Latinos in Boulder County, Colorado 1900-1980 Vol 1; History and Contributions 

[with many genealogical connections back to the San Luis Valley]

by
Marjorie K. McIntosh
Distinguished Professor of History Emerita University of Colorado at Boulder
​

Excerpt from the Latinos in Boulder County, CO 1900-1980

"Since the beginning of the twentieth century, people from Spanish- speaking backgrounds have played essential roles in Boulder County, Colorado. Immigrants from Mexico, northern New Mexico, and southern Colorado provided much of the labor that fueled two of eastern Boulder County’s main economic activities prior to around 1940: growing and processing sugar beets; and coal mining. Work in the beet fields required men, women, and children to stay in a stooped position, using short- handled tools, for hours at a time, often under a hot sun. The housing provided for agricultural laborers was generally deplorable. Coal miners engaged in physically demanding and potentially dangerous work in dark tunnels, always facing the possibility of cave-ins or explosions. Some of their families lived in camps next to the mines, with company stores where purchases for food and other supplies were deducted from miners’ wages. Although Hispanics faced overt racism especially in the 1920s and 1930s—with armed attacks on their unions, threats of violence from the Ku Klux Klan, exclusion from stores and restaurants, and mass deportation orders—they held together in strong families and maintained their faith that life in this region offered a brighter future for themselves and their children. In the decades between 1940 and 1980, access to education and better employment options contributed to ongoing immigration and brought many Boulder County Latinas/os into the wider community, where they continued to make valuable contributions. Returning veterans in the 1940s and 1950s and Chicano civil rights activists in the later 1960s and 1970s took the lead in tackling discrimination. Latino culture expanded the horizons of a predominantly Anglo county."

This two-volume set describes the history of Latinas/os living in Boulder County between 1900 and 1980"....

To read the complete edition of Volume 1 - Read more

Written for:
Boulder County Latino History Project
With assistance from:  Longmont Museum
Endorsed by: Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder

"In the middle of Colorado’s San Luis Valley [in Antonito], a progressive architecture and design firm is proving that everything old is new again. Also, that the future is mud."

"Combining indigenous mud-based building materials with 21st century robotics, California-based Rael San Fratello created the oddly beautiful structures of “Casa Covida,” their “proto-architectures” that connect high- and low-tech traditions. Its name is a nod to both the pandemic and the Spanish word for “cohabitation.”
​
"The project recently took a virtual bow in an impressive hour-long event hosted by the Architectural League NY. (The video is online.) The partners, Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, spoke from Antonito, in southern Colorado, and took questions about their work and about “the social agency of design.”

Read more at The Colorado Sun

Video  --  Gather round the hearth in Rael San Fratello's Casa Covida, a house made from 3D-printed mud.

By Stephanie Butzer
The Denver Channel

​As the first fingers of spring started to peel back winter’s hold in 1874, a man staggered out of the mountains and into Lake City, ready to spill a story — or two, or three — that few would believe. He’d quickly become known as the Colorado Cannibal.

It’s a tale as puzzling as it is horrific, and somehow, from the safe distance of about 150 years, humor has wiggled its way in.

His name was Alferd Packer.

Recognize the name, or perhaps know his story? He became somewhat of a Colorado celebrity in the mid-1900s, when you could find the Packer name in everything from a wilderness cookbook title to a festival name to a musical created by CU Boulder students. People learned of his story and instead of turning away in disgust, they leaned into it. Unabashedly embraced it.

An article from April 1984 in The Washington Post captured the absurdity in one of its opening paragraphs: “In the days before bean sprouts and granola, when the West was raw and men ate men, Packer chewed his way into the hearts of Coloradans by devouring five gold-seeking companions.”
Of course, under the silliness is the much darker story of how those five men met their horrific demise in the freezing, lonely mountains.

The particulars around what actually happened are foggy at best. Packer was the only one from the group to live to tell the tale and he told several. And those details are now buried — and in some instances, altered — under 150 years of history. To dig up what happened, we turned to the details in official court documents and the ink-smudged columns of the local newspapers, both from the late 1800s.

These documents have preserved countless moments from the case, such as Packer’s statement about his alleged crimes as he stood in front of a courthouse packed with people who were no doubt fascinated that a cannibal was in their midst and wondering if he’d get his just desserts.

Even in those moments, just before his sentencing, it was not absolutely certain if Packer had planned to eat the men through a twisted, murderous mind or if it just unfolded that way in an equally desperate and reluctant struggle for survival.

But either way, he had surely bit off more than he could chew.


Introducing Alferd Packer, Colorado’s Cannibal

Packer’s story starts in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. According to the April 20, 1883 edition of the Lake City Mining Register, he was born on Jan. 31, 1842, though other reports list his birthdate as Nov. 21 of that year.

​Andrew Gulliford, a professor of southwest studies and history at Fort Lewis College in Durango, said Packer was “a little bit of a drifter” and possibly a Civil War veteran. The Washington Post wrote in a June 8, 1989 article that Packer was discharged from the Union Army in 1862 for epilepsy. While he re-enlisted in another regime, he was discharged for the same reason, according to the City of Littleton.

In an unproven story, but one widely spread, a young Packer visited a tattoo artist who made the permanent error of inking “Alferd” instead of “Alfred” on Packer’s skin. He apparently embraced the typo and ended up adopting the name, though his first name, legally, remained Alfred, per court records.

Between 1863 and 1873, Packer moved west to pursue multiple jobs varying from hunting and trapping to guiding and mining, according to the Hinsdale County Museum in Lake City.

Gulliford said Packer was just one of the thousands of drifters who decided to embark on that journey.

In his early 30s, Packer volunteered to guide a group of 21 men through the Rocky Mountains starting in the area around Salt Lake City, Utah, despite having no weapons, little food or provisions, and limited skills. Reports vary on their final destination — most reports say they were bound for the Los Piños Indian Agency outside Saguache, others say they were headed for present-day Breckenridge.
They were set to start the long journey late in 1873.

Just in time for a nightmarish snowstorm.

‘Then, we gave up to die’

Packer’s stories start about the same — all of them.

He led the group to Ute Indian Chief Ouray’s winter camp near modern-day Montrose, arriving in late January 1874, according to the Hinsdale County Museum.

Knowing another party had left the camp and successfully made it to Los Piños Indian Agency, Packer said he thought his group could do the same. Only five others decided to take the risk with him. Those men were Frank Miller, Wilson Bell, James Humphreys, George Noon and Israel Swan.

The six men took advantage of Chief Ouray’s shelter and food for a few days and left to continue the journey in early February 1874.

It was the last time five of those men were seen alive.

On April 16, 1874, as winter gave way to spring, Packer emerged from the mountains, according to reports in the Lake City Mining Register. He was alone.

​Read more...

By John M. Motter
PREVIEW Columnist

John R. Curry, editor of Silverton’s newspaper, published a letter written from Pagosa Springs in March of 1881. It said, in part, “Pagosa Springs, the largest, hottest, and most singularly curious hot springs of their class in the world, are no longer isolated, as they have been in times past, shut off from the great traveling thoroughfares of the country by a formidable range of mountains, a trip across which any season of the year, by such conveyances as were available, was unpleasant and tedious to the extreme.

​“Now these difficulties have been overcome by the approach of the Denver and Rio Grande railroad, which was extended over the range in question and has a station at Chama only forty-five miles distant from the Springs.

“J. L. Sanderson and Co. and Wall and Witter have established lines of coaches between Chama and Durango, the flourishing city of the Animas Valley … This has given initiative to hotels and building houses … persons coming here now to see these wonderful springs and to bathe in their benefit-giving waters, can feel assured that comfortable lodging will be provided and something to eat at reasonable prices.”

The letter was a response to Curry’s unfavorable article the previous fall, when he reported traveling through Pagosa Springs. He chose to journey by freight wagon along the road between Silverton and the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad ending atop Cumbres Pass [in the San Luis Valley].

Of Pagosa Springs, he said, “At Pagosa Springs, there are at present very slim hotel accommodations; it is certainly the best point for someone to locate and erect a hotel of 30 or 40 rooms that we know of in southwestern Colorado.” He stayed overnight at the “Hotel de Blair.”

​By May of 1881, Pagosa Springs could boast of its first public bath house, a frame building erected by Thomas Blair. It had a large plunge bath, fully 4.5 feet deep, and several single bath tubs, sufficient to accommodate all visitors. Pagosa Springs was on the rise.

​#sanluisvalley #slv #mysticsanluisvalley #cumbrespass #johnmotter 

article originally published in the Pagosa Springs Sun newspaper 

Nearly 7,000 Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens from northern New Mexico Territory woke up on Feb. 28, 1861 to discover they were now in the newly created Colorado Territory. These citizens were accustomed to a bilingual legislative assembly in New Mexico’s Territorial Legislature that had the office of official translator for the monolingual English legislators and a budget for legislative printing.
​
Colorado Territory was scrambling to pass laws and enact taxes without the full representation from Conejos, Costilla and Huerfano counties – the three southern counties of the time. Sanchez also includes a biography of the early Hispano legislators and introduces new historical research about the violence against Hispanos, including the Espinoza brothers who were named mass murders in 1862.

The book, Pleas and Petitions: Hispano Culture and Legislative Conflict in Territorial Colorado, is the first in-depth history of Hispano sociopolitical life during this period. Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior, U.S. Senator, and Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar wrote the foreword to the book. “Until Virginia’s book, no other author has explained the early territorial law from the Hispanos’ point of view… Her story tells us that [the Hispanos annexed to Colorado Territory] wanted to be returned to New Mexico; however, Congress and the territorial executives would not hear their pleas.” In his review of the book, former State Historian William Convery wrote, “Sanchez given Spanish-speaking leaders their overdue credit for fighting for Hispano rights and contributing the creation of Colorado.”

Sanchez is an independent scholar who lives in Denver. She was preparing a book signing of Pleas and Petitions in Conejos and Alamosa when the Covid pandemic struck. This is her second book about Colorado’s Territorial Period, and it was published last March by the University of Colorado Press. An article she co-authored about the 7,000 Hispanos who were “displaced in place” won a monetary prize as best article published in 2018 by the New Mexico Historical Review. Her book, Pleas and Petitions, is available from local and online booksellers. 

​Monte Vista Journal, published Nov 3, 2020

Looking to purchase her book:  https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/virginia-sanchez/1906181/
​

#VirginiaSanchez #hispanoculture #ColoradoTerritorialPeriod #PleasandPetitions