Review by Ed Quillen
Local History – December 1996 – Colorado Central Magazine
Pikes Peak Backcountry
by Celinda Reynolds Kaelin and Leo Kimmett
Published in 1995 by the authors
ISBN 0-9651706-0-8
Florissant is one of those places I often drive through on my way elsewhere. The scenery, though not spectacular, is more than appealing, but I never bothered to speculate about its history and lore beyond the usual negligent driving by a railroad buff. That is, my eyes often leave the highway as I scan the landscape for remnants of the old Colorado Midland Railway roadbed.
The Midland, which operated from 1887 to 1921 between Colorado Springs and Aspen, gets its just due from Pikes Peak Backcountry. But there’s plenty more here, starting with æons of geology that left crystals and fossils, and two passages in the mountains.
One was east-west: From present Colorado Springs, up Ute Pass, then across South Park to Trout Creek Pass. The other extended south-north: From present Cañon City, up Currant or Fourmile Creek into South Park, and on over Hoosier Pass to Middle Park.
Those routes, used by bison since the glaciers melted, crossed on the west side of Pike’s Peak, and the Utes guarded this crossing zealously — they built stone forts on the hillside above Twin Creek in present-day Florissant.
But these structures on Fortification Hill didn’t block the fur trappers and traders, among them Kit Carson, nor the gold-seekers and ranchers who began arriving in the late 1850s.
What followed was a microcosm of the conquest of the American West: a crossroads store and inn, a railroad invasion and retreat, wars between cattle and sheep operators, a gold rush or two.
There really was gold at Cripple Creek, only 18 miles from Florissant, but people had a hard time believing it in 1891, on account of the “Mount Pisgah Hoax” of 1884, (which was actually on McIntyre Mountain). That episode gets detailed and disapproving treatment, but the authors are at their best in their descriptions of daily life. At the schoolhouse, for example:
“Students sat on wooden benches and committed their lessons to small, square slates. Each student usually carried a small jar of water and a rag with which they cleaned their slate between lessons. Older and more capricious children would dispense with the bottle and rag, substituting a bit of spittle and the sleeve of their shirt….
“The little room was lined with brass coat hooks on one wall and wooden shelves on the opposite wall. These shelves were used by students to store their lunch buckets, made from a half-gallon size lard or syrup pail. Most lunches consisted of a jelly sandwich, or perhaps a fried egg sandwich, placed on thick slices of home-made bread or biscuits. It wasn’t unusual to find that the bread had frozen while sitting in the anteroom, and had to be toasted on top of the pot-bellied stove. These sandwiches were washed down by cold spring water, brought up from the creek and shared from a common dipper.”
Another strong point of this book is that, when there are conflicting accounts of an event, the authors present both, generally along with their surmise as to what really might have occurred.
The area it covers is pretty much Teller County, with some extension west to Lake George and Guffey in Park County, and Backcountry removed some of my confusion about place names in that area. Guffey, for instance, began as the center of the Freshwater Mining District (two nearby gulches, and the other was Soda Water), and was incorporated as Freshwater in 1896. But the post office, opened in 1895, was Idaville. It all became Guffey when James McClurg Guffey donated $500 for street improvements.
Other place names thereabouts are also explained quite well, with an exception. That area teems with names like “Fourmile Road” and “Thirtyninemile Mountain” — four miles or thirty-nine miles from what? I’ve been wondering for years, and I still wonder.
However, I’m now up to speed on the Florissant Fossil Beds, which I’ve visited several times, and Mueller State Park, which I now plan to visit. These, in the authors’ views, are the true treasures of Florissant.
This book has a few flaws. Its typography, though generally readable, is disconcerting at first. Some minor errors pertaining to railroads (i.e., mention of a non-existent Rio Grande line in South Park) and mining (Aspen mined silver, not gold) slipped through.
But it’s got an excellent index, and it’s copiously illustrated with many photos that I’ve never seen before.
One of the ironies of Colorado is that its center is one of the emptiest regions of the state (and many of us like it that way). But the unpopulated core of our state is rich in lore, connected to the great currents of national history and international commerce, and Pikes Peak Backcountry delves deeply.
Local histories all too often just throw material at the reader. This one is organized and presents a clear narrative, making it good reading, too. The guy who recommended this book to me was enthusiastic, and now I understand why: this is local history, about as good as it can get.
–Ed Quillen