Volume XXV, Issue Two | September 2024
The first time I saw Breckenridge was 1961. I’d just bought a 1958 Austin-Healey. So a friend and I went for a drive in the mountains.
We’d decided to make a circle trip from Denver down to Fairplay, over Hoosier Pass and Highway 9. By the time we got to Breckenridge, it was storming. I peered through the rain at the boarded-up buildings on Main Street and asked, “Who would ever want to live here?”
Two years later, the answer was “Me”. Bob was the first public relations director at the ski area, and we lived in Breckenridge for two years. Later, we bought a miner’s cottage there that was a vacation home for us for another 35 years.
What made me think about Breckenridge was a trip I took there in July to meet with a book group. I hadn’t been in Breckenridge in 10 years, and I barely recognized it. Main Street is lined with shops and restaurants. Our little cottage has a huge two-story addition in the back. Once untouched mountains are covered with houses and condominiums. And the streets are jammed with bikers and pedestrians. The answer to that long-ago question seems to be “Everybody.”
Breckenridge was beautiful with flowers and aspen trees, but somehow, I missed the old town. I missed the miners who had lived there and the men who had worked on the gold dredges, the women who had waited in cabins and Victorian houses for them to come home. Some of them still lived there when Povy and I did the research for Colorado Ghost Towns and Mining Camps.
Flipping through the book, I wondered about the changes that have taken place in the other towns and camps we visited, photographed, and wrote about.
Dutton, once a thriving town where Butch Cassidy supposedly hid out after his first robbery, was nearly deserted when we visited it in the early 1980s. Today, it is a popular spa. Aspen and Crested Butte are thriving ski towns. Independence has been restored, although nobody lives there. Still, time has taken its toll on other “ghost towns. A highway has sliced through Emma. Winter storms have destroyed the buildings in remote towns. Povy said back then that our ghost town book might be the last look at some of them.
I thought of all the fun we had had researching that book. Many of our trips were taken in my BMW 2002. We zipped along, singing the Muppets’ “Movin’ Right Along,” taking pictures and prowling through deserted cabins. I picked up an old box in one of them. It fell apart, and on the back side was written:
Tom Earley Middle Swan, Colo.
Povy photographed the board for the book, and 10 years later, when I’d started writing fiction, I used Tom Earley’s name for a character in The Diary of Mattie Spenser and The Last Midwife.
Perhaps it was foolish, but I never worried about our safety back then. Povy was too young to drive. We were a mother and young daughter alone in remote areas, in a car that wasn’t built for rough roads. The people we encountered were friendly ghost town buffs and sometimes lonely old timers, who were glad for the company.
We even encountered a ghost, and that was in the Breckenridge cemetery. Povy took a picture of a grave marker, a hand-made wooden box that, as I recall, stood on iron legs, with a cross on top. The box held the remains of a photograph and faded silk flowers. Just as Povy clicked the shutter, the wooden cross on top broke in half. We looked at each other, and without a word, we went and got a roll of tape and put the cross back together. Some years later, we visited the cemetery and found the historical society had repaired the box and even put a name to the body buried there. I hope the ghost is happy with that. I am.
WWW Conference
I’ve given up many public appearances in recent years, but I will be on a panel at the Women Writing the West conference this fall. Whenever women ask for advise on writing, I suggest they join WWW. The conferences feature speakers and panels of successful women writers. There are sessions with agents, and presentation of the WWW Willa Awards (named for Willa Cather.) Perhaps most important, the conference brings women together to talk about writing and publishing. This year’s 30th anniversary conference, “Through a Woman’s Eyes,” is in Denver, Oct. 10-12. I’ll be on a panel, “the Land: Through a Woman’s Eyes,” on Saturday morning. You can find information on membership and the conference at www.womenwritingthewest.org.
Oh, and by the way, Where Coyotes Howl was just named a finalist for WWW’s Willa Award.
Sandra’s Picks
Children of the Storm
By Ariana Harner and Clark Secrest
Fulcrum
It was one of the saddest stories in western history. On a spring day in 1931, 20 children climbed aboard a rickety vehicle that was part school bus, part truck. By the time bus driver Carl Miller left the school yard, the storm was so bad that he couldn’t see beyond the bus’s radiator cap. He tried to make it to a nearby house, but disoriented by the storm, he drove the bus into a ditch. That was the beginning of a terrifying 33-hour ordeal that left Miller and five of the children dead. Many others were in critical condition when they were found.
The tragedy made news all over the country, thanks to the promotion-minded publisher of the Denver Post, Frederick.G. Bonfils. He sent a plane-full of supplies to the hospitalized kids, and later, brought them all the Denver for a week’s publicity tour. He singled out one boy to be the hero, although the boy had done no more to save his schoolmates than the other children.
Children of the Storm, written by Ariana Harner and my college buddy Clark Secrest, was originally published in 1999 and became a classic, due to the extensive research that debunked the misconceptions that grew up around the tragedy. Fulcrum’s to be commended for republishing this absorbing account.