THE MEMORIAL
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In
1875, prospectors slipped over the rocky shoulders of the San Juan Mountains
from Silverton in an unending search for pay dirt, staking placer claims in the
pristine valley of the upper San Miguel River. On August 23, 1875, brothers Lon
and Bill Remine, and a group of eight other men located and recorded the first
placer claim in the area. Others weren't satisfied with nuggets and flakes.
They dreamed big dreams of mother lodes and great strikes. They scratched and
clawed into the rock of the surrounding basins, and later that year John Fallon
sparked the dreams of hundreds with his discovery of the Sheridan group,
recorded October 7, 1875. The "Eureka!" cry cut loose, reverberating east and
west, and mining gave birth to Telluride. |
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Colorado was still a territory in
1875, a year of expectation and hope, of unrest and discovery. Ulysses S. Grant
was in his second term as president. The South still stumbled beneath the
reconstruction policies of the "Radical Republicans," while Mark Twain
published his hugely popular, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." In the rest of
the world, uprisings against Turkish rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina were met
with promises of reform from the sultan, while Russia's military might swelled
to 3,360,000 men. Great Britain built up her army to 113,000 and sent the
Prince of Wales to visit India. P. E. Lecoq discovered gallium, a new element,
and the beloved Hans Christian Andersen died. Yet in the remote regions of the
upper valley of the San Miguel River, only the great mineral strikes held
importance. |
Telluride never suffered the
extreme fluctuations of prosperity and population of a typical boom camp.
Development of mineral veins brought investors, but because Telluride was
predominantly a silver camp with lower grade ores, there was no great influx of
prospectors. The silver claims of Fallon and others that eventually were
consolidated as the Smuggler-Union were slowly but steadily developed. The town
established in 1878 as "Columbia" soon changed to "Telluride," and the general
assortment of banks, churches, saloons, outfitters, newspapers, and hotels
sprung out of the mud. The railroad arrived in 1890, allowing for a quiet
increase of activity in the decade of the 1890s, yet not in the frenzied
beehive manner of Cripple Creek or other gold camps.
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The important mines gave
Telluride her breath, filled up her soul, and kept her heart beating. Without
the hundreds of miners employed by the Smuggler-Union, Sheridan, Liberty Bell,
Tomboy, Alta, Gold King, Hidden Treasure, Japan, Argentine, and the rest, the
town would have sunk back into the dirt, for the place was isolated, remote,
lonely, and harsh.
"Transcendent
peaks separated Telluride from the rest of the world. She was a boisterous
town, loud with the booming vigor of 1,300 miners, intoxicating in the noise of
saloons, gambling dens, and hurdy-gurdy dance halls whose energy splashed into
the streets late in the night. The atmosphere vibrated with the braying of
hundreds of mules and the music of scores of accents. The flags of Finland,
Sweden, Tyrol, Italy, Ireland, England, and elsewhere painted the sky in the
ethnic quarters of town. Opera houses, churches, and fraternal organizations
goaded the wild edges toward civilization, but men and women flowed in and out
of the camp like a steady surging tide. They came for riches or anonymity,
burrowing deep inside the majestic peaks, disappearing deep inside the distance
of a place on the edge of nowhere
" [From the book, The
Corpse on Boomerang Road: Telluride's War on Labor 1899-1908,
Western Reflections Publishing
2004]
Telluride remained a
mining town until the mines finally played out only a few years ago. She
changed her face to a resort town, a festival town, a shining creature embraced
by art and poetry and music all year long. Yet the miners gave birth to her,
and now that their voices are silenced and the great mines are closed, it is
our desire to create a memorial to the men who worked here within the belly of
the earth. It is important that their song of the pick and hammer is never
erased from the heritage of Telluride, that their work and sacrifice for just
wages, safe working conditions, an end to child labor, and the establishment of
an eight-hour day is never forgotten. It is especially important that those who
died while working in the mines, those who gave up their lives trying to save
others in mine disasters, and those who were instrumental in saving hundreds
through their own selfless work are held up as the heart of what made Telluride
what she is today. |
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Copyright by TMM 2005 [No part of this material may be used
without permission of TMM] |
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