Colorado Central Articles From — October 2000

Column by Hal Walter

Mountain Life – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

THE CARCASS LAY at the bottom of the rock-walled well, undoubtedly hand-dug by an early settler. Our new neighbors had found the well and the carcass this summer after purchasing the land. They suspected the dead animal to be a deer.

At first look I could tell the animal was not a deer. The rib bones were round rather than flat. The rump had a shape different from that of a deer. It looked more like a dog. Read the rest of this article

Sidebar by Martha Quillen

Politics – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer.”

–John F. Kennedy, 1958 Read the rest of this article

Essay by Martha Quillen

Politics – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

AS THE 2000 election draws near, it’s business as usual in the U.S. Throughout the summer, the Denver media reported escalating problems with delays and cancellations at DIA, and by August the airport had earned the dubious distinction of being the first in the nation for late arrivals. Read the rest of this article

Article by Rayna Bailey

Local Artists – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

GIVE AN AVERAGE PERSON a Nikon and a roll of film and they usually snap average pictures of family and friends that eventually end up in a photo album or shoe box on a closet shelf.

Put that camera in the hands of photographer Bill Gillette, and he creates masterpieces that are framed and hung on display in a home — eventually to become family heirlooms. Read the rest of this article

Letter from Gail Holbrook

Wildlife – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

Dear Ed & Martha,

Do you want to know the real reason all the bears are moving into the cities? As you know, I talk to the bears, and recently one that was passing through talked back. Read the rest of this article

Letter from Frank Smith

Land Trusts – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

Editors:

Dave Skinner’s comments on The Nature Conservancy [in the September edition] are so completely wrong I hardly know where to begin correcting him. It, like most land trusts, DOES “actually take direct physical or fiscal care of the land it supposedly preserves.” It does NOT “act as nothing more than a high-dollar real estate and lobbying firm that temporarily acquires land…” Read the rest of this article

Letter from Virginia M. Simmons

Otto Mears – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine -

Editors:

In your September issue, Jeanne W. Englert, referring to my article in your May issue, raised a question about the validity of a story concerning Otto Mears and his bribery of Ute Indians in 1880. Here is my response, although Englert still may not be entirely satisfied. Read the rest of this article

Letter from Slim Wolfe

Modern life – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

Dear Martha & Ed:

Seems like I must be one of the last skeptics in America. Everyone else seems convinced that cyberspace is the biggest thing since movable type. Human nature loves something it can manipulate, particularly when there’s a bit of a challenge, interaction, backtalk. The earliest public commercial venture may have been a game called “Fascination,” a primitive computer poker which hypnotized the masses at amusement arcades of the late 1950′s. Amazing how the science of extracting money from people while they’re mesmerized by screens has progressed since then. If only we could make that sort of progress in getting rid of inflation, murder, and disaster. Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0870815733[/amazon-product]Review by Ed Quillen

Colorado attractions – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

Colorado Museums and Historic Sites A Colorado Guide Book
by Victor J. Danilov
Published in 2000 by University Press of Colorado
ISBN 0870815733
Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0375501770[/amazon-product]Review by Ed Quillen

Prisons – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
by Ted Conover
Published in 2000 by Random House
ISBN 0-375-50177-0 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]1555910483[/amazon-product]Review by Clint Driscoll

Western Writing – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

Living in the Runaway West: Partisan Views from Writers on the Range
Compiled by the editors of High Country News
ISBN 1-55591-048-3 Read the rest of this article

Sidebar by Martha Quillen

Kit Carson – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

As for the question Allen Best asks in the main article, I think it’s fine to call a mountain Kit Carson.

But at the same time, I’m not scandalized by a mural depicting Carson killing a Navajo, either. On the contrary, I’d say it’s pretty naive to imply that Carson ran a major campaign to round up the Navajo, and didn’t kill anyone. Read the rest of this article

Sidebar by Martha Quillen

Reference – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

Quotes from:

Colorado, A History of the Centennial State

by Abbot/Leonard/McComb

A Colorado History by Ubbelohde/Benson/Smith Read the rest of this article

Article by Martha Quillen

Kit Carson – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

SOME OF THE TRAGEDY of the Navajo story rests in its inevitability once peace treaties were signed. The Navajo were a widely scattered people living in small bands across northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah when the first peace agreements were negotiated at the end of the Mexican War. Read the rest of this article

Sidebar by Allen Best

Reference – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

Sources

Kit Carson Days, 1809 – 1856 by Edwin L. Sabin

“Dear Old Kit”: The Historical Christopher Carson by Harvey L. Carter Read the rest of this article

Sidebar by Ed Quillen

Kit Carson Mountain – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

When it comes to scenic real estate, few parcels can match having your very own 14,000-foot peak.

Thanks to old Mexican land grants, several of Colorado’s tallest summits are in private hands.

The best-known of these is 14,059-foot Culebra Peak, on La Sierra (or the Taylor Ranch, depending on your politics) a few miles east of the town of San Luis in Costilla County. Read the rest of this article

Article by Allen Best

History and Geography – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

“Blasted kids,” I gasped to myself as we cornered from the broad ledge called Kit Carson Avenue and headed up the couloir toward the 14,165-foot summit. The 30-year-old in our bunch was strolling up the jumbled rocks like they were the stairs at the county courthouse. I was panting furiously after every flight.

Just a few years ago I had also bounced up mountains such as this, and I was a smoker then. I no longer smoke, yet this beautiful mountain, among the finest profiles seen in the Sangre de Cristo Range, was thumping my butt. Is there justice in this world? Read the rest of this article

Column by George Sibley

Economic Development – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

I GOT INTO “local economic development” here in the Upper Gunnison region of Central Colorado by the back door. The stage door.

In 1988, we started doing an annual “Sonofagunn” drama here that was basically a spoof on whatever had or hadn’t been happening in the valley in recent years — or decades or centuries for that matter. Read the rest of this article

Essay by Lynda La Rocca

Mountain Life – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

I knew it was just a matter of time before the “Stupid Zone” grew beyond the borders of our property to engulf our neighbors.

As regular Colorado Central readers know, a Stupid Zone (a description coined by the male half of this magazine’s publishing team) is an avalanche chute, a sandy beach, a plot of land within throwing distance of an international jetport, or any other place where the terminally muddled choose to live so that they can then whine ad infinitum about snowslides, hurricanes, the recurrent, earsplitting roar of jet engines — you get the idea. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Closed Basin – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

It was a dry summer — so dry that the Rio Grande went dry in parts of central New Mexico on account of diversions by the Middle Rio Grande Water Conservancy District (MRGWCD).

A dry riverbed is pretty hard on fish, and among those fish is the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Old Spanish Trail – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

After more than three years of study, the National Park Service has concluded that there’s just not enough information to justify designating the Old Spanish Trail a national historic trail in the National Trails System. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Marcia Darnell

San Luis Valley – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

Relic No-Shows

What if they opened a time capsule and nothing was there? That’s what happened when crews began demolishing the 80-year-old Ortega Middle School on Main Street in Alamosa. Legend had it that there were timely treasures behind the double cornerstone of the building. When it was opened before onlookers, though, it was empty. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Colorado Geography – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

Some of us who live along the Arkansas River have boasted that its drainage includes both the highest point in Colorado (14,433-foot Mt. Elbert in Lake County) and the lowest (3,350 feet, where the Arkansas crosses the Kansas line a few miles east of Lamar).

It turns out that we were wrong. We were in good company, since that’s what the U.S. Geological Survey has listed as Colorado’s lowest point for as long as anyone can remember. Read the rest of this article

Comic Strip by Clint Driscoll and Laura Ravenwood

Mountain Life – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

Read the rest of this article

Essay by Lou Bendrick

Wildlife – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

AH, SUMMER. In the Rockies it’s a season marked by many things, such as rodeo, camping, bing cherries, forest fires and wildflowers. But perhaps more than any other sound (even that of the backhoe), the shrill whir of the hummingbird marks summer in the West. Read the rest of this article

CONSUMPTIVE USE MODELING

Water managers need crop consumptive use estimates to manage the competing demands of agriculture, population growth and wildlife. The widely-used Blaney-Criddle method estimates consumptive water use based on mean monthly temperature data, percentage of daylight hours during the period of interest, and a standard crop growth stage coefficient that describes changes in consumptive use as plants mature. Initial studies indicate the use of standard coefficients would have underestimated total consumptive use by 30 to 130% in high altitude, irrigated mountain meadows. Since consumptive use estimates will be needed to quantify irrigation depletions that would benefit from the Aspinall Unit subordination contract and to determine augmentation needs for down-stream senior calls, the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District has contracted with CSU Extension, with assistance from their Agricultural Experiment Station to get more accurate information within the Upper Gunnison Basin. Twelve lysimeters have been installed throughout the Upper Gunnison Basin to more accurately estimate consumptive use. Among the many variables in evapotransporation are crop height and ground cover density. It will be several years before reliable data will be available. Read the rest of this article