As the town recovers from its annual Mountain Fair with this year’s theme of “Camp Bonedale,” it’s worth noting similarities to another famous gathering in the Rocky Mountains involving vendors, music, dancing, games and merriment. Carbondale’s celebration was not the first mountain fair in Colorado. That distinction goes to a rendezvous that started in 1825, […]
History
Posted inColumns
The View from the Therapy Pool: The truth we never accepted
“We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Not a lot of equivocation there. Thomas Jefferson declared the words that followed could only be refuted by someone with their head in the sand. “All men are created equal.” The man who wrote those words was definitely an enigma. Jefferson, along with 41 of the 56 men […]
Posted inColumns
Historiography: Tragedy at Coal Basin
On Highway 133, near Redstone, Colorado, a memorial plaque reads: This monument stands in tribute to the miners of Coal Basin, who confronted adversity and proved themselves resourceful, innovative and intrepid. We honor their achievements and their sacrifices, remembering in particular those brave, good men whose lives were lost in the mines … Placed with […]
Posted inNews
‘If only the walls could talk’ — The story of 202 Euclid
So mused Carbondale resident Lynn Siodmak when describing the house she and her partner Joel Rem had purchased at the corner of Euclid Avenue and 2nd Street last fall. As it turns out, the walls — and house — had a lot to say, thanks to her research and that by members of the Carbondale […]
Posted inEducation
Frank Sweet: The man behind the Sweet Jessup ditch
Editor’s note: Most of this article is taken from Edna Sweet’s 1947 book “Carbondale Pioneers, 1879-1890.” She based the book on interviews and her own memory. When Frank Sweet arrived in the Carbondale area from Connecticut in 1882, the dry ground was covered with nothing but sagebrush as far as his eye could see. He’d […]
Posted inColumns
CVEPA Views: Flow the Acequia Madre
I am just back from the Land of Enchantment and I am still under the spell. On my sojourn through northern New Mexico I wandered through the cacophony of tan hills and deep arroyos (gulches) filled with small villages and intimate neighborhoods. I ate my way from pueblo to pueblo, savoring food that is typical […]
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Historiography: The Politics of Water
Turn on the tap, water pours out. We take it for granted. But our water was hard-fought in the early 20th century by some of the Roaring Fork Valley’s legendary champions of water rights. In the late 1880s, Glenwood Springs attorney Edward T. Taylor dealt mainly with cases involving land and water issues. Particularly concerned […]
Posted inBusiness
Crystal Valley Echo flips the page
Just up the Crystal Valley, in a cabin on Redstone Boulevard, Gentrye Houghton has kept busy behind the keyboard, often basqued in the blue light of her laptop late into the night to get The Crystal Valley Echo to print. While the winds of the Pacific have whispered in her ear that it’s time to […]
Posted inColumns
Historiography: The last picture show
“Carbondale History, 1887-1976,” by the Carbondale Study Club (1976): In the early days of the town, there was a motion picture theater on the north side of Main Street [351 Main, now The Pour House]. Every week there was a show … on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Admission was 10 cents for children and 15 or […]
Posted inColumns
CVEPA Views: Earth, water, fire and air!
Woe is us. Yes, the millions of people in the Great American West who depend on the snowpack for 80% of our water. This year has shaken us to the bone. Apparently, there was a warmer and drier year, winter 1980, that we are competing with. Oddly, more prominent in people’s memory was the terrible […]