During the winter of 1883-84 in San Juan County there was a normal snowfall until the end of Jauary; the snow fell heavily and the D.&R.G. railroad into Silverton was blocked from February 4 until April 17, a period of 73 days.
I was working out of Chattanooga, a little camp of perhaps 20 cabins, on the north branch of Mineral Creek; I had horses and mules and I was hauling ore from the Congress mine at Red Mountain to the Walsh Smelter at Silverton. I hauled 450 tons in January altho the snow was five feet deep.
On the 2nd of February it began to snow in dead earnest, and snowed 20 days without let up. February 3rd was the last day the train got into Silverton, until the 17th of April. The whole country was covered deep with snow and slides were running. At Chattanooga the snow was 12 feet deep; we measured it. It got so deep we could no longer shovel the trail, so we dug a tunnel under the snow from our cabin to the barn in order to take care of the stock.
Around the 1st of March, after 30 days without a train, the situation was desperate for the people of Silverton, Howardsville, and Chattanooga; the mines had closed and all the men were in town. There were about 1,500 people in Silverton that winter. All fresh food was gone and practically nothing left but flour. Starvation was in sight for people and stock animals alike; and yet, only 15 miles down the Animas Canyon at Needleton station, there were three carloads of food, and two carloads of grain and hay, which had been run up from Durango as soon as the track was cleared that far. Couldn't get this into Silverton because of the snowslides north of Needleton. The telegraph wire had been down, but Sam Herr and others went down the Canyon on snowhoes and repaired the wire and put it up on forked sticks stuck in the snow.
From Durango, Cole Lydon, Division Superintendent for the D.&R.G., had 400 to 500 men working up the canyon to Needleton, digging the snow out with shovels. The men worked in groups, or in layers, you might say; the deeper they dug, as the go closer to the track, the more men it took to throw the snow up and off from the top of the cut.
Cole Lydon's men got the track cleared to Needleton about march 3rd or 4th and had run up the cars of supplies. When this news reached Silverton by wire, we men got together and decided it was up to us to bring grub to town at once, before hungry children starved to death. We had to break about eight miles of trail to get my stock down from Chattanooga, the best pair of snow horses in the world, and four mules. twenty-six men got their stock together, about 52 head in all.
At 6 a.m. of March 6, after breakfast of only bread and no coffee, we started for Needleton. We had no food for lunch except bread. Well, of course, we had some good whiskey. Some men had broken about 4.5 miles of trail the day before. Most of the stock were mules and they soon laid down on the job -- when they got tired they quit. So I had to take the lead with my two good horses, Bob and Bill, the best snow-fighters in the world. When they got tired they sank down in the snow and rested, then got up of their own accord and were ready to come again. They were a pair of sorrels. We broke the trail, following the railroad track tho' it was under 8 to 15 feet of snow, and where the snowslides were we had to work around them. We fought that 15 miles of snow for 18 hours.
Just before we reached Needleton, we came onto the Snowden slide; we looked around to see how we could best get over it, and up in the trees we saw a light, it looked like it was on top of the trees. We hollered, it was Sam Herr who answered, he had a lantern. He told us to go up and cross above the slide; railroad fellows had been shoveling and made a trail for us. We soon were in Needleton, at 12 minutes after 12, March 7.
Well, Cole Lydon had brought food and Sam Herr had a stack of beefsteaks three feet high in the section house kitchen; they stirred up the fire in the big range and we fried steaks aplenty. Snow was seven feet deep on the level at Needleton.
Herbert Smith, station agent at Silverton, had come along to check out the stuff and re-box it so we could pack it on the mules. Next morning some of the boys made up the packets and Hiram Herr and I did most of the loading on the animals. We got the 52 animals loaded and started back; I had two very big mules, could put 275 pounds on each of them. The pack train was strung out over more than two miles of awful trail; five head were loaded with beef, others with hogs, sugar, canned goods, hay, grain and other stuff. The men were afoot, except for Herbert Smith and George Bradford who had saddle horses. When we came in sight of town, men, woman and children came out to meet us.
Well, that story got me to quit feeling so sorry for myself about this mud. But... hey... it's not February 2nd yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment