By Mike Rosso

Election day in Salida was unusually bright and sunny. Since I’d already voted by mail, I decided to spend some time sipping coffee in the sun outside Café Dawn, chatting up some of the customers and passersby.

I started asking random folks how they voted, not on the general election – around which there was much anxiety – but how they voted on Amendment 64. “Which one was that?” was a common response, and when I mentioned it was about the statewide legalization of marijuana, most relaxed and their answers came as a surprise. Read the rest of this article

As I write this we are only days away from the next “big” election. Along with this comes a high level of anxiety among the populace that, in some cases, is alleviated somewhat by the Major League Baseball playoffs and World Series.

Not having even basic cable TV service, I can only begin to imagine the frustration, confusion and feelings of helplessness that the massive barrage of political ads helps to manufacture. Thanks again to Justices Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Kennedy and Thomas for enabling so much unaccounted-for cash to dominate the election noise this year. Unfortunately the small media outlets such as this magazine are not the recipients of so much cash in the form of advertising revenue. All that money goes to the big boys at the TV and radio networks. And what a coincidence that a “close race” adds even more to their coffers. We can only hope they use some of that money to hire actual investigative reporters, rather than repeaters. More likely it will be used to fill the coffers of the CEOs, but so it goes. Read the rest of this article

The Lobato (Costilla Crossing) Bridge is the southernmost bridge over the Rio Grande River in Colorado. It sits on County Road G between Antonito and Jaroso, Colorado and was originally constructed in 1892 by Joseph F. Thomas. He was a civil engineer and the Conejos County Surveyor and lived in Manassa, Co.. The bridge was purchased from the Wrought Iron Bridge Company of Canton, Ohio for the sum of $8,400. The bridge parts were shipped to Colorado by train and assembled on location. Read the rest of this article

Robert Martin Stein was seven years old when this photograph of him was taken in 1919 in front of the 365-foot tall brick smokestack near Salida, built for the long-since defunct Ohio and Colorado Smelting and Refining Company.

Robert is wearing his first suit, which happened to be homemade, and is posing in front of “his rock” which he used to leap from as a child. His father helped in the construction of the smokestack, which is still standing in 2012. Read the rest of this article

 By Mike Rosso

When Marilyn and Harold Sampson of Lawrence, Kansas decided to purchase property in Chaffee County in 2005, they probably didn’t expect to someday own an infamous piece of the county’s history.

The sent their son Darrell on a scouting mission and he discovered six acres of land on County Road 160 that bordered State Wildlife land. On it sat a newer barn and a dilapidated old brick structure on the edge of some wetlands below the mesa. Read the rest of this article

For a week or so this summer, the majestic Sangre De Cristo mountains served as the backdrop for a colorful array of gravity-defying crafts, catching thermals and drifting on the wind.

Dubbed Colorado Fly Week, an event held this past July just east of Villa Grove hosted nearly 130 hang gliders and paragliders from all over the U.S., testing their skills, enjoying the views and raising money to improve access to their launch point. Flyers enjoy the valley view after launching from a nearby bluff, a fifteen-minute drive up from the landing zone (LZ). Along with various festivities, there is a friendly competition based on a number of factors, including total air time and altitude gain. One flyer managed to soar all the way down the Sangre De Cristo range to Taos, New Mexico, where he reportedly spent the night in a homeless shelter due to the fact that he carried no money on his flight. Read the rest of this article

It’s been an abysmal news cycle in Colorado since our last issue. First, we had one of the worst fires in our state’s history. 346 homes were destroyed on the edge of Colorado Springs in the 18,247-acre Waldo Canyon fire which started on June 23. As of press time, the cause has yet been determined.

Here in Salida, we felt some of the effects: from smoke in the valley to evacuees taking refuge in the cooler climate. At the local farm market I met a couple from Woodland Park who had to evacuate their home and were fortunate to have a second home here to escape to. Another couple were from Manitou Springs, the first area to be evacuated, and were camping out on national forest land. They joked about how they weren’t allowed to have a campfire. Read the rest of this article

Read the rest of this article

Browns Canyon

Back in November 2009, we wrote extensively about the proposed Browns Canyon Wilderness Area in central Chaffee County (Colorado Central, No. 189). Recently there has been some major movement on the possibility of wilderness and/or national monument designation for the area on the part of Sen. Mark Udall. Our current congresscritter, Doug Lamborn – apparently due to some lingering animosity towards his predecessor – has chosen not to pursue years of negotiations on the scenic, diverse and remote 23,000 acres of Forest Service and BLM land, but now he is getting rightly nudged aside with the proposals put forth by Udall. Read the rest of this article

Best Friends

Back in February I got a call from my friend Ken Vargo of Howard. He was wondering if I had any interest in joining him for a trip to Southwestern Utah in early March to volunteer for trail-building at the Best Friends Animal Society.

Having had few opportunities to spend time in the red-rock country of Utah since I moved here from Durango, I decided to take the trip with Ken in his trusty VW Westphalia van along with his dog, Buster.

This would be Ken’s third trip to Best Friends in as many years and he had made all the arrangements. Ken works for the U.S. Forest Service so has lots of experience with trail building; skills that are a good fit to help out at what is considered North America’s largest no-kill animal sanctuary. Read the rest of this article

Honoring our Veterans

I was never a member of the armed services. My father was. He served during World War II as a lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, flying paratrooper missions over Germany. I graduated from high school two months after the fall of Saigon, which officially ended the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

For some reason I still have my selective service card – maybe for historical purposes, but I also recall that my lottery number was pretty high, something like 320, so I wasn’t too concerned about being drafted to fight in that ill-conceived conflict. Read the rest of this article

Okay, raise your hand if you’re relieved this year is coming to an end.

For my family’s and my health and well-being, 2012 hasn’t been too bad. Dad got through some major surgery back in January at the age of 90; Mom is hanging in there, helped by the company and love of her sole grandchild Olivia; and my siblings seem to be doing fine.

Mostly I am glad the elections are behind us with the accompanying bluster, anger, anxiety and misinformation. Now we can get back to the usual cooperation and civil discourse …

Of course, if the Mayans are indeed correct, none of us will be around to fall off the supposed “fiscal cliff” anyway, but that’s another matter. Read the rest of this article

Big Changes at the USPS

On Feb. 23, after a five-month study, the U.S. Postal Service announced it would be consolidating 223 centers across the country sometime after May 15

In Colorado, post offices in Salida, Alamosa, Durango and Colorado Springs will be affected by the decision. What this means for Colorado Central subscribers is that the magazine (and all other mail sent from Salida for that matter) will first be re-routed to Denver for sorting and then delivered back to Salida (sounds more efficient to us, right?). Normally, locals get the magazine the next day but the new rules will add several more days to the delivery time. Our Front Range subscribers may see their copies sooner but we‘re not holding our breath. Read the rest of this article

By Mike Rosso

Mass transportation in Central Colorado? Up until recently that meant piling as many folks as possible into the bed of a pickup for a trip to WalMart.

The last passenger train service around these parts stopped running in July of 1967, according to Ed Quillen. But in the last few years this has changed thanks to an effort by the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) to improve transportation options to rural areas of Colorado. Read the rest of this article

Story and photos by Mike Rosso

Regular travelers on the east side of Monarch Pass have seen it. Just north of Maysville, the crumbling remains of a four-sided mansard roof rise like a sentinel above the guardrail on the south side of the highway. At 55 mph, that’s about all that motorists are likely to see, but closer inspection reveals an impressive piece of historic architecture that won’t likely survive any expansion plans on the part of the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT). Read the rest of this article

You don’t have to be a baseball fan, or even a Brad Pitt fan (I know you’re out there) to enjoy the movie Moneyball. It’s about the underdog 2002 Oakland As and their general manager’s unconventional methods of building a winning ball team. Apart from the high quality of the film, I was also struck by the two trailers leading up to it. One was for the upcoming One for the Money, based on mystery writer Janet Evanovich’s main protagonist, Stephanie Plum, the Trenton, N.J.-based bounty hunter. The other was for a film entitled Haywire, directed by Steven Soderbergh, about a female covert operative who had been set up and is out for revenge. It’s great to see women in the role of protagonists instead of just eye candy or props for leading men. Read the rest of this article

It’s hard to read a newspaper or watch the news these days without hearing about the supposed dire situation at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Although, like much information being disseminated by the powers that be in federal government, there is much to be skeptical about with the numbers and warnings being broadcast.

There is indeed a fiscal problem with the USPS. They’ve taken quite a hit the last few years, mostly with the advent of e-mail and our ability to send and pay bills online. The USPS supports itself primarily by the sale of stamps. Taxpayer dollars do not subsidize it. But, even with the decline of revenue the USPS, by implementing cost-cutting measures; downsizing its workforce and gaining concessions from its unions, still manages to break even. How many federal governmental agencies can claim that? Read the rest of this article

By Mike Rosso

“One gear bikes have two speeds: riding and pushing.” – Anonymous

I remember clearly my first bike. It had one gear. If you needed to climb a hill or gain momentum you stood up and pumped hard. Downhill you wound it out to the maximum RPM, slamming back hard on the pedals to bring it to a screeching halt. No hand brakes, no derailleur, no multiple gears – very reliable except for the occasional flat tire or broken chain. But who could resist the lure of multiple gears? The decisive click of a three-speed grip shifter found on the typical English commuter bike? The sudden ease of climbing hills? I then became smitten with the five-speed in-line stick shift on the gold Schwinn Stingray I was astonished to find on Christmas morning one year (thanks again Mom and Dad). Sure, the Stingray was kind of a ridiculous contraption; the banana seat, sissy bar, high-rise handlebars – but that cool shifter! Man, you could do some serious climbing and get some great speed, all the while imagining myself another Mario Andretti. Read the rest of this article

Pedallers and Hackers

This month’s cover art was provided by Nathrop-area photographer Taf McMurry. She made our job very difficult after providing dozens of great photos depicting all kinds of bicycles in a variety of artistic stylings. We decided we needed to run at least one more of her images in this issue so we did, on page fifteen.

Although we don’t consider this to be a “theme” issue, the fact of the big race scheduled for August in Central Colorado was enough to devote several pages of content to the velocipede.

If you haven’t been on a bike in a while we hope it inspires you to get back onto one or at least go out and ring a cow bell for the racers coming here from all over the planet this month. Read the rest of this article

Vision of Photography Series, The Museum Collection,
William Meriwether
People’s Press, 52 pages $14.95
ISBN #0981781071

Reviewed by Mike Rosso

William Meriwether is not a well-known name in photo circles but the recently deceased Colorado-based photographer left behind a body of work that may someday bring his works the stature they deserve.

Meriwether, who spent part of his youth in the San Luis Valley, self-published a limited edition book of his work and essays in 2005 and it was formally published in 2010 by Peoples Press in Woody Creek, Colorado. Read the rest of this article

By Mike Rosso

“Hello and welcome to MegaCorp. Para el Español presione por favor cinco. Please enter your ten-digit phone number, followed by the pound sign.”

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

“Thank you, the next available representative will be with you shortly.”

Five minutes of scratchy, cheery music at high volume.

Read the rest of this article

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” – Emma Lazarus

This excerpt from The New Colossus appears on a bronze tablet that resides in the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. It is very likely that statue was the first sign to welcome each one of my grandparents to their new home back in the 1890s. Read the rest of this article

One of our former subscribers who was also an area publisher passed away in August, 2010. Gerald Lee Hitt was a 22-year U.S. Air Force veteran and resident of Albuquerque who also owned at cabin in White Pine. He his wife Lois produced a monthly publication, the White Pine Cone Newsletter for over fifteen years, named after the original White Pine Cone newspaper.

Hitt and his wife discovered the ex-mining town while he was working as the chief investigator for nuclear accidents for the U.S.A.F.. Read the rest of this article

I took a rare week off in early April for a Colorado road trip. In less than seven days I traversed six mountain passes, twice crossing the Continental Divide.

My first stop was the Colorado National Monument near Fruita for a rendezvous with a friend. In my 30-plus years in the state I’ve never visited this expanse of red rock and canyon country. As it was early in the season, the campground was pretty empty as were the hiking trails. There were some bicyclists on the rim drive through the park, enjoying what has to be one of the more spectacular rides in the state. Read the rest of this article

Since our last issue the world has seen tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, near-meltdowns at nuclear reactors, no-fly zones, allied bombing of Libya, new protests in Bahrain, Syria, Egypt and Yemen, forest fires in Colorado and Charlie Sheen.

We’d like for our April issue to be a respite from all that but we do have to warn you – we have two pieces discussing one of the greatest tragedies in U.S. history, the Civil War. Read the rest of this article

By Mike Rosso

February 2011 was a tough month for dictators – and journalists.

While covering the uprisings in Northern Africa, many journalists were abducted, arrested, beaten and in some cases, lost their lives.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper was roughed up on the Egyptian streets by Hosni Mubarek’s thugs. Worse was the vicious assault on Lara Logan, the veteran correspondent for CBS News. In an age when the entire field of journalism is under attack, is it any wonder that one of the first things that occurred during the recent uprisings was the shutting down of the internet and the intimidation of reporters? Read the rest of this article

By Mike Rosso

High on a ridgetop south of Salida sits the possible future of solar energy generation.

In May 2010 the SolFocus Concentrator Photovoltaic (CPV) system, the first of its kind in Colorado, began generating electricity from the sun on property owned by Salidans Michael and Joyce Ferree. Read the rest of this article

Have you noticed how home projects always take at least three times as long as planned?

I am currently in the process of remodeling the enclosed porch on the rear of my house (okay, it’s a mud room). A project that began in late fall and, at this point, with luck, might be done by the next election.

I have no one to blame for this delay except myself. Granted, the recent holidays and publishing deadlines did put a crimp in the work schedule, but it seems I can always find other things to occupy my spare time; laundry, house cleaning, snowshoeing, visiting with friends, eating … time that could be spent in my grubbies, the radio turned up, clutching tools, getting this project completed.

So why am I bringing this up here?

It’s all about love. Read the rest of this article

“Is that Ed?”

Several readers commented about the photo on the cover of last month’s issue, wondering if Ed Quillen had somehow been magically transported into the past to play the role of Santa among a group of Salida youngsters.

While we freely admit there is a certain resemblance, Santa is highly unlikely to have been him, as Ed was all of one year old at the time. Also we try to avoid using Photoshop to manipulate images, time, space, physical planes, etc.. Read the rest of this article

The Malta Schoolhouse, located south of Leadville off U.S. Hwy 24 was built in 1902 after the original schoolhouse, which had been moved to the property from across the highway, burned down. The “second” Malta School operated from 1902 to 1945. Read the rest of this article

Salida, Colorado is the highest, driest, coldest, windiest and probably, based on per capita income, the poorest place I’ve ever lived.

So, how the heck did I end up here anyway?

Partly it was because, unlike many other mountain communities in Colorado, I was actually able to afford to buy a house in town after moving here from Durango in the Fall of 2001. Colorado’s more desirable zip codes were quickly being priced out of proportion to the average income base. Durango among them. Read the rest of this article

The sponsors of Amendments 60 and 61 and Proposition 101, also known as the “Dr. Evil Initiatives,” had to endure some uncomfortable questioning as well as fines after it was discovered they may have had ties to TABOR author Doug Bruce who has denied any hand in the budget-strangling measures. Read the rest of this article

The hard drive on my computer decided to call it quits early this September and boy, was I relieved.

For the less tech-savvy readers the hard drive basically stores all the data on the computer, which in our case includes advertisements, current and past articles, back and current issues, graphics, photos, etc. – basically everything a publisher needs to produce a magazine. In addition, the hard drive stores the application programs – the tools actually needed for the layout and design of this magazine. Hard drives are not invincible and can cause catastrophic results when they break down. Data is irretrievably lost, production schedules grind to a halt, and the machine is rendered virtually useless. Read the rest of this article

Last month I needed a book to take along on a flight to the West Coast and grabbed from my bookcase a beat up old copy of Resist Much, Obey Little; Some Notes on Edward Abbey.

I read a bunch of Abbey’s works in my twenties and thirties as did many of my peers here in the West. It was the age of James Watt and the notion of monkeywrenching had a certain mischievous appeal to those of us who felt the hard-won environmental regulations of the 1970s were under assault. Read the rest of this article

photos and story by Mike Rosso

A prominent Pueblo-based architect with multiple buildings listed on the National Historic Register is responsible for the “Art Deco” style typified in the original Chaffee County Courthouse in Salida.

Walter DeMordaunt, who practiced architecture in Pueblo, Colorado from 1920 to 1962, was hired to design the courthouse in 1929 after a controversial 1928 election was held that moved the county seat from Buena Vista to Salida. But the controversy did not end there. Disputes over the use of contractors and local labor overshadowed the construction. Over DeMordaunt’s objections, county officials decided to brick over the stained glass windows he designed for the records vaults citing security issues, according to the book, Trails of the Columbine. “Private citizens” supposedly took matters into their own hands and removed the offending brickwork but it was later reinstalled where it remains to this day. The courthouse officially opened in its new Salida home in January of 1932. Read the rest of this article

I’m a cat person.

There, I’ve said it. Somehow I tend to relate more to those independent-minded, self-absorbed masters of the art of lounging than their canine counterparts. Cats have always been part of my adult life. Grey tabbies mostly, and, if I may indulge in a little Buddhist philosophy, am pretty sure each one was the same tabby, reincarnated, having returned just to keep me company and for my personal amusement and enlightenment. Read the rest of this article

Story and Photos by Mike Rosso

As a native of Black Hawk, Colorado, Aaron Peyrouse has been playing in the mountains all his life. He learned to ski at Loveland Ski Area at a young age and eventually became a full-time ski patroller. It was during those years at Loveland that he learned about avalanche rescue dogs and became intrigued. The area had employed golden retrievers trained to seek out and hunt down the scent of skiers buried in avalanches.

Peyrouse began his own research into the training of rescue dogs by referencing the certification program offered through Search And Rescue Dogs Of Colorado (SARDOC) Colorado Rapid Avalanche Deployment (CRAD). Meanwhile, he ran into an old friend in Central City who had just arrived from Montana with a fresh litter of bird-dog puppies. Peyrouse got to choose the pick of the litter, a six-week-old black lab he named Üllr after the Norwegian god of snow and skiing. Read the rest of this article

by Mike Rosso

What began in the 1970s as a review and evaluation for wilderness designation has become a jumble of information and falsehoods – involving politicians, off-highway vehicle enthusiasts, wilderness proponents and the National Rifle Association.

If designated, the proposed Browns Canyon Wilderness Area in central Chaffee County would be one of the lowest elevation wilderness areas in Colorado and one of the few actual wilderness areas combining both U.S. Forest Service (USFS) as well Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. Read the rest of this article

Built in 1886, this two-story contributing brick building occupies one of Salida’s most eligible corners at 102-104 North F Street. Back then the Salida Weekly Mail wrote of it: “…we admire the push and pluck of Salida. She is coming up out of her ashes. Read the rest of this article

I had already penned a piece to go in this spot, even going as far as dropping it in the layout, when Martha Quillen’s column came across my desk.

About halfway through it I realized she was voicing many of the same thoughts I had written except with a bit less cynicism. You see, what had prompted my unpublished tirade was a bumper sticker I had seen that day. It was stuck on an oversized SUV driven by an aging woman in downtown Salida equating liberals with laziness and unhappiness. Although I prefer not to be pigeonholed into all-too-convenient liberal/conservative tags, I certainly cannot side with a group of paranoid, angry folks who consider people like Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck their spokespersons. Read the rest of this article

by Mike Rosso

Salida-based musician Bones has put quite a few achievements under his belt over the past 25 years. He has performed in a variety of rock bands from England to Los Angeles and was a member of the popular Afro-beat band Jaka as well as the Grateful Dead tribute band, Shakedown Street. Read the rest of this article

by Bill Hatcher

photos by Mike Rosso

It happens without fail every September. Driving down a county road where I live in the northern San Luis Valley, I am given yet another opportunity to ruminate on why I love living here so much. No, not it’s magnificent scenery. Instead, the little reminder of pastoral patience I’m referring to lumbers along over cloven hooves, tended by that durable American icon, the rancher-cowboy, reins or twist-throttle held loosely in gloved hands. Read the rest of this article

At this moment I have nearly 2,000 strangers spending the night in my neighborhood.

Participants in the Ride the Rockies bike tour are camped out in tents, RVs, pickup beds, vans, and on the floor of the high school field house, about two blocks from my home/office. Today they rode over the Continental Divide from Gunnison, about 65 miles. Tomorrow they rise early and pedal 60 miles to Leadville. By Friday they are back in Glenwood Springs, having completed a loop of 380 miles in six days. Read the rest of this article

Compiled by Mike Rosso

Farm markets in our region are becoming more popular every year as locals strive to buy and consume regional produce and goods. We’ve compiled a guide to most of the markets operating this summer. Eat well, buy local! Read the rest of this article

by Mike Rosso

They met in Berkeley, California in the early 1950s. She was an art student at the University of California; he was up from his home in Riverside, California to live with a friend after graduating from two years of art school in Los Angeles, awaiting his inevitable induction into the Army. Read the rest of this article