Brief by Central Staff
Gunnison name – July 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
A Long Ways from the Gunnison Country
Among the attractions of Dutchess County in upstate New York, according to a tourist brochure circulated there, is the Gunnison Natural History Museum.
We wondered if there as any connection between that Gunnison and Colorado’s, but if there is, we haven’t found it yet. The museum in New York was named for an Olive Gunnison, a long-time area resident who bequeathed her collection of fossils and the like to the local library in about 1960, and the museum evolved from that.
Our John W. Gunnison was an army captain from New Hampshire who led a survey hereabouts in 1854. He crossed the San Luis Valley and Cochetopa Pass before getting killed by Indians along the Sevier River in Utah.