Brief by Central Staff
Media – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
We understand that town names like Saguache and Cotopaxi can be easy to misspell. But Hartsel?
This was in a collection of “Unique Holiday Traditions around the State” in the November/December edition of EnCompass, the magazine for members of Rocky Mountain Motorists, also known as AAA Colorado. (AAA used to stand for American Automobile Association, but now its formal name is just the initials.)
As for Hartsel, it sits in South Park a few miles east of Trout Creek Pass, and the Postal Service says it is Hartsel, not Hartsell.
It dates back to 1862 when Sam Hartsel established his ranch among those meadows. From 1887 to 1917, it was a stop on the Colorado Midland Railroad — the bunkhouse, section house and depot remain to this day.
To continue this theme, there was an article in the Nov. 24 Denver Post which began “The view from the top of Kenosha Pass really hasn’t changed much since explorer Zebulon Montgomery Pike first saw it in 1806.” Pike, however, never crossed Kenosha Pass; from his journal, it appears he was never within 20 miles of it.
And now it’s our turn. The photographs of Salida yards in our December edtion were taken by Mike Rosso, not Mike Russo. We apologize.
