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James Lamping
August 9, 2004
OK, this is Bob Hult and today is Monday, August the 9th, and I am in the home of Mr. James Lamping, and his home is in Grant, Colorado, and we are going to be talking about his experiences in Park County, and his relatives, and we will just start out the conversation by asking you Jim, what is your birthrate and where were you actually born? Born in Grant, March 23, 1920.OK, so you’re a real native here in Colorado, and actually specifically in Grant. You spent most of your life here in Colorado then, it looks like. Well, let’s see, I left home at 17, went to work in Alma, Colorado, for the American Mine, 1935, that’s before my time working there, it was the largest gold producing mine in the world. What mine was that? The American. The American Mine. That was just above Alma? Well, yes, quite a ways up. Don’t remember the gulch…Was it Buckskin Gulch? Was it up in that direction? No, it was (unintelligible)… OK. Let’s see, you went over, well anyhow, what’s the name of that gulch? Can’t remember the name of the gulch…Anyway, I spent a lot of time up there. OK. Were you actually…was it a gold mine? Right, in other words, originally, we had the American dump, and then later on, after we had all of the dump milled, we got to pull the stokes out of the American Mine, way up on the hill. And in those days, they said it was the largest gold producing mine in the world until (unintelligible)…, and the only interest were mine owners, vertical shaft, and the old-timers were panning there, they had a load of high-grade ore, they…can come back and get a lease on this place sometime, I’ll dump this load of high-grade down this stope, and know where it’s at. Yeah. Well, this continued on and on, and in order to keep from hygrating, that’s stealing gold, the miners at the boarding house, cook house, it was all in one building, and the boarding house, where the men slept was upstairs, over the cook shack. And to keep from hygrating, they had this steady hardware cloth over the windows, you couldn’t get out. In other words, you were more or less searched when you went out, come back in, to see if you were carrying gold. And that…for some reason, the boarding house caught on fire, down at the kitchen area. Now the men couldn’t get out, so they burned to death there. Course they was in the bunkhouse sleeping. This was about 1935? Well, it was about…I imagine about ’35, ’40. Now you were, in 1935 you were 15 years old. Right. So, were you in Alma area at that time, were you actually working there? No, I didn’t go to work until 17, 1937. OK. But people told you about this fire. The mill I worked in…(unintelligible)…was the American Mill, belonged to that mine. Cause that’s different than the Paris Mill. Oh, yeah. That was another mill… That was way on down the gulch. That was down the gulch. That was torn down, even the tailing ponds were cleaned up. Don’t know why. There’s nothing left of the American Mine, now. Even the houses and everything were tore down. Was this near a place called Windy Ridge? No. Now the road forks, at what we use to call the scale house, that was where all the trucks stopped and weighed in and weighed out, regardless at what mine they were working at, and the road forks, this one went on up the left fork, towards the South London and Duke (?), and the right fork went on up over the pass. Before the first switchback, off to the right was the American Mill. OK. And…Like I said, today, it’s all cleaned up, nothing’s left there at all, they even cleaned down the old tailing ponds, everything like that. Wow. It was quite an experience when we after we got the dump, then we got to unfold the stopes. And coming down into the first (unintelligible), through the ball mills, put a screen on there and everything would pass through the screen, went down over concentration tables, that didn’t, was returned back to the classifier and reground again until it was (unintelligible), and any of that that was let out from the table was stopped there for now, and (unintelligible)… Ok, now, a stope is… That was…a stope is when they do mining up this way, and the ore runs off that way, basically it follows that stope… Ok, a stope, is it an angle or is it 90 degrees to the main shaft? It goes upwards usually. Upward and just follows the vein. That’s right, following the gold. Right, and you could actually see the vein, it was clearly a vein of gold-bearing ore? That’s right. It wasn’t gold as we expect to see gold, was it? I mean, you would see nuggets or chunks of gold, would it? Gold in hard rock. It was actually gold in hard rock, mixed in with like quartz and granite? Not quartz. Usually no quartzite. Wow, you would actually see the vein go off, and you would just chase that vein basically. Right. (unintelligible) In other words, they would fork off one way or another, it’s hard to say… Sure. In other words, whether they were a water deposit or a hot deposit, you know, by meterotic water, meterotic water is real different than the water today, I imagine it came in from the deepest oceans and treated through the rock, back up to the surface. And just deposited there. And carried…I always wondered how did the miners, how were they so successful in finding all the gold? I mean there is no new gold being found… Prospecting. Just, I mean there was always something on the surface that indicated that there was gold below? Well, (unintelligible)…The story of the Independence Mine, that’s why my mother and them lived, I had a sister Margaret, Margaret was born down there in the Idaho Springs area, and (unintelligible) …after he and my mother were married. (unintelligible)…The Independence, these old prospectors were around there, and with their brothers, and this one man he picked up a rock to throw at the brothers because they were doing something they shouldn’t, running off or something, and he happened to look at the rock and there was gold in it, so that started the Independence Mine. That’s were he started his shaft. Really, right there. Right there. I’ve been hiking back in some of these canyons, and there are mine shafts on almost vertical walls. Right. How do these people get up there and look for gold up there? From the top, and drop down on ropes. Is that what they did? Yup, there some up there in the Valley that way. What made them think that there was gold on that surface to begin with? Well, I think they probably put these rocks down there, and these ropes and swung back and forth on them looking at the various veins and rock structures until they found the rock that looked good, and then they started there, I don’t know. Usually a quartzite, or something of that nature. Ok. But, I had been, before I had started mining up there, milling, with the American…well, I went up there to Alma, rustle around, that’s rustling trying to find a job in a mine. Yup, When you were 17? 17. Ok. And no luck. So I came back home. (unintelligible)…Webster, that I was living in. And I hadn’t been home a day, and here come my brother-in-law told me to get back up there, they had a job for me as a sample booker at the American Mill. So, I went back up there and went to work, and over the years well I worked up to as sample booker to operator to shift boss. What was a sample booker? What did you do? Sample booker? Well they had samples from every shift, every shift had three or four samples. Ok. And they had to prepare those samples to be sent to the assayer. Ok. They didn’t have an assayer right there at the mill? The assayer was out in Alma. Ok. Then it was published on a sheet, a couple of days later, what a sample ran. That was good. That was you first job in the mines? Being a sample booker. You didn’t have to go into the mine itself, then. No, I was in the mill. Yeah, Ok. Down at the bottom. They had an aerial tramline from the American Mine down to the mill. So it was a cable with buckets? YeahThat came from the mine right to the mill where you could dump the contents into the mill and start the process. Ok. Oh, I don’t remember how many miles that was, I imagine it was about 4 miles of tramline from the mill to the mine. Really. Lot of buckets. Yeah. Imagine! It was…two cables on the tramline, which is a track, which is a…about inch and a quarter, inch and a half line, a different kind of cable because the wire itself was a v shape on the top, and that was all wound up in a what you call a land lay that won’t unravel and then under that was a power cable, the buckets were going to, with the wheels on the top line. Now something I can’t figure out…up the gulch a little farther was the London Butte. And in the Wallace plan was (unintelligible)…way down here at the mill was over a thousand feet straight down. And occasionally, these buckets come loose, and (unintelligible), the power cable tighten up, and somebody’s greenhorn men would be scared seeing that bucket coming at them, they would jump off to their death down below. And all they’ve done was to held onto that dog that held it to that power cable, it might’ve knocked the bucket off the track, but they wouldn’t have killed themselves. And this I can’t understand, from that, riding aerial tramlines was outlawed. Right, I’m sure. Today, I guess through politics, and money, that was abolished, now those ski areas have those tramlines on them, identical. That’s interesting. So, it was illegal to ride a bucket during the mining days? But now of course they…What did they use for power? I mean they had to have some energy. Was it steam power or electric? Electric. They had electricity. Did they have their own generator? No, they had power lines from over the hill. Ok. Came over from Alma?…or did it come over from the other side from Leadville… I don’t remember where the power came from. I know we had electric power. Ok. It had to take a lot of power… Oh, it did come over the top of the hill from over the other side, over around Leadville, not Leadville… What would be the other side of that? The other side…Well, you know Mosquito Pass is just south of there, and that leads up to Leadville. On the other side of (unintelligible) Pass, down in the bottom before you get down into… Into Breckenridge? …into Breckenridge…Ok. The power line come up that way. Ok. And that’s what powered the mill, also? Ya. Now did you actually work in the mill…the mines themselves? No, I worked in the mill. You were always in the mill? Ya. How much did you earn in a day, do you know? Remember what you earned at that point? Well, when I started out, it was $2 a day. At sample booking. And that…future years every time an opening come up…I’d…well every time I seen the supervisor, I’d hit him for a raise. He wouldn’t give me another job, but he’d give me my raise. So I was making pretty good money as a sample booker. But there was a job was open for the mill operator, so I took a little reduction in pay, and went there and worked my way up from that to shift boss. Then, about that time, a forty-hour week come on, and that twas worth time and a half, overtime. Well, we worked seven days a week. Yeah, I’m sure. Well, before that forty-hour week, how many hours do you think you worked? How many hours did you work a week? Well, 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. Everyday? You never had a day off? Well, You had three shifts,…Yeah, ok. The day shift, the afternoon shift, and graveyard. Right. But, one shift, all you had was 8 hours off. Before you went back to work again. When the law changed, you had 24 hours off. Ok. I think that was graveyard to day shift. You had…the law changed. Now, did you live at the mill when you were working there, you lived at the mill? Well, yes and no. Originally, I lived down in Alma in a boardinghouse. And they had a boardinghouse there at the mill. Well, they also had several houses for people to live in. And later on, the boarding house closed down, and I thought that was a big building, and instead of driving back and forth from Alma to the mill, why don’t I just start baching it at the boardinghouse, which I did. I bached there at the boardinghouse for a couple of years, I guess. How many years did you actually work at the mill? You started when you were 17, and how many years were you there? 17, 18, 19, 20, 21,…Six years. Six years. Ok. Did that mill use mercury, or any of the heavy…cyanide, or any of those kinds of materials? No. It was strictly chemical. OK. See there is two types of …of course there is two types of…what do you call it?…There is a float gold… Na, Na, That’s not it? They’ve got a name for this one. It’s the pH value. Ok. Now, from 6.0 to 7.0 it’s acid, and from 7.0 to 13, it’s alkaline. Right. Now, that acid isn’t a good system. The alkaline is the best, because one of the proper uses of crycilic acid had to be careful with it. Dip you finger in it, go like that, would take your skin off. Oooh. What kind of acid was that? Crycilic acid. Crycilic. Ok. And they used that at this American Mill. Yeah. (unintelligible) The mine up Hall Valley is alkaline. Was there a mill in Hall Valley, also? Just a mine. In Hall Valley? Right. Ok. That was quite an operation up there. Now that’s different than the American Mill? Or is that’s what you’re saying… A lot different than the American Mill. Ok. So what was the one in Hall Valley called? Well, that’s mine. It’s still there. Yeah. You actually own the mine yourself? What?You had a mine yourself? My own mine. Well, I didn’t know that! You actually have your own mine. Well, I’ve got a lot of property here in Hall Valley. Huh. Because I have hiked up there. What?I have hiked up in Hall Valley. You have?Yes I have, and I have seen that there’s been a digging that’s been closed. You been up to a place that’s got a gate, a gate across the road? A pipe just so big around, you’re above timberline. Yeah. Ok, yeah, I remember seeing there was a …that’s actually your mine? That’s my gate. How far back did it go? How deep was the mine? My mine…over a thousand foot deep in my tunnel. Did you do it all by hand? All by myself. By yourself!? Mainly. With a pick and a shovel. Interview interrupted. Ok, so you actually have a mine of your own in Hall Valley, you have your own claim. It’s not a claim. What is it? It’s patented land. What’s the difference? Well, when you take out a mining claim, you have to do so much work on it a year, until you have expended so much money. And can prove you have ore. Then the government will come in, and survey it out for you, where you want your line to run, and put up cornerstones, and you pay for this, and then it becomes patented land, just like your home’s sitting on. Now they used to call it proved…? What’s that?Proved, was that a claim that’s been proved? That’s a term I had read about, a claim that’s been worked and improved has been just proved. There’s proof that there’s ore there. Yeah, Ok. Then, if you can prove you have ore there, then I guess you pay for the survey, and for (unintelligible). Now, when did you start that mine? Well, years ago, silver used to run the same price as gold – around $12 an ounce. And then the monetary system were decided what they wanted for standard – silver or gold. And this loud-mouth politician, I guess a Colorado politician, stood up and said there’s enough silver in the state of Colorado to build a wall around the state a mile high and a mile wide. Silver went from $12 an ounce down to six cents. Ok. Now, you might say all the mines, the silver mines in the states were shut down. You couldn’t afford to operate at six cents an ounce. That happened a lot up in Hall Valley. There was a lot of good ore up there. And…well, my granddad bought a lot of it, pennies on the dollar, and then later, that ground was given to three people. I was one of them. The man that told my granddad how rich the mines were was nothing but a big liar. He happened to be a distant cousin or something like that. I guess he met them in Leadville, that’s what we could talk about a little bit yet. Um. Do you recall what year you started that mine, though, up in Hall Valley? My mine?Yes. Around 1960. ’60, huh. Ok. You got your claim and you started digging… It wasn’t a claimYou got your patented… I went into, well I went into on ground of another mine that I picked up. Oh, there was a mine there already. There was a patented mine, and I picked my patent up. Ok. Ok, and I went in there, and went through the other tunnel that was belonged to the family, you know three people’s names including mine, like I said, this old guy told him he was a distant relative, there was good ore there, I went through there and never hit a damn thing. So I’m out on the other side now, and I have good silver ore there, how long ago I don’t know, but that whole mountain slid down out of there, and it stopped right here. And you can see the, and you can see the silver ore vein now? Oh yeah, good ore right there, good silver ore…I’ll be darned. So you, now you aren’t doing this yourself anymore, are you? You’re taking a pick and ax… Yeah, but I haven’t been up there this summer, I’ve been up there but I haven’t worked on it. I wanted to start working this summer, I don’t know, but certain things have stopped me. Well, your 84 years old now? Right. And you’re out there at that elevation, which is above timberline… Oh, yeah, 13,000 feetyeah, exactly, and you’re…are you using automated equipment of some kind?… What?Are you using automated equipment? Oh, yeah. What do you have up there? Well, a rocker shovel loader, they call it a mucking machine. Ok, you’ve got a mucker, you’ve got your own machine? Oh yeah, two of them. For scraping up. Do you blast, also? Throw it over your back into a pile behind you. Right. Now my little electric (unintelligible) down here, I brought it down here, rebuilt it, did some other work on it, never taken it back yet. I hate to leave it up there, you know, it’s an expensive piece of equipment. I’m sure. This is a silver mine? Always been a silver mine? Right. There’s some gold in there, too. I’m sure. It’s mixed. Let’s go back for a second, you said you didn’t get your first job in Alma, in the American Mine, until you were 17. What did you do, you were born here in Grant, what do you recall of this area when you were a child? For instance, where did you go to school, were there schools here, local schools, or what? Right up here in Grant. There was a school here? Yeah. Do you know where that lake is that’s here in Grant right up the road here?Yup. The schoolhouse was right across the road from that. Ok. The railroad was here in your early years. RightBecause that wasn’t taken out, what, until the early 1930s? About ’34 when they junked the railroad. Ok. So it came through here on its way down to Como? Right? And from Como, well, there was a lot of spur lines from Como over pass into Breckenridge to the other side. Yup. Also, it run up to Fairplay, and up above Alma, and that gulch again, damnit!..No, Buckskin Gulch’s a dead end up there. It can’t get out. Right. Buckskin is at the base of Democrat. Democratic Gulch, you know, one with all the (unintelligible) south side and the other side, north, sitting practically up on top was the American. But you went to elementary school here in Grant. Right. Was it a one-room schoolhouse, then? Right. Ok. Did you go to school everyday? Or was it just certain days? No, everyday. Everyday. You know, five days a week. As a child, what did you do for fun? Oh, played softball and stuff out in the schoolyard. Ok. You had friends up here, there were several kids in your class, there were several other children up here? Well, yeah. Quite a few. Mainly. I was practically the only boy in school. Really? That’s why I got long fingernails. The girls made sure I had the nails, and I can’t get along without them, I can’t pick stuff up without them. Ok. Interesting. Do you have any other remembrances of this area, back in what would have been the 1920s, early 1930s? Well, the railroad, I remember the old railroad. And Dad worked on the railroad. Ah, Ok. And later, during WWII, he was transferred to the broad gage out of Wyoming, and they were hauling iron ore towards the war effort out of Wyoming. They lived in Cheyenne. I guess that’s where Dad put me in the hopper. In 1929 you were 9 years old, and that was when the stock crash happened, the Great Depression began. Right. Do you remember much of that and how it affected people here in Grant? Well, here it didn’t bother people too much. I remember folks used to give food away to sorry people. Really? Did they grow it here? Did you have gardens up here. It didn’t have to be relatives, just friends. Ok. See down here at the post office, Santa Maria, the big hotel, see there was a lot of large hotels up the canyon, and they had what they called a fish train. It left Denver, Union Station, on a Friday evening about 5 or 6 o’clock. And it tied up right here in Grant. There was a railroad bridge right up the creek here, and it was a Y. That’s where they turned the trains around here. They actually turned around right here? Right. And while the fish train was getting up here, it was coming up through the canyon, it would stop wherever you wanted, wherever anybody wanted off. Usually it was hotels along the canyon, so guys, people, get off and fish or just spend enough time in the mountains in a hotel. Sure. And, and we had a big hotel here in Grant, too. Really? (unintelligible) What was the name of that? The hotel? I don’t know. Where was it? Was it before… On this side of the river. The north side of the road? Yeah. Ok. See, when they put this road through, they really screwed up the town of Grant. They killed the town of Grant, because, say, I know when I was a boy, this was the largest town in the county. Really? Grant was a big town. In the 1920s? Yeah. You don’t remember how many people roughly were here? No. But it was the biggest It was the biggest town in the county. In the county, bigger than Fairplay? Oh, yeah. That’s interesting. Was it mostly miners? No, they, it was, well, there were some miners but they didn’t live here, they were on up the gulch. Yeah. Up Geneva. Trying to get it down here where, well, my great uncle, Joe, buried up in Webster, …the New York infantry, he insisted that there had to be ore around here. And he had countless tunnels dug all around that damn place. Clear on top of Kenosha Pass. Never found anything. Probably there was something in there today, like uranium, or something like that, but that was before…. Exactly. All Grant had, he went into the charcoal business. Well, that was up in Leadville, too. Where they had the first charcoal. It’s up Tennessee Gulch. Not real Tennessee Pass…(unintelligible). In there, they had small charcoal kilns. And I guess they shipped charcoal all over the country. Railroad finally built a Y up to these kilns, and after they cut all the good timber, why they got looking for more, and they cut the giant grove at this halfway house here in Webster, I told you it was two, half sections of land, side by side, and well they were setting just like this, where they’re joined here, I don’t know. But…Now that was in Webster. Right. Now Webster was between here and Kenosha Pass? Right. At the foot of Kenosha Pass. Ok. I remember seeing the signs. That’s were our cemetery is. In Webster. Is there anything left of Webster, now? Well, not as Webster. In other words, there’s…Should I tell that story?Sure. Now, in ’31 or ’32, they built what they called a federal aid highway up Kenosha Pass. Ok. Before this, the supply road was down in the bottom and through the swamp, under a great big cliff. If you were riding a horse, you had to get off the horse, to get under the cliff, because, the cliff overhung the road, and the road and stream was all one. Ok. When they built the new road, they went over the top of that. It’s still there if you want to hike down under there and see how narrow it is. Well, during that time, why killed quite a few people, men, putting the road up there, because they didn’t know how to blast off or do anything. They had drillers with jackhammers down below, men on top, higher than that, (unintelligible) firing rocks off, they killed several of these drillers. They hit them with great big boulders. Now was that part of the Civilian Conservation Corps? Or WPA project? No, that was Federal Aid. So that was a different…Was it a work project to put people to work? Because that was… Not WPA or anything like that. See, I know there are two highways that are WPA highways. Ok. There’s the first mile and a half up Kenosha. Alright. Then…Can’t think the name of this pass. Ok. Out of Leadville, you go over that pass, what’s the name of that pass out of Leadville down in… Oh, gosh. I don’t know. I’d have to look at a map. Out of Leadville, there’s a pass runs down there…Ok. Railroad runs through a tunnel, see goes through the pass, and halfway down the pass, it’s still pretty mild yet, and there’s this town, it’s a nice town, little town. How in the hell they got a golf course in there, I don’t know. Because it’s a steep canyon like that, I think that’s Red Cliff. Ok. I’ve skied in that area. And then, from Red Cliff on down that down into the town, the bottom town, that’s Federal Aid. Ok. And on that there’s the road runs down through there, there’s no parking. You’ve gotta go straight down canyon. The canyon’s narrow like that, and the railroads down there on the bottom. Right. You were starting the story about Webster? Webster? Well, well that’s were federal highway started, ’31, ’32. Right. And then later on, that’s when I was 16 or 17, Honacker Construction Company out of Colorado Springs had the contract to build a highway, rebuild a highway from the end of the federal aid at Kenosha, here, over the top and down to the curve that took over to South Park. That’s the only time in my life that I was fired. And they said I was too light for such heavy work. You worked on the construction of that road? Oh, yeah. Ok. And, the only reason I was fired was that we had to cut down some trees. Quick. And a single bladed ax and you could tell which side was the sharp side. You didn’t cut the tree down, you bruised it down. So, I think that‘s the reason I was fired. Because, the hell with that noise. So I took a (unintelligible) to work with me and stuck the ax on a stump was sharpening it that night and that’s when the foreman caught me and fire my ass. Too light for such heavy work. Yeah, Ok. That’s when I went to Alma to look, and then come back down, and a day later, we got a job for you. But then, I don’t know how they got my dad started, oh because the tools were so damn dull, stuff like that, they wanted me back again. I’m surprised they didn’t use a saw, like a two-man saw, to saw trees down. Ah, hell, that would’ve been like, just like rubbing a piece of iron against a tree, would’ve got no teeth on it. They’d nobody to take care of their equipment. So, somehow, I got Dad in there, and he became the blacksmith, sharpening the picks, and their axes, and anything drove steel, anything that needed done. Dad was a good blacksmith. Well, (unintelligible). Know that canyon, Clear Creek Canyon? Up out of Golden? Yeah. Those tunnels? Well, that was Dad’s work, too. And I also went up there and worked up there for quite a while. Dad had a good job, but I had a better job. Now he was blacksmithing? (Unintelligible) All I was classified as skill labor, but I was foreman, too. I had about 20 men working for me. Ok. Well, I guess that started here on Kenosha. Cuz I was a good, hard worker. My dad taught me how to work. If I didn’t work like that, I got his foot. So,… You got his foot…? Up here on Kenosha…Yeah. They had (unintelligible), where you had the bank nice and curved. And they had these men’d come out on pass from Social Security to work. They were on this bank and they had to be over on the other bank. Naturally, we I worked, I worked my ass off, so those guys could watch me, seen how I worked, and they would work the same way. Either that or get down the road. I don’t know. I got to be (unintelligible). My impression is in talking to people, people worked very hard years ago, a lot harder than they do now. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Did you stay healthy or did you have any accidents? Or did you have any health problems over the years? You’re smoking, now. Have you always smoked? Oh yeah. It’s never bothered you? Well, I don’t inhale as deep as most people. You know, people they clear down here, and get it about here and then blow it back out. My dad died from emphysema from smoking. Really. Well he smoked it clear down, used a cigarette holder, and didn’t have to throw the butt away cuz he could burn it out too inside the cigarette holder while he was smoking, and that’s why he died (unintelligible). They didn’t know what was wrong with him, and he couldn’t live up here. They lived in that old shack over there. I was going to say, if he had emphysema, at this elevation, that’s a challenge, isn’t it? I mean that’s hard to breathe at this elevation, if you have emphysema. See I was living in Kansas City at the time. What were you doing there? What were you working on there? What were you doing there? In Kansas City. An engineer. A mine engineer? No, war effort. Ok. You mentioned earlier, that you lost some of your hearing due to a mortar shell that fell near you. You were in the war, World War II? Yeah. In Germany. In Germany. Ok… But then, after the war, I worked seven years in the electrical business. I went to night school and college, and later got an engineering degree. Ok. That was my first one. Then I went to work for…damn… That’s ok. Bridgeport, they were out of Bridgeport. Ok. Damn. Well, when did you come back to Park County? You were in the war, you got your degree… Well, when I come back to Park County, let’s see, well, I was going…I was working in Indiana… So you lived in Indiana, too? For Abco Corporation. They were slave drivers. The only time my family seen me was Sunday morning about 8 o’clock to 11 o’clock. Wow. And the rest of the time I was at work. Ok. I even had a bed there. At Abco. At Abco. I had 10 departments under me. Oh my gosh. What did you get your degree in? What engineering, what type of engineering did you get? Well, I have a doctor in engineering. Really! That means to get a doctors degree, you have to have three engineering degrees; electrical, mechanical, structural. That’s amazing. Did the GI Bill of Rights help you pay for that education? Yeah, a lot of it. Yeah, that was a tremendous advantage for people coming back from the war. Yeah. So you’ve got three degrees and a doctors degree? Three degrees make the doctors. That’s fantastic. The third degree I was working on, I only got halfway through it. Hell, they really don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Physical science. Physical science. Do you know what physical science is?Just kind of general science, is it? Study of Mother Earth. Ok. They don’t know a damn thing about the earth. They think they do, but it’s just speculation, just like outer space. Just speculation. Hell you can only drill so deep in Mother Earth and that’s as deep as you can go. That’d be geology, wouldn’t it? Well, it’s physical science. Physical science. What made you come back then to Park County? Well, when I quit working for Abco, I was going up to Jolliette, Illinois, invited up there, because of my various inventions, processing, making ammunition,… Really? Ok. That…They had more of an opening for me, that Remington had, that’s who I was working for, Remington…Ok. Remington. …That Remington is quite a story, too. I got a book on Remington in there that…, a publication that they gave us for Christmas. But that’s all we got for Christmas. They never gave us a Christmas present. This was 19… This one year they gave us a book, and that was it. This was in 1950s? Somewhere in there. Yeah, ok. Just wanted to focus on your experiences here in Park County more than anything else. Well, the reason I didn’t stay in Jolliette, had the whole family up there, I had the job, reactivating a TNT bomb loading plant. Salary, what I wanted. Looking around Jolliette, found out Jolliette was 95% Black. Really. I didn’t want no Black daughter-in-laws, son-in-laws, so if we’re going to relocate, let’s come all the way home. Ok. So went back in Richmond, rented a U-Haul van, loaded everything we could get in the van, left part of it, headed home. Back here. I think that was in about ’59, ’60. (Unintelligible). And looking around for a place to live, found a house I liked, so, sold my home had in Indiana, had a nice home there, had the home constructed, outta a home I liked, wanted a little more than that, it’d only had the one-car garage. And I wanted a two-car garage. Over the second garage, I wanted a sundeck. I got all that. There you go. Good. It’s a lovely home, now. Yeah. And, when it was completed, why we moved from Aurora, a rented house, to a home in Lakewood. Years later, I improved the home. I think put about another $30,000 into the home. In Lakewood. That’s why the taxes went up so damn much. I guess, you mentioned earlier, you paid $3000 a year in taxes, that was what was, in the ’60s? Yup. That was a long time ago. That was a lot of money. (Unintelligible) One thing we never had was a shag carpet. It holds everything, doesn’t it? Well, the hairs on it are about that long, they’re not worth a damnSo when did you move back to Park County? Well, this ground here was given to my mother and father out of my grandfather’s estate. Ok. Now they had a clear choice of this ground here or the ground in Webster. And, well, nobody wants to live in Webster. Even though they live there now. Because there’s two gulches. Kenosha and Hall Valley. The wind’s always blowing out of one of the two gulches, tornado like. Where was Webster in relation to Hall Valley? Right there at the junction. It’s right there at that junction? Yeah, that’s Webster. Ok. There’s sure isn’t anything there now. There’s a few scattered homes, but that’s about it. That’s about it. Ok. Well, also there at Webster, my grandfather and uncle purchased that property, at Webster, from my distant cousin, John Grove. At the halfway house. Now the halfway house had accommodations for two stage lines, overnight stop for two stage lines. Two stage lines. When you say two stage lines, it would be like a stage coach that would come through. A stagecoach. So you would have six or eight people on each coach? Well, as many people could pay to ride the coach. Ok. You had to pay to ride the stagecoach. Sure. How many people could ride on one of those, though? Imagine they could get inside about six people inside. Yeah. Ok. Well, one went over Kenosha Pass. Went on up Platte River which is now called Hall Valley on account of the mining up there. There was old Colonel Hall the (unintelligible) promoter. That’s where that name comes from. Yeah. And on up, I guess about 4 miles, maybe 5, the road turns off to the left, then to the right bend. And goes over what is called, well the gulch is called Handcart. Ok. Over Webster Pass, on the eastern slope, western slope, I mean. Ok. And the reason it’s called Handcart is because the paying passengers, well, Webster Pass was a toll road, too, to keep the road open and maintained year around. You could still drive over it, but you got a narrow car, truck, four-wheel drive, road grader, one thing or another. But the weary travelers with their possessions, they had in little carts, would be either hand or pulled or pushed. That’s how it got its name Gulch, Handcart. I’ll be darned. Still today, that’s Handcart Gulch. Were there little tracks that these little carts went on? What?Were there little tracks that these carts were running on? No, No, just the road. That was it. Ok. They had to pull, push it. Ok. You get your worldly possessions on a cart so high,…Yeah. With wheels on it. That was it. That was it. What kind of timeframe did that all happen where this was built? Do you know? I’d have to dig it out. About halfway house in Webster, John Grove…Do you think its… I’d say 1820 or ’23. To populate the West what started out was called a land grant. Right. They were given property. This was not the Homestead Act. Ok. It’s a land grant. Alright. To populate the West. Well, I guess that’s when John Grove started Webster, you know the halfway house…at Webster. Tape 2, Side AWe were just talking about the start of Webster around 1820. Yeah, around there. ’20 to ‘23What was it originally formed for? Was it mining at that time? Probably not, because they didn’t discover gold until… For the stage lines. For the stage line. Ok. Overnight stop for the stage lines. For the paying passengers, they had first class accommodations. Weary travelers, they had a large dormitory. And for a certain fee, you could rent a place on the floor, to spread out your bedroll, and … That was it. …you rented a blanket from him for a certain fee. This was John Grove, sounds like family, so you could rent this blanket, and a place on the floor to sleep. And, should he run out of blankets, you’d find a real sound sleeper, and steal his blanket, and re-rent it, that’s why I say it sounds like a family. Well, Webster is a very old town, then? Oh, yeah, Webster’s an old town. That probably predates Fairplay, then? Oh, yeah. That has to be one of the first towns in Park County? I don’t know when Bailey… Bailey was a town, a lot of towns up the canyon…There were, ok. Well, no…because they didn’t have a canyon, because they didn’t have a railroad yet. Right. Exactly. It was just a stage coach road. Yeah. Coming out of Denver at that time? Well…I’m kind of curious…you spent a lot of time in the Alma area when you were a teenager. Right. What was Alma like at that point. Have you been through Alma recently? Yes. It’s in shambles. It’s in shambles? Compared to what it was in the…that would be in the mid 1930s. Yeah. 1930s. So, it was a bigger town, was it nicer, what was there? Well, Alma? Yeah, it was a little bigger then. Not a hell of a lot. But, quite a bit. It did have a nice schoolhouse. Movie, motion picture show. Really? In the theater, it had its own theater? Yeah. Ok. They had some kind of church. I don’t know remember what, what kind of church it was. A lot of taverns? What?A lot of bars? Bars or taverns? Oh yeah. A lot of those. It was strictly a mining town. Right. And you know, what time they shut bars down, 10 o’clock, something like that?Yeah. They were open 24 hours a day. Revenuers would come up there and try to close them down, which they did, and they pulled all the blinds down, and you’d come out of work, off of work, off of graveyard, say 11 o’clock, 12 o’clock at night. You went to the window, the door’s over here, there was a bar here, and the windows here, and a bartender back here. And, what you’d do was knock on the window, pull the Venetian blind open a little bit, see who it was, and if he knew who you was, he’d open the door and let you in. And this was during Prohibition? Yeah. So, the saloons were open really during that period of time? Yeah. Well, this wasn’t Prohibition. We didn’t have it. It had been lifted. But this was when the saloons had to close at a certain hour at night. I think 10 o’clock. Oh, I see. I think it’s still that way. Don’t they have to close at 10 o’clock?I don’t know now. I think they probably stay open a lot later now. Well, that was when it was 10 o’clock. Well for a mining town, I would think with miners coming off these different shifts, I would think they would have to stay open. The revenuers tried to shut them down, but they never could. I imagine not. What else was there in Alma at that time? Was there a food store, what else was there in Alma? At that time. Oh, yes, there was a grocery store, a couple of grocery stores, assay office, like I said, a movie theater, a great big high school, it’s not a high school anymore, it’s some kind of museum down there. It’s a big brick building. Beautiful. And… Did it have a red light district? Not in Alma. Not in Alma. That’s up Park City. Oh, that’s where it was. Know where Park City is?I know where it used to be. It is still Park City…Ok. On this side of the road was the tavern, on that side of the road was the clubhouse. Ok. Now, saw a women by the name of Nola run the clubhouse. Now, for ten dollars, you could make arrangements to take this prostitute out, take her to a dance or to a movie or to some kind of a party… Ok. That was over, take her to your home, or your boarding house, and spend the night together in bed. For ten dollars? Ten dollars. Take her back the next morning. How I know this one woman by the name of Nola, she run the clubhouse, and this jack-of-all-trades we had, he was supposed to be that, he was the electrician at the mill, he was always taking Nola out. That was his girlfriend. That was his girlfriend. I see. Well, the town was full of bachelors, so I would imagine that would probably be pretty popular. Oh, it was. Interesting The tavern, it was a nice building. It was…well the clubhouse, it was just another old shack. But the tavern, it was a nice building. It still stands today. And it is a nice building. Really. But it isn’t a clubhouse. This is the tavern. Now was the clubhouse actually in Alma, or was it in Park City. Park City. Both of them were in Park City. Ok. Alma…Well, no they didn’t have no (unintelligible) houses in Alma. But they didn’t need them. There was an old sign down in the jail, you know the Fairplay jail…You ever been in the Fairplay jail? Yeah, I’ve seen it. That little building behind?Behind the courthouse. Yeah, I wrote on the wall above there, probably it’s not there anymore, but, just let you know what the girls around Alma was like. In Fairplay. The sign on the wall said “Buena girls take three inches, the Hartsel girls take four, but the Fairplay and Alma girls take all they can get, and wiggle their ass for more.” Is it on there? Ya, it’s on there. That was Alma. That was Alma. Alma and Fairplay. Well, look, I probably need to wrap this up. Are there any other comments or things you’d like to share about your experiences here in Park County? Anything at all. Girlfriends?Sure, whatever experiences you had. I had this one girlfriend, she was nice. I guess she was cripple. Well, maybe not cripple, what do you have when you have braces on your legs? Some kind of deformity. Well, Patricia had these braces on her legs…Might have had polio, maybe? What?Did she have polio or something along those lines? No, I don’t know what gave her that, maybe she was born that way. Ok. Well, maybe not. Well, she was a beautiful piano player. I remember that. One thing she liked to play was piano. Now this was when you were in your mid teens, or early twenties, or what? Well, eighteen, maybe. Ok. So you’re still working up at the mill? You’re still in Alma at the time. Yeah. Ok. She had her own car. The only time you could visit her was in the summertime. In the wintertime, she went south. Can’t remember the name of the college. A school in warmer climate. Get out Alma because it’d get colder than hell… I can imagine! She was heavy-set, too. So, she was big enough that, say in the driver’s seat you’d hug her on this side, the other side’s getting cold, so you’d get out of the car and go around and hug her on the other side. That was a good girl, a big girl. I guess so. Did you go dancing, or what did you do for fun? Go for rides. Just go for rides. Go to her house. Listen to her play the piano. She was a wonderful piano player. Neat. No television or radio up here at that point I notice. Not at that time. So you had to make your own entertainment. And, well that was about it. Once in a while her mother would have dinner. And go to eat, you know. Did she live… It was always kept nice. Between Pat and I, there was no such thing as sex, or anything like that. Good friends. Just real good friends. Yeah. Except her mother. Her mother didn’t like me for some reason. Because I went out with some of the other girls who weren’t too good once in a while. Sounds like you have a lot of neat memories. Great memories of your experiences up here. Yeah. So, ok. Like I said, I lived in the boarding house, there was a room in the basement where we slept. I was disgusted with life. Why don’t I get rid of myself? So, I don’t remember why I was disgusted. So I got one of these boxes of Anacin, took the whole damn box. I don’t know why I took Anacin to kill myself with, but I did. That’s the only thing you could buy that was real strong, except booze, and I wasn’t a boozer. Well, that’s the best night’s sleep I’ve had in my life. Well, it obviously didn’t kill you. Well you’ve had a lot of interesting experiences up here. World War II came along. Did you enlist in World War II? Drafted in the Army. Ok. So when did you actually go to Germany then? Remember what year? Well, I really didn’t have to go overseas. But I take it, I helped train these men, better stay with them. So, I went with them. Now, I went to school more in the Army I think than I did in civilian life. Really. No, not quite. But after the war, that’s when I went to college. Right. But, before that time, they more or less kept me in schools, I don’t know, for several years. I went to these school, we were combined with boys like myself, young men like myself, and officer candidates. Well, you were 22 years old roughly at that point. So that’s prime. So, I don’t know. We got the same training as the officers got. Yeah. A lot of people from Park County, you were living in Park County at the time of WWII broke out…? Yeah, cuz I enlisted down in Fort Logan. Ok, so a lot of people from Park County, a lot of men from Park County, I’m sure left the County to enlist, and so that probably didn’t leave a whole lot of people here? No, I enlisted. Yeah. I went to Fort Logan both times... Ok. When I enlisted I went into Fort Logan, and when I discharged, I discharged in Fort Logan. Ok, so in and out. That was a nice place. That like smoke, when a boy, well, I smoked all my life, I guess. Even as a baby, because my grandfather come to the house, crook-tin pipe, he’d clean it out, load it with tobacco, light it, put it under his arm, at the table, I’d take it and run outside, (unintelligible) it, bring it back, put it under his arm, (unintelligible), fill it with tobacco, he’d smoke it. Well, I guess I really didn’t inhale, and then old Jack Kimberly looking at the school board, old Jack Kimberly lived across the gulch up here is a wonderful old man, he had to work for Western Union, had the telegraph line, along the railroad, and he was also the treasurer of the school board, nobody ever kicked him out or re-elected anybody else. Jack was a good man. Let me tell you about old Jack. He was a wonderful man. He mined up Geneva. A good mine up there. He was always gone all summer long. He used to employ people to go up there and help him out. Sure. Well, I’m about to run out here. You gonna turn that off? You got enough?I think I got enough. I appreciate that. End of tape. |
