We love traveling. We always capture tons of pictures from wherever we've been and we like sharing our traveling experiences with our friends. So, this is how this blog began - as short stories with pictures in an attempt to share where we've been and what we've seen. Even not stories , but just notes. Nothing serious and big. Mostly I'm writing these stories on a rush and sometimes even don't have time to re-read them. So, I apologize in advance for possible typos here and there. There can be some factual errors or inaccuracies and they even might be corrected one day. Don't hesitate to contact me if you find something that needs to be fixed and don't expect these notes to be a perfect novels ;) The stories in this blog are not in chronological order, but I will try to remember to put the date of the trip. So... welcome to this blog and, hopefully, you will find something interesting and have the same feeling we had when we were there. Let's go...
And... by the way... all pictures and texts in this blog are protected by International and USA Copyright laws, so if you'd like to repost or use something on your page - contact me first.
Using anything published here without permission is violation of the law and... it isn't really nice...
Wednesday, July 12, 2023
Town of Gunnison. Independence Day 2019 trip, part 7
While we traveled back in time to see Black Canyon (click here for this story - Black Canyon - the most beautiful canyon... part 6), the car took us
down a beautiful road. This road ran through planes and jumped up and
down hills. From time to time it zigzagged
like a rabbit running
from the fox. Probably the best part of this road is running along the
Blue Mesa reservoir.
Here is the short video of this stretch, it's a pity the camera didn't catch the reservoir as well as our eyes (be careful watching, 20 minutes squeezed into 7 but, probably, it's even better to feel the road and all its twists and jerks ;) ).
We stopped in Gunnison to stretch our
legs and to walk on the main street. The town was named in honor of John
W. Gunnison, a United States Army officer who surveyed for the
transcontinental railroad in 1853. The late 1850s saw the start of
people joining the hunt for gold in Gunnison county. Miners were in
search of placer gold, but with the growing numbers of white men in the
area, this brought conflict between the Ute tribes still around the
county. At least several miners were killed by these tribes and this
caused some of the miners to flee the area, caring more for their lives
than potential gold bonanzas.
With the mining boom, Gunnison
began to see an increase of people around the 1870s. Along with the
miners coming in, ranchers and farmers were among the others that led to
the Ute people becoming forced out of the area. The mining camps in
Gunnison and around the county reportedly produced about 130,000 ounces
of gold from the beginning of the gold rush through 1959. At the start
this was mostly from placer deposits, but the largest amounts were from a
by-product of silver-lead ore. The largest deposits were found along
the Taylor River, as well as the Tincup and the Washington Gulch
districts.
Also in 1880, the cattle industry in Gunnison was
established. Realizing the poor conditions for farming (with only about
eleven inches of rainfall annually and the short growing season due to
the high elevation and alpine environment) the local farmers turned to
ranching and began breeding cattle. To do this effectively, they had to
clear and level fields for grazing purposes. Irrigation ditches also had
to be cut into the ground to properly irrigate the fields in order to
grow hay for the horses and cattle. Many of these practices are still in
use, which can be seen while driving through and around the town to the
various ranches that are still in operation.
Gunnison residents
isolated themselves from the surrounding area during the Spanish
Influenza epidemic for two months at the end of 1918. All highways were
barricaded near the county lines. Train conductors warned all passengers
that if they stepped outside of the train in Gunnison, they would be
arrested and quarantined for five days. As a result of the isolation, no
one died of influenza in Gunnison during the epidemic. This served as
partial inspiration for the novel The Last Town on Earth by American
writer Thomas Mullen.
Gunnison is home to Western Colorado
University which received its third renaming since its beginnings from
an approval of Governor John Wright Hickenlooper on August 1, 2012. The
college was founded as The Colorado State Normal School for Children by a
bill signed on April 16, 1901 by Governor James B. Orman. In 1923, the
college's name was changed to Western State College of Colorado because
its role expanded from a teaching institution to a liberal arts college.
Historical papers in the Leslie Savage Library on campus state that the
school was the first liberal arts college on the Western Slope of
Colorado.
Now it is a busy and crowded town. There aren't too
many hotels to be found in Crested Butte, but skiers in the Winter and
hikers in the Summer use Gunnison as a pit stop on their journeys.
We
grabbed a chili for lunch at one of the busy restaurants and
continued exploring the area...
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