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

[greatgrandma]

We also went to Westcliffe

Westcliffe

and visited the church where my father's family attended.

Lutheran Church in Westcliffe

Lady doing flowers for the church

Westcliffe Lutheran Church window

Westcliffe Lutheran Church window

He was baptised there and so was I.

 

[greatgrandma]

thirty two years later.

Miss Kettle's house in Westcliffe

Miss Kettle (one of my father's school teachers) had a house in Westcliffe.

We went up Round Mountain, a small mountain in the valley, and looked for garnets. (I don't think we found any).

From Round Mt. 1948 - Silver Cliff closest to us and the upstart Westcliffe farther away

We also went up Geyser Hill to take photos of the surrounding area.

From Geyser Hill - 1948

From Geyser Hill

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

I read it all, saw all the photos and enjoyed it very much, Rosalie. It must be really nice to have had a photographing dad so all the places you all visited have been documented in his wonderful photos.

 

[JohnPD]

Rosalie, instead of liking every post, I will just say how much I too enjoyed reading your account of the trip and the photographs. Thank you for sharing it all with us here.

 

[greatgrandma]

I hope you don't mind, but I'm only half way through. My thumb got sore doing the copy and paste and it was time for bed. I wanted to show my dad's photography early in his career and also post what are really historic pictures in some cases. (I don't think we would have Indian's dancing for tips anymore - at least I hope not).

One day we drove out to Willard Walker's ranch.

En route to Walkers

Willard had milking goats.

Mother and me with the goats at the Walkers

Willard was the son of one of the Evans twins - the other twin was married to my grandfather's brother. Willard had three daughters - the youngest one (Wildra) was my age. I am not sure what our relationship was but we became friends and were pen pals for awhile. Wildra still lives out there. While we were there, we took a trail ride.

Me on the trail ride

Trees damaged by beavers

 

[greatgrandma]

Another day we drove up to Hermit Lake.

En route to Hermit Lake

Old shack on way to Hermit Lake (our car parked beside it)

On the hike up there, I caught

Me with the garter snake I caught


a garter snake - I found that the snake can discharge a malodorous, musky-scented secretion from a gland near the cloaca.

Hermit Lake

My father took some photos across the valley - there was a hailstorm.

Hail storm over Wet Mountains from Sangre de Cristo

 

[greatgrandma]

From Hermit Lake trail - family on right

Rainbow

When my grandmother's parents came to this country they bought property and established a ranch. After my grandmother married, and built their house, they moved in with her. We drove out to the ranch

On the way to the old Schwab ranch

Schwab Ranch house - our car with mother and my sister

Ranch House

 

[greatgrandma]

Then we packed everything in the car and went back to the State Game Farm.

Daddy at the Tourist Cabins packing the car

We did one additional trip in Colorado before we started for home. We drove over to the other side of the Rockies to the Uncompahgre Plateau.

Tennessee pass

(Standing or sitting on the rock markers of the passes is a family tradition)

We were someplace having lunch - I don't remember where but it might have been a bar. Colorado had silver dollar slots, and I ask my mother if I could play. So she gave me a silver dollar. I put it in and pulled the handle, and hit the jackpot. The machine spewed silver dollars all over the floor and everything. My mother wasn't happy. Her father was a gambler (he bet on the dogs) and she didn't want me to get the idea that I could get money that way. So she made me play the machine until I lost all the money. This took some time, because I would win little jackpots every so often. Slot machines are not attractive to me now.

In those days the area was fairly rural. My dad's photos showed the cowboys with their horses,

Horse herd

Cowboy and his dog


He also was fascinated with the genetics of breeding Palomino horses. We had not seen many of them at that time.

Palomino with a palomino foal

 

[greatgrandma]

There were burros roaming on the roads and we came across two Jennys with a colt. We stopped and we caught the non-mother Jenny.

My donkey ride

My dad got out his movie camera and I got on the burro and my mother attempted to lead me around - without any resulting movement. the burro was not going to go anywhere. Then my sister got on

I'm not moving - even for a carrot

also without any results until my father put down his movie camera and put a loop of the rope around the burro's lip and then she would walk with my sister on her back.

After my "ride", my mother told me to hold the mother Jenny and so I put my arms around the burro's neck.

"Holding" the other donkey

When my parents finished giving my sister a ride, they let the other burro go and told me to let mine go too. But I apparently didn't hear that instruction because I retained my hold on the burro's neck. The other burro and the colt started trotting away and mine was going to join them with or without me. She dragged me across the roadside until I either let go or she kicked me off - I don't know which. I had some road rash on my tummy right through my T-shirt, but I was otherwise unscathed.

 

[greatgrandma]

I had a more successful ride when we came across a stuffed bucking horse for a tourist photo op.

My sister getting off the stuffed horse

If you took the photo from the right angle, the post holding the horse up wasn't visible

"Riding" a bronc

Bull near Nucla

Rainbow near Nucla

I think our goal for this part of the trip was the town of Uravan - named because the ore that was mined here Carnotite ore has uranium, and vanadium in it.

Uravan (Uranium - Vanadium)

My dad had a geiger counter and since WWII, he was always looking for a possible location of uranium ore. In Uravan there was a fireplace made of the local rocks - my dad's geiger counter went into a frenzy of clicking - so fast you could not hear the individual clicks. Giving a whole new meaning to the phrase "hot rocks'.

Uravan no longer exists. The EPA declared Uravan a superfund site in the 1980s and ordered the mining company, Umetco, to start clearing away the entire town.