Review by Allen Best
Colorado History – June 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Colorado Avalanche Disasters: An Untold Story of the Old West
by John W. Jenkins
Published in 2001 by Western Reflections
ISBN 1-890437-44-1
FATAL AVALANCHES fascinate us in some peculiar, primordial way. And, from the first winter after the gold rush of 1858 to as recently as this past winter, Colorado’s mountains have often responded to this maniacal morbidity.
John W. Jenkins caters to this curiosity with a book intended for easy reading. From the mining camps to the ski mountains, he scans 120 years and a cemetery full of white death. He had a good idea, and his prose is adequate. Ample footnotes suggest exhaustive research that would make this as carefully documented as a bank loan.
However, I wouldn’t bet my house on his history. Several of his stories are too good to be true. His Homestake Mine story is almost certainly bogus, and his story about Buck Rogers and a lost gold treasure from Red Cliff is highly unlikely. And there are more canards yet. These stories are almost certainly tall tales rather than fact. This was “taking” research, rather than “painstaking,” and as the saying goes, “no pain, no gain.”
For better primary documentation and perhaps better writing, I’d suggest “Historic Avalanches in the Northern Front Range and the Central and Northern Mountains of Colorado,” by M. Martinelli Jr. and Charles F. Leaf.
They also plan to issue a volume for the Southern Mountains of Colorado.
— Allen Best
