Vagneur: Proud to tread the trail of pioneers

In my library is a priceless book, “The Tread of Pioneers,” by Charles H. Leckenby, longtime publisher of the Steamboat Pilot. It gives a great snapshot of the settling of northwest Colorado and the differences between Ute and white man philosophies and behaviors. It goes back to 1873. My good friend, Buck Deane, gave me that book.

Today, as I travel around the draws and mountainsides along the shores of Capitol and East Sopris creeks, that title keeps crossing my mind — not because there are any stories of this neighborhood in that book (Actually, there are a couple of mentions), but part of my routine of packing cattle salt and keeping recalcitrant cows out of trouble covers ground pioneered in the 1880s and still being used as ranch land.

The Gates Place, that’s what we call it, homesteaded by C.W. Gates back in those early years. The land is owned by the monastery now, and the only real sign of it ever being a ranch itself is the old barn, which can be seen if one drives up to the Hay Park parking lot (the old ranger station) at the beginning of the trail to the park. That and the beautiful hay fields upstream from what once was the headquarters. We run cattle there in the spring and fall, a gathering place before they head to the high country in the spring or back to the ranch in the fall.  

Just down the road a piece is the Nicholson Ranch homesteaded by William and Alice Nicholson, about 1903, and eventually owned by their son, J.H. (Hod) Nicholson. (More about him in a bit.) It’s a great piece of ground, relatively open, aspen-dotted meadows very typical of similar altitudes in the area.

The tragedy of this, if there is one, is that the small stream that flows through the ranch is named Nicholson Creek in honor of the Nicholson family, who homesteaded the place. However, on all the USGS maps and others, the name is misspelled as Nickelson Creek. Not only is that a tragedy in human terms, it’s a damned insult to the family that was an integral part of early Aspen, through the 1970s and ’80s.

The C.W. Gates family had a couple of daughters, Mattie and Polena. Young Polena struck the fancy of a boy down the road a mile or so, the aforementioned Hod Nicholson. How convenient it seems today, out there in the wilderness, and true love was born in the Capitol Creek Valley. They were wed sometime around 1920. Hod bought the ranch from his parents. (It should be noted that both ranches were about as far away from civilization as possible — both abutted government land with only a couple of neighbors for company.)

The land is not conducive to farming, and young Hod took to raising horses rather than cattle, giving him time to ride, fish, and enjoy the high country. Part of his method of making money was to run a camp each summer, taking as many as six young men on travels, for weeks on end, through what is now the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness Area. He knew that country like the back of his hand. 

One summer, he took his young charges on a mission from his ranch to the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He was a man who loved horses and camping.

Sometime around 1930, they sold the ranch and moved to town — Hod was elected Pitkin County sheriff, and like other sheriffs before and after, they lived in the courthouse basement, adjacent to the jail. He served two terms. 

Not much is written about Polena, but clearly she was active in politics and, for years, was either an election judge or clerk for almost every election that was held in Aspen or Pitkin County. She was a charter member of Aspen’s Fraternal Order of Eagles #184 Auxiliary. According to accounts in “Aspen: The Quiet Years,” she was a very patient woman who would wait in the pickup truck while her husband imbibed his drink of choice in the Red Onion’s Beer Gulch or the Ski ‘n’ Spur. She would then drive him home to their house on West Main, a very small house which amazingly still stands in its original location. 

Their son, Hod Jr., owned Aspen Laundry and Cleaners for many years. Their granddaughter, Alice Marie, named in honor of her great-grandmother, was my cousin, and to further confuse the issue, Alice Marie’s son (Hod Sr. and Polena’s great-grandson), Kelly Vigil, is a family relative and friend who makes a yearly ski pilgrimage to Aspen. 

The generations change, the land ownership can change, but the stories, the history doesn’t change; and except for the original homesteaders, this writer personally knew these people. He is proud to tread the trail of those pioneers and to remember them as the important contributors to Aspen’s history that they were.   

Tony Vagneur writes here on Saturdays and welcomes your comments at ajv@sopris.net.