed to farmers, gardeners and schools. The future was looking bright for Carbondale’s famous potato. Alas, seventeen years later there is still no commercial production of the Red McClure and it has once again become scarce, found only in a few scattered home gardens.

Finally, regarding the name of the nearby pass on Highway 133, columnist Steve Skinner wrote in the Aspen Daily News on Sept. 20, 2022:

… [N]o, McClure Pass, was unfortunately not named after that scrappy Irish spud farmer, but after “Mac” McClure, who built and ran a hotel along the railroad in the area.