My Dad's pictures from a 1948 trip from MD to CO

[greatgrandma]

First a parade (where Uncle Leonard got us a place on the corner so we had a good view)

Buffalo Bill's Wild West float

Union Pacific float

Stagecoach float

Stagecoach

Another stagecoach

 

[greatgrandma]

Appaloosas pulling a red cross carriage

Cowboy

and then we saw our first ever Rodeo.

Arena

Indian encampment on the far end

In 1897, Frederick W. Angier, Traveling Passenger Agent of the Union Pacific Railroad, suggested to the editor of the Cheyenne Daily Sun-Leader, that Cheyenne have festival. It was then that plans were made for the first “Frontier Day”. Events included pony races, bronco busting, and steer roping - events that were seen as a test of a cowboy’s skill. The inaugural event was so successful that the next year it was expanded to two days and a parade was added.

Hitching up a mule

 

[greatgrandma]

After we left Uncle Leonard's, I am not absolutely sure of the sequence of events.

We went to Rocky Mountain National Park

Chipmunk lured out with a PB and J

and I remember seeing the Rocky Mountain Sheep, but I don't have any photos of them.

Me up on the rocks in Rocky Mountain National Park

Iceberg Lake

I think after that we spent the night at Professor Wallin's cabin. The story behind the Professor's cabin is as follows:

My father went to interview at the University of Colorado Medical School for a job as a teaching assistant. The questions that the professor asked were -Can you clear land? and Can you notch logs? Evidently my father's answers were satisfactory because he was hired. He spent the summer during the week learning how to dissect a human cadaver, and the weekends building a cabin for the professor.

Prof Wallin

My dad and my mother spent part of their honeymoon there, and 16 years later, we all spend the night there too.

Wallin's cabin

We went fishing and we brought home trout which we fried up for breakfast. Our father taught us to eat them tails and fins and all.

 

[greatgrandma]

We went to Denver

Prismatic Electric Fountain in Ferril Lake - Denver, CO City Park

and my dad took photos of a fountain where the colors were synced to music,

and we visited my little first cousin Margaret - the daughter of my father's younger sister Mary.

Margaret

My father's sister died in 1944 and her husband had remarried.

Margaret, her father, stepmother and half sister

 

[greatgrandma]

We went up Mt Evans where the University of Denver Cosmic Ray Lab is.

Mount Evans

My dad had an experiment up there last year, to see whether cosmic rays (from the sun) had any effect on cancer. Some of the mice were up here and some were down in a coal mine in Pennsylvania

Then we went to my father's younger brother Harry. Harry managed the State Game Farm in Colorado Springs. My grandmother was there

Granny, Daddy, Mother, me, my sister Aunt Alice and our cousins


along with our Aunt Alice and my three cousins.

Aunt Alice and Uncle Harry and our cousins

The four of us cousins had a really good time there - our youngest cousin Beth was still in diapers. Uncle Harry raised game birds - pheasants and quail. Every morning we would gather the eggs which were put in an incubator to hatch.

Eggs hatching

Bird just hatched

Some of the eggs Aunt Alice would fix for breakfast.

 

[greatgrandma]

Eagle and its prey - Harry shot it

Harry holding eagle

Uncle Harry had to keep predators away from his flock - some of the pens were covered with wire and some were not.

My sister and me holding the eagle

We played on the grain sacks in the barn until we were stopped because it was disintegrating the feed in the sacks.

My sister and I wore dresses most of the time. Usually made by my mother. She would make one for my sister and one for me, and then when my sister grew into my dress, she made another one for me in a bigger size. After I grew out of the dresses, she sent them out to the Colorado cousins - the oldest of them was my sister's age.

Five first cousins - me, my sister and the three Colorado cousins

Uncle Harry's was a chance for our mother to wash our clothing - I was "helping" with the wash - the washing machine had a wringer, and I was feeding the wringer and got careless and fed my whole arm through. Fortunately it was set for blankets and I did not suffer any injury.

Another of my mother's first cousins (she had 12 of them) was married in the spring. She asked my sister to be a flower girl and this is the dress my mother made for her to be a flower girl in.

My sister in her flower girl dress

 

[greatgrandma]

Hunters would come across fauns which had been hidden in the woods, and thinking that they were abandoned, they would bring them in to the game farm.

Fawns at Bird Farm

One of our jobs was feeding them.

My sister and cousin feeing fauns


The State Game farm had a really good view of the Garden Of The Gods across the valley.

Front Range of the Rockies

Pikes Peak

 

[greatgrandma]

We went and saw Balanced Rock with our cousins.

Balanced Rock - Garden of the Gods

Indian at the Garden of the Gods

Indian family - posing for tourist photos for tips. In the movie my father took of them one of the Indians is reaching for a tip from another tourist

Garden of the Gods Trading Post

 

[greatgrandma]

Our grandmother died on July 16th just before her 70th birthday. My mother and father took us and our two older cousins camping to allow Uncle Harry and Aunt Alice to make the funeral arrangements. We camped as before, on a ground cloth, up on a bluff above a stream. My mother wanted to know why we didn't camp next to the stream so it would be easier to get water. But my father wouldn't do it.

The next morning, the water was up much closer to us - there had been a cloudburst upstream which had filled the dry arroyo.

We went to the funeral service in Canon City.

Granny

Wedding picture 1899

My father was born December 1904 in a ghost silver mining town called Silver Cliff. Silver Cliff is in the Wet Mountain Valley between the Wet Mountains on the east and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains (part of the Rockies) on the west.

Wet Mountain Valley looking toward the Sangre de Cristos

The town was originally built in the 1870s in order to accommodate the mine workers during the silver boom. Silver Cliff was incorporated in 1879 and by 1880 had around 5,000 residents. At that time it was Colorado’s third largest city, behind Denver and Leadville. The railroad was built to the Wet Mountain Valley but it deliberately didn't go to Silver Cliff. The depot was a mile west of Silver Cliff in Westcliffe. Westcliffe was incorporated in 1887. Government purchases of silver were nearly doubled by the 1890 Sherman Silver Purchase Act. The repeal of the act in 1893 resulted in a collapse of silver prices, bringing about an end to the boom and many mining camps like Silver Cliff became ghost towns.

Our father was the middle child. He had an older brother and older sister, a younger brother (Harry) and a much younger sister.

Photo taken about 1911 - In the back my dad's older brother Ernest. The baby on the stool is Harry. In the middle his older sister Margaret and on the right my Dad. His younger sister Mary hadn't been born yet.

He went to a one room schoolhouse and helped in his father's general store,

General store

but otherwise, he was a free-range child who hung out with the friends of his older brother. He would tell us stories about his boyhood.

To get to Silver Cliff my parents always talked about going over the Hardscrabble. I never knew what that meant - even though I looked up the word Hardscrabble, I never realized (until now) that the Hardscrabble referred to is a mountain pass through the Wet Mountains.

We drove into town and stopped to take pictures.

My father with his movie camera and my sister

 

[greatgrandma]

Wet Mountain Valley

My father wanted to take movies panning along the mountains. In order that he get the panning speed right, we were to run along parallel to the mountains.

My sister pointing at the Sangre de Cristo

When we were staying in the valley, we did not camp - we stayed in a tourist cabin. The cabin didn't have indoor plumbing so to use the bathroom, we had to go across the street to the gas station.

My sister, me and my mother in the Main Street and the gas station where we used the bathroom

Town street

We visited the house that had been my grandparent's house.

Grandparents old house

It is a small house - one bedroom, the front parlor and the kitchen. On the kitchen door frame were notched the heights of the children and the year. My father said that the b