Review by Ed Quillen
Local Lore – March 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Beyond the Great Divide – 101 True Stories of Western Colorado
by Abbott Fay
Published in 1999 by Western Reflections Press
ISBN 1-890437-19-0
THIS ISN’T SOBER HISTORY and it certainly isn’t organized chronologically. It’s a collection of incidents and anecdotes about the Western Slope, spanning time from the Utes to the modern era.
Abbott Fay, who once taught in Leadville and is retired from Western State College in Gunnison, obviously delights in the arcana of Colorado’s past (a delight I share, by the way).
Fay is also a fine story-teller. He doesn’t waste words, but his prose flows and never seems compressed or telegraphic. Here’s an example:
Skimming over the Continental Divide
The Eaglerock Aeroplane Was Overloaded
There had been some stunt fliers and parachutists over towns in Western Colorado early in the twenties, but they were daredevils. Most of them were veteran pilots of World War I, barnstorming all over the nation, landing in any field large enough to handle their machines (then still called aeroplanes.)
In 1928 the community of Montrose decided to build an airfield on nearby Sunset Mesa. This was not very fancy but had four dirt landing strips which came together at a point where a big circle was marked for air viewing.
The people in Montrose and surrounding counties became enamored of the idea of air mail service. It was announced that there would be air mail flown from the airfield to Pueblo, to connect with Denver. Citizens crowded the post offices to buy five-cent air mail stamps for the first flight.
Local bush pilot Walt Piele had the contract. He owned an Eaglerock with a World War I motor, water-cooled. When it came time to stow the cargo, he was not at all happy with the load of 360 pounds. It seemed that everyone wanted to send a letter on the initial flight. His plane was designed to hold only 200 pounds of cargo in addition to the pilot.
Not wanting to disappoint the many who showed up to watch him take off, he decided to give it a try. Just barely clearing a barbed-wire fence at the end of the field, Piele was airborne.
Gradually, the plane gained altitude, and flew smoothly enough over the town of Gunnison. When the pilot reached Doyleville, though, he realized that he would never clear Monarch Pass at 11,312 feet elevation.
That’s when he decided on a radical idea. Near that village towers Tomichi Dome, something of a huge geological bubble formation, about which many earth scientists become excited. It rises to 10,200 feet, nearly a half mile above the valley floor. Piele began to fly around and around it to gradually gain the altitude needed. When he reached the highest point he knew he would have enough lift to clear the pass…barely.
Making it over the gap on the Continental Divide, he began the descent on the eastern side, but by then, because of the extra circuits he had made, he saw that the fuel gauge was running very low. He then glided into a field spotted near Poncha Springs, west of Salida, and made a safe landing.
Walt got out and walked to the home of a very excited and rather proud farmer and telephoned a Salida filling station. Before long, a truck arrived with a barrel of gasoline and as many curious people as the van could carry. The craft would need every drop of the fuel. Once again the pilot was faced with a problem. Could he get airborne once more? Well-wishers helped him roll the plane to the farthest corner of the field, and once more he was able to take off with his heavy load. The rest of the journey was merely a matter of flying down the Arkansas River to Pueblo where the mail was transferred to a regular carrier.
Many of these accounts were new to me (I lived only four years on the Western Slope). But even when they were familiar (how the old Model T got pushed off Inspiration Point on the Trough Road west of Kremmling), I learned some new details.
Fay does not document each selection, but he does provide a thorough biography at the end, and the book has a good index — an important feature for a book you keep around for looking up those offbeat details that one needs from time to time.
It is marred by at least a couple of errors. He puts Mt. Elbert on the Western Slope, when it is really drained by the Arkansas River of the Eastern Slope, and he puts Marshall Pass at 11,312 feet (Monarch’s elevation) in one place, and at 10,600 in another, when it’s usually listed at 10,846.
But those are mere annoyances. This is a fine and fun collection of lore that both educates and amuses — and you don’t have to be a Western Slope resident to enjoy it.