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A Short History of Hotchkiss
By Thomas Wills
There was never really an Old West in the North Fork and Hotchkiss. There were no typical Colorado mountain gold rush boom towns here... with gunfights in the streets... with ten thousand miners and hangers on crowding the streets one day, and a few hundred a week later ... The North Fork in the early days was a different sort of West.
The history of the North Fork is based on four things: land, coal, fruit and cattle: in roughly that order of importance. The valley has had its share of booms and busts in its history, but not until this century, after the railroad arrived and the coal industry became fully established.
The modern history of the then isolated North Fork of the Gunnison River Valley began in 1880 when the Ute Indian reservation, which then included most of the Western Slope of Colorado , was closed by the federal government following the infamous Meeker Massacre. The Utes were then forced to move to a small reservation in Northern Utah, and an even smaller one on the border of southwestern Colorado, and the area was opened for settlement.
The first prospective settlers into the North Fork were a small group of men from the Lake City area led by Enos Throop Hotchkiss in 1880. Hotchkiss had made his money by discovering the Golden Fleece mine at Lake City. His party surreptitiously scouted the valley and picked out likely homesteads while the Utes were still in possession.
The next year, when it was legal, Hotchkiss returned with two young brothers, George and William Duke, a herd of 200 horses and David Platt, Samuel Wade, Samuel Angevine, and William Clark. They were the first into the valley as settlers. Henry Roberts, later a prominent Paonia and Hotchkiss area pioneer, was probably the first one to actually try to stake a homestead in the Valley, but had to retreat when some of the few remaining Utes “ran him out”. Or... maybe the first settlement attempt was made by a mountain man by the name of Enoch Holloway who came into the valley with his Indian wife in the mid- 1870’s and ended up being killed in his makeshift stone fort located on Jay Creek just east of Hotchkiss. His skeletal remains were discovered many years later and as a newspaper of the time claimed that they had Holloway’s skull was on display in the paper’s office for many years.
Be that as it may, Enos Hotchkiss and the Dukes, were the first successful legal immigrants, and staked out their homesteads in the area of present day Hotchkiss. Wade, Clark, and Angevine went further up valley and Platt apparently went insane and had to be sent home, or was shot, depending upon which story you want to believe.
Following them that fall and the next spring were a virtual land rush of people. In Hotchkiss, Enos was trying his hand at cattle and then sheep ranching as the years passed. His young protegees, the Duke brothers, became the driving force behind the development of the Town. They platted and sold most of the early lots, established the first bank and major store. They brought in a third brother, Ed Duke, and a sister and brother in law, (the Simonds family) and had a hand in nearly every thing of importance in early Hotchkiss. George became the first mayor in 1900 when the town was finally and officially incorporated. He was also the one who had named the town “Hotchkiss” back when he was still an employee and was acting as the first postmaster of the Town with the office located in his boss’s home.
Other important pioneers of early Hotchkiss included Joseph H. Reich, who began the first store in the town. He sold the business, located on the site of the present Church of God, to Ed Duke and Charles Roberts, and began at least two other businesses, a hotel, a stage delivery company, and a livery stable.
Reich’s close friend, John Edward Hanson, for whom Hanson Mesa north east of town is named, was another important pioneer. A risk taking gambler he built the gigantic 7-X ranch including the impressive sandstone mansion on Leroux Creek above Rogers Mesa that still exists. The 7-X empire lasted only about a decade but is still a North Fork legend.
Enos Hotchkiss died on January 29, 1900 just a few months before the Town of Hotchkiss was officially incorporated with his name on it.
Hard Black Gold
What was to become the valley’s leading industry, coal mining, had its modest beginnings when, geologist, Ira Quimby Sanborn discovered coal in the Somerset area of the upper North Fork. He staked the first claims and set up a small scale mine, supplying local blacksmiths. Eventually John Edward Hanson (mentioned earlier), who was another Enos Hotchkiss acquaintance from Lake City, as well as a rancher and investor in Hotchkiss, bought the mines from Sanborn and promptly sold them to Utah Fuel and Iron in about 1899 for a nice profit.
In 1902, the rail was laid into the North Fork and on to the mines. Coal mining has been important around here since then. Up to five full train loads of coal per day are currently shipped out on the Union Pacific spur line that extends the full length of the Valley.. The coal is hard anthracite, a type of cleaner burning low sulfur coal much in demand for power plants around the country. While wandering around the valley a recommended stop for those interested in mining history is the Coal Miner’s Memorial in the Paonia Town Park. The plaque at the base of the impressive statute of a miner lists miners who have lost their lives in the North Fork mines over the years. Another place to really get the feel of the early mining era is at the small cemetery perched on a bench above the town of Somerset at the top of the valley.
The railroad also changed the commercial scale of the fruit industry which had grown up around Hotchkiss and Paonia. A thousand car loads of fruit were shipped in 1904 alone. Although the Valley is still well known for its fruit, in those early days the fruit from the area won multiple ribbons at the World’s Fair.
Interlaced with all of the fruit, cattle (and sheep) and coal mines was the constant buying and selling of land in the valley. This is a thread that continues to this day. The local real estate business is probably as vital today as it was when George and Bill Duke sold their first lots or Ed Hanson sold “fruit ranches” by advertising in Eastern newspapers.
History is only really just beginning in the magical North Fork Valley.
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