Willoughby: Transforming parts from the past

Parts from the past are often transformed and included — sometimes to save money and sometimes for design — in creating something new. Here are a few examples from Aspen’s past:

The Midnight Mine drove a mile and a half long tunnel under the Little Annie Basin to tap into what they were sure was an extension of the original Midnight Mine. It took over ten years, and stockholders were finding it hard to pony up more cash. The tunnel tapped into the extension close to the day the stock market crashed and the price of silver plummeted. To build a mill and begin production, the Midnight purchased an 1890s defunct gold mine near Independence and salvaged all of the left-over parts including a mine tram.

During WWII, the Herron brothers, John and Bill, stepped up ore production to meet the war effort needs for lead and zinc. They built a small processing mill capable of extracting the minerals from the Smuggler mine dumps as well as the ore they produced from the upper Smuggler workings. They scrounged much of what they needed for the structure. This may have been the only mill with stained-glass windows that they recycled from a closed downtown building.

The Aspen Ski Club faced similar financial challenges in the late 1930s when it built the first ski facilities on Aspen Mountain. The lift, known as the boat tow, was constructed with donated and scrounged parts from local mines. The timbers for the towers, a one and a half inch cable, as well as pulleys came from a local mine hoist system. An older truck was transformed into the power system using its motor and transmission. In the next decade, the Aspen Skiing Company, also meeting a limited budget, scrounged the Park Tram cable for its Number Two lift that ran from Midway to the Sundeck.

In the 1950s, many locals took advantage of the piles of marble at the closed processing plant for the Yule Marble operation. Some used pieces to build benches and tables or to ornament their pathways or gardens. Local sculptors used the quarried marble for their creations. Herbert Bayer, who designed the Aspen Institute’s first buildings, created the Marble Garden at the Aspen Meadows using very-large already-fashioned geometric marble shapes. 

Even though there were magnificent Aspen Victorian houses and buildings constructed in the 1880s and 1890s, few featured elaborate, stained-glass windows. The most common were regular windowpanes with color squares and rectangles surrounding them. (see photo). Newcomers renovating Aspen’s older homes, and those designing new ones in the Victorian style, wanted more elaborate stained-glass windows. Enterprising dealers drove the more impoverished streets of Denver and New Orleans that had Victorian structures and bought their windows.

Aspen’s new gardens and building landscapes incorporated salvaged, old railroad ties to frame them. To break the monotony of dry wall in new homes and renovations, it became popular to add texture using barnwood — the dried brown-grey pieces from abandoned old sheds and buildings.

One of the most obvious transformations that you walk over today was the creation of the downtown mall. The paving bricks came from the streets of St. Louis. They were installed there in 1900. Each brick weighed about ten pounds. Aspen bought 315,000 of them for $126,000.

Tim Willoughby’s family story parallels Aspen’s. He began sharing folklore while teaching at Aspen Country Day School and Colorado Mountain College. Now a tourist in his native town, he views it with historical perspective. Reach him at redmtn2@comcast.net.