The Rise and Fall of the Colorado Yule Marble Company: Part II
By Lynn “Jake” Burton
Continued from last week’s Works in Progress page …
By 1912, the Colorado Yule Marble Company (CYMC) had grown to about 700 workers; and so had its reputation nationwide, with dozens of white marble buildings scattered in several states, and cemetery monuments and grave markers in even more.
The year 1912 was perhaps the most infamous for the company. Two years prior, in 1908, a newspaper publisher named Sylvia Smith moved her printing press from Leadville to Marble, to add her newspaper, The Marble City Times, to a newspaper lineup which included The Marble Booster. The two newspapers covered the Colorado Yule Marble Company from opposite angles. While the Booster lived up to its name by promoting CYMC on every occasion, The Marble City Times did just the opposite.
Smith opposed the CYMC, claiming the enterprise was a scam meant to deceive shareholders. She took every opportunity to bad mouth the company. Her big break, literally, came on March 12, 1912 when a massive avalanche roared down the mountainside, jumped the Crystal River and destroyed part of the mill. Nobody was injured but Smith headlined her coverage in that week’s paper with “Destiny kept her appointment and redressed many wrongs.” She continued by writing that the mill was “crushed like an eggshell …. Avalanche warnings unheeded …” that dividends “… will never be paid to shareholders” and the company was organized by “strenuous promoters” who prey on unsuspecting shareholders who are losing their “hard earned life savings …”
Well, Col. Channing Meek, company officials and most town folks (including the town doctor) were not happy with Smith’s article. Long story short, they had the town marshal put her on a train to Carbondale, where she proceeded to Denver. The town confiscated Smith’s printing press and stored it in the Kobey’s store basement. Smith sued dozens of town residents and won a sizable settlement, but many town people couldn’t pay and were forced to leave town. Smith died in Denver in 1932.
Aside from the Sylvia Smith affair, the year 1912 was the darkest one for CYMC. The company’s founder, Col. Meek, was killed in a tramway motor accident in August. He and three workers loaded onto the open sided tram at the quarry for the 3.8 mile trip to town. At some point, the trolley brakes went out and it started careening down the tracks faster and faster. Meek yelled for everyone to jump. They all did, and three survived. Not Meek, a rotund man of well over 200 pounds. He hit the ground, rolled then struggled to get up. He was taken to his house on the far north edge of town. A doctor was brought in from Glenwood Springs but he died three days later. He was 57 years old.
Meek’s body was loaded onto a Crystal River & San Juan rail car and taken to Carbondale for his eventual burial in Denver. Among his pallbearers was Colorado Governor John F. Shafroth. The irony of the accident is that the tram eventually came to rest on a flatter stretch than the 17% grade where the four occupants jumped off. Had they rode out the brakeless tram, Meek would have survived.
In 1913, the CYMC recorded its major claim to fame in the form of a $1 million contract to provide the stone for columns and east facing side steps for the Lincoln Memorial. Under the leadership of General Manager J.F. Manning, CYMC beat out competitors in Vermont and Alabama. Not only did CYMC finish the job a few years later, it delivered its last shipment before the contract deadline.
Despite the prestige and publicity from the Lincoln Memorial job, by 1915 CYMC was in serious financial trouble. The company had issued $3 million in bonds in 1905. Not only were the bonds due, it’s believed CYMC hadn’t even paid the interest on them. CMMC went into receivership in 1917. Its assets were sold at auction in 1919 and CYMC was dissolved.
The hopes and dreams of Col. Meek and hundreds of others came to a disappointing end, only 12 years after he lowered himself into the quarry to show his men the operation was safe.
One side note regarding the year 1917, was that scores of Italian nationals were called back to their home country to fight in World War I. Some observers say this is what doomed the CYMC. In reality, the company had been doomed for years but hardly anyone knew it.
This piece is far from the full story of the CYMC. How and where did Meek roundup hundreds of workers willing to move to the wilderness of Marble, Colorado? Had Meek not been killed in 1912, could he have refinanced the company to make it profitable? These are among some of my own looming questions.
Material for this article came from several sources, including Oscar McCollum Jr.’s books “Marble: A Town Built on Dreams” volumes 1 and 2, “Marble Colorado: City of Stone” by Duane Vandenbusche and Rex Myers, “An Inventory of the Papers of the Colorado Yule Marble Co” from the Colorado Historical Society library, and internal documents including a 1904 company prospectus written by Charles Autin Bates of the New York-based Knickerbocker Syndicate.
