Marmot Press

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History

Pitkin Past Times: 1879 - 84

By Freeda Brown, Revised by Clifford Caruthers

The first edition of Freeda Brown's Pitkin Past Times: 1879-84 (Gunnison: Wendell's, 1981) has long been a collector's item among Western Americana.

This second edition, revised by Clifford Caruthers, again provides unique insights into Pitkin's beginnings, early town activities, mining and railroading interests, infamous "sporting houses" and saloons, and prime businesses. Ms. Brown gleaned most of her information from copies of the Pitkin Independent, the Mining News, and the Town of Pitkin Records. Some of these articles and records are no longer available.

Handset Reminiscences: Recollections of an Old-time Printer and Journalist, Part 1

Handset Reminiscences: Recollections of an Old-time Printer and Journalist Part 2

By Jared (Jerry) B. Graham

A Facsimile in two parts

This anecdotal autobiography, long a classic in the archives of journalism and Western Americana, consists of much-traveled Jared (Jerry) Benedict Graham's colorful recollections of his experiences as an American journalist and adventurer. Born in Rochester, New York, in 1839 and orphaned at the age of four, he began newspaper work at 15 with the Rochester Advertiser, but soon followed Horace Greeley's dictum to "go west."

Graham's subsequent newspaper career included work in San Francisco, Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. Among his newspaper friends were Mark Twain and Artemus Ward. (both of whom he met in Virginia City, Nevada).

Typical of his narrative style is the chapter "Four Years in Gehenna," which covers his time as editor of the Pitkin Independent during that town's more turbulent years as a mining and railroad center on Colorado's Western Slope. As might be gleaned from the title, his experiences in Pitkin (particularly his feud with rival editor Frank Sheafor), did not leave Graham with many fond memories of this segment of his life.

The chapter about Pitkin, Four Years in Gehenna, is on pages 198-253, in Part 2.

Poetry

Inez Hunt and Wanetta Draper are long-established Colorado historians and regional poets. Their Ghost Trails to Ghost Towns (1958) is a remarkable collection of poems that dwell on the courage and frailty of human endeavor along with the awareness that so many unrecorded experiences have died with those vanished residents.

Ghost Trails to Ghost Towns

Trips

Hancock to Tincup by Napoleon Pass

By James M. Peavler

Portions of three passes comprise this four-wheel drive trip.

Hancock Pass, used as early as 1878, connected Chalk Creek (specifically St. Elmo and Hancock) on the eastern side of the Divide to Quartz Creek (specifically Woodstock, just southeast of Mt. Chapman) on the western side.Though rocky, steep, narrow, and winding, this passage became a stage road and early gateway to the Western Slope.

Napoleon Pass was named for Napoleon ("Frenchy") Perault, a saloon owner in early Virginia City (as Tincup was first called). An alternative trail to the longer route over Cumberland Pass, Napoleon Pass allowed early primitive travel between Pitkin and Tincup. However, for wagon shipments of ore, Tincup miners had to use the much longer route over Tincup Pass to St. Elmo until 1882, when the DSP&P Railroad ran its tracks through the Alpine Tunnel and down to Pitkin. In anticipation of the coming of the railroad to the Western Slope, Tincup miners then improved Napoleon Pass into a wagon road, as a means of shipping ore much more conveniently to the railroad.

Tincup Pass, from Tincup over the Divide to St. Elmo, was in use by 1879 and soon become an important wagon and stage road. From 1880 through 1882, it was the main route for exportation of ore to the East.

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