Seasons Change (Development on the Front Range, Part III)

Continued from: "Taming the Great American Desert"

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John Frank Church was born in the Wild West--a young cowboy on the Front Range. He used to help his Pa, George, with the harvest and driving cattle across the continental divide each spring to graze. The famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) Buffalo Bill used to stop by the ranch to visit the family. President Grant and his daughter once spent the night, as well. Passengers on the Overland Stage Coach frequently dropped in on their way to Denver or Boulder. Frank's mother, Sarah, was always ready to greet the road-wearied travelers, with a hot, home-cooked meal and a warm, clean bed. Necessities were met through hard work. In the early rugged west, even keeping food fresh took special measures. Meat and fish were smoked and stored. "Refrigeration" involved stocking blocks of ice, carefully cut from frozen winter lake beds, in underground, concrete "iceboxes."

i-6839e1d512c55d9204e29fa6c5ba64d4-railroadmap.jpgBy the turn of the 20th century, as Frank grew up and took over the family ranch, the west was beginning to change. While the rugged streams and fields had been tamed, a new sort of Wild West had begun to emerge. Jungles of power lines and telephone wires began to creep across the rural land. Snakes of asphalt slithered alongside, paving the way for a new sort of creature, the automobile. In 1908, the Denver Interurban Railroad was built along the old stage route. By the 20's, passengers no longer stopped by the ranch on their way; instead they sped by, in cars, trains, and even airplanes.

i-136ed72ad41af385f81f966508ee8ec8-Frank.jpgIn 1892, Frank married Katherine Jones, a schoolteacher. He had some timing--soon after the wedding, a momentous decision by the federal government shook the state of Colorado. The vast amounts of silver that were mined in Colorado threatened to lower the price of the metal nationwide. In response, the government rescinded a plan (the Sherman Silver Act) to buy large amounts of silver from the west each month. Colorado felt the blow. Banks closed and businesses folded-including a brick yard near Church's Ranch. Frank jumped on the opportunity, purchasing loads of bricks, dirt cheap. Then he hired a bricklayer and carpenters to build a house for his bride. The craftsmen, impressed by the room and board at the ranch, took time to pay attention to detail. By the time the house was finished, Colorado's economy was on the mend.

While the great silver mines of Colorado would never recover, other industries had more success. Farmers and ranchers prospered, while the miners turned to other minerals. As the country switched to a gold standard in 1900, gold mines thrived, making fortunes for folks like the famous "Unsinkable" Molly Brown. Coal became an important commodity as well, as new factories and railroads increased the demand for power.

North of the Church's ranch, even the distant family found success. Sarah Church's aunt and uncle, Mary and Lafayette Miller, had settled along the Overland Trail at Coal Creek, even before Sarah burned down the cabin north of Boulder. While Lafayette passed away in 1878, Mary continued to manage the farm. Following Mary's hunch, in 1884, coal was discovered on her property. Within a few years, Mary was the founder of a boom town, which she named for her late husband.

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By the 1910s, trains were flying past, carrying coal from Lafayette, passengers to Denver and Boulder, and supplies to everywhere in between. The ranch was no longer a remote outpost, but a part of the backbone of a future metropolis. While it once took months for his parents to cross the plains, Frank could travel across the country with ease, and so did. Early in the decade, he and his father took a train south to New Orleans. From there, they boarded a steamship headed south on the Mississippi and beyond, to see the construction of the Panama Canal.

Having been the first in Colorado to bring irrigation across the continental divide, George and Frank Church had a natural interest in transcontinental waterways. In his travel log, Frank eagerly described various water-related structures he spotted along the way:

This river [the Mississippi] was very interesting to me, being in most places very wide and able to carry the large ship. Along its banks and levees, which prevent the inundation of the surrounding territory, fields that appeared to us to be only covered with grass, we were told, were rice fields. Many little houses were along the banks, set on stilts in the edge of the water, the occupants of which were engaged in the production of the oyster.

Nothing, however, could compare to the sight of the Gatun Dam, near the Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal. Frank was quite impressed, and compared the engineering marvel with a reservoir near the ranch in Colorado:

This dam in some ways resembles our Standley Lake Dam, as it is 115 feet high where the Standley Lake is 113 feet; the Gatun Dam is 1 1/8 miles long, which is somewhat similar to the length of the Standley Lake Dam. However, they differ very materially in width, as the Gatun Dam is 375 wide at the 85-foot elevation, which is about the high water line. In the western portion of the Dam is a spill-way to regulate the turbulent waters of the Chagres River, and near the center of the Dam are the Gatun Locks, which consist of six (or rather three double) locks, each lock is 100 feet wide and 1000 feet long, and each pair of locks will serve to raise or lower the largest ship that has so far been built in the world, 28 feet and a fraction per lock.

After touring the remainder of the canal construction, including the challenging Culebra Cut, where the land had a nasty habit of sliding back as quick as they could dig it out, Frank and his father stopped in the small fishing port of Almirante. There, they booked passage on a ship due delivering bananas to New Orleans. Before they left, Frank arranged to go fishing in the bay.

I saw some people come in with some nice strings of fish and I got it into my head that I would like to go and fish, and so arranged to go with a gentleman. We did not have any luck, but I saw a stick of wood in the water and asked what it was. He informed me that this was a buoy and that there was a fish trap at the bottom. I then said "what's the matter with taking it up and get the fish?" He said that we were near some willows, and that the custom of the country was that when a man was caught taking a trap of fish, to shoot him on the spot. I then decided we had better abandon the project.

While Frank was wary, not only of protective fishermen, but also the cries of baboons and monkeys emanating from the jungles, he made it out in one piece.

Frank continued traveling, while his wife, Katherine, stayed at home raising their three children, Ruth, Marcus, and Perry. The roads and rails offered a quick escape and return home-except when nature got in the way. During an unusually cold winter in 1913, a large blizzard descended on to the Front Range, closing the cities and stranding members of the Church family.

They expected the snow on Thanksgiving. Frank was in Arizona, and missed the dinner. The storm was late as well, but didn't miss the Church's ranch. The snow began to fall over the weekend, and didn't stop. A week later, the storm continued, with gusts of wind blowing drifts of snow up to 15 feet high. A diary (probably Katherine's) described the desperation of the situation:

Men can do nothing about feeding the stock. If paths are made, they fill again very quickly. Frank started from Holbrook last night at 12 o'clock, but tho he will be to Colo. Springs sometime this afternoon, if he can get thru, but it is said there is not a car in Colorado moving today. Children at Dr. Russell's and must stay there. A heavy fall of snow all the time with a severe wind. Cattle and horses suffering and may be dying but cannot help them in any way. Saturday, stopped snowing last night.... Frank is snowed up in the Raton Mountains in five feet of snow, just west of Trinidad. A snowplow went north on the steam car line and back so we hope for a train today. None since Thursday eve, none from the city that could bring Bee and Marcus from Westminster. So they are there since Thursday morning.

By Christmas, over 67 inches of snow had fallen. The Church family and their livestock survived the worst of it, but learned that technology was no match for nature. Out on the ranch, it was necessary to improvise:

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Horses pull a stuck automobile from the snow and mud.

i-a19eefd723e0112e6bd699aa75494f1e-Katherine.jpgJohn Frank Church, elected to the state senate, kept traveling for various business ventures. Katherine continued staying at home. In the late 1920s, he left home to run a placer mine in the Four Corners region. While he was known for his successes in irrigation and the art of moving water, his ideas about pulling gold from the San Miguel River never really panned out. Frank's business crashed just before the stock market. Returning home, he was ready to spill the bad news. Before he could even explain, his wife met him in the doorway.

"John!" Katherine said, with an eager gleam in her eye. "I am the new business manager! We milk the cows two times a day around here, and when you're finished with your work here, there is milking chores and continuous manure that needs to be cleaned out."

The stunned husband didn't get a chance to respond. "Oh, by the way," she continued, "I am the new President of the Mandalay Irrigation Company, and oh, by the way, I changed the combination on the safe and I am the only one who can sign the checks."

As the depression set in, Katherine became a model businesswoman, keeping the tradition of success in her family running strong. With her daughter Ruth's help, she created one of the first subdivisions in Colorado. She named it "Mandalay Gardens" after Rudyard Kipling's poem:

I am sick 'o wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,

An' the blasted English drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;

Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,

An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand?

Beefy face an' grubby 'and--

Law! wot do they understand?

I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!

On the road to Mandalay.

Mandalay Gardens was divided into small tracts of land, 1 to 5 acres. A purchase of a land tract included not only a deed for the land, but for the water rights, as well. A full-page Sunday advertisement ran in the Denver Post in July of 1924, boasting the fertile patches of land:

---Like Old New England

---Like Home Spots of Missouri

The old Church Ranch, or Mandalay as it is now known, is having its home folks picnics, its fried chicken dinners, its royal good times-for Mandalay is now a dignified agricultural community, where each little farm is paying its way-and the folks are happy, for they are finding that the possibilities of Mandalay are far beyond original expectations. A regular New England, or Missouri farming district is rapidly being evolved from the old cow ranch-chickens, pigs, cows, vegetables and fruit are part of the landscape and community spirit that has been developed.

i-c4223f4e5e51545124ccf900ccb32dff-mandalay.jpgThe development was a hit. By 1928, the population of Mandalay Gardens had grown enough to demand its own schoolhouse. Katherine had the old Stagecoach bunkhouse torn down, and used the lumber to build the Mandalay Schoolhouse. The entire community helped in the construction. A local coal miner, Frank Miller (son or grandson of Mary & Lafayette?) helped by digging the entire basement-by hand.


Over the years, the community at Mandalay thrived. The successful subdivision was a precursor to the sprawling suburbs to come. Katherine lived to see much of the expansion of the Denver metropolitan area. i-0c2ba58a40eb65883fd682aa7e1e8f8a-sempercrossing.jpgUnfortunately, John Frank Church did not. Always a man who loved to travel, he left, in a sense, by rail. In 1940, he was driving in his truck along Old Wadsworth Boulevard, once known as the Overland Stage Route, when his truck stalled on the railroad crossing at Semper Hill. He was killed instantly.


Church's Crossing in 1908, showing Old Wadsworth as it crosses Walnut Creek, and runs beneath the railroad tracks:

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The same spot in 2006:

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Next: "Suburban Blues"

Notes: Quotes and pictures from the Church family provided by George Church McKay and Kandi McKay. Images of Denver trolley cars stuck in the storm of 1913 near 17th & Sherman Street (photographer unknown), De Havilland Aircraft by Otto Perry, skier and dog by Harry Mellon Rhodes, mine in Lafayette by the Rocky Mountain Photo Company, train near Church's Ranch and the 1908 image of Church's Crossing by Louis McClure, and the city of Denver (photographer unknown), all via the Western History Photos collection at the Denver Public Library. Railroad map via the Library Of Congress. All other images were created by the author.

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