Volume 18 , Issue 43

1895 - Durango Grew Up In A Big Hurry

We found this news article concerning Durango, Colorado, in The Times, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, dated 27 January 1895, Sunday, page 21: "Durango Grew Up In A Big Hurry." But it grew up symmetrically and with proper spirit. It had great mines and vast coal deposits and it also went in for culture.

Found on Newspapers.com

Colorado Springs, CO, January 17 (1895) -- Ten years ago (1885) if anyone had prophesied that the shanty mining town inSouthern Colorado, called Durango, would today be the State's southern metropolis and a centre of culture he would have justly been laughed at. At that time Durango was the very centre of the delay cattle feuds between the outlaw Eldridge band and the cattle-raisers in Northern New Mexico.

No business man went out into the streets without his gun, nor did he do business unless that same gun was back of the counter or on his desk. But history once more repeated itself in the case of Durango, and a vigilance committee utilized several inviting limbs of a huge pine tree standing in the centre of its main street, and a few of the outlaw band were sent somewhere in space. Following this bod move toward morality on the part of Durango's good citizens came a visit from the outlaws, and with it a number of shooting affairs, followed by several more pine tree hangings, and then the shanty town girded itself for a true Western hustle. How it succeeded in the years is illustrated simply by the fact that today (1895) the trolley cars run over the ground where the old pine tree stood.

Historically, Durango has "had a big day," as they say West. Vasquez Coronada, in 1541, with a thousand men, in his march from Mexico in search of Quivira, the city to temples adorned with gold and silver, went over the land upon which the city is now situated and his scribes told the world of the ruins now known as the Mancos cliff dwellings. The skeletons recently exhumed from these ruins and preserved in the Durango collection had silky blonde and brunette hair adhering to the skulls, and it may be taken as an evidence that a race not unlike the European inhabited Durango and its vicinity long before Columbus made his voyage. Then, in 1776, Padre Escalente, with a small army, traversed the land now embracing Durango, and gave its rivers the rich musical Spanish names they bear - Dolores, Pinots, Florida, Animas, Plata. Mancos and Piedras. By the Guadaloupe Hidalgo treaty of 1848, the land upon which Durango was situated was bought from Mexico by the United States. In 1873 the San Juan mining excitement was at its high point and the land swarmed with prospectors. It being a part of the Indian reservation the United States army was sent to remove the miners, but the miners stayed and our government bought 3,000,000 acres of mineral land from he Indians and the Indian title was extinguished in 1874.

The period from 1874 to 1881 marked that primitive growth and development common to the birth of all Western towns. The description of the Durango of today (1895), with its water supplies, its vast coal deposits, its smelter, ore bodies, railroads and everything essential to an individualized "jumping" Western city, would take a guide-book; indeed, has already been given in guide-book magazine articles. But the aesthetics of the place and its cliff-dueling collections have not received anything like the notice they deserve. We from the East have an idea, for we are told it so often, that money and culture don't mix in the West. Hearsay has no legal backbone, and so one finds when one travels. At Durango's very doorway are the monuments of the Mancos cliff dwellings, written of by Coronado, and within a comparatively short distance are the cliff dwellers' ruins in Southwestern Colorado and the adjacent ones in Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.

The collection preserved in the Court House at Durango in 1895 was remarkably valuable. As it was well known, these cliff dwellings were built in wind worn caves, absolutely protected from moisture by overhanging cliffs.

The major portion of the present collection came from those parts of Utah known as the Grand Gulch and the Rio San Juan. It embraced human remains in the doubled-up posture, a hundred or more skulls, mummified heads, arms and legs, feather cloth, buckskins, the famous seamless sacks, scalps, bunches of hair, cooking pottery, vases, diapers, willow baskets, stones for grinding grain, stone axes and knives, spear heads and arrow points, and wooden sticks, ranging form farm implements to those for making music and fire and war. Undoubtedly, one of the most interesting was the sandal collection, which was in an excellent state of preservation. They were chiefly woven and made of split yucca blades. The bone implements were found chiefly in the debris near the houses, and consisted of skinning knives, cups, awls, needles and one perfect fife. From the places and positions where the ornaments were found it would seem they had been worn about the necks and wrists of the dead.

The textile fabrics, the canes, wicker and rope snares and the various seeds would alone make an exhibition. That such a collection could be gathered and appreciated by a ten year old city was remarkable, but, further, there were at least a dozen private collections in Durango. One very curious story is told of this Cliff Dweller collection, at the expense of Judge Richard McCloud, its custodian.

Colorow and Ignacio, the two famous Ute chiefs, came to the city on some business and the Judge desired to show them the exhibit. The rooms in the court house were somewhat close and the sight of the drawn dead and shelves of skulls did not please Colorow. He asked the Judge, before entering the door, "What you keep these for?" and the Judge proceeded, with the aid of the interpreter, to explain. Colorow again repeated his question an again the Judge went into details. Colorow drew up his nose and coiled himself tighter in his blanker and said: "Heap damn stink. Durango white man heap damn fool." But even such a criticism had not dissuaded the enthusiasts from going on and adding to a collection which was already known in Europe and which, before long, it was to be hoped, will be known in America.
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