A visit to Doc Holliday

[Pilgrim]

Just got back from a couple of days in Glenwood Springs, CO...where both Doc Holliday and Kid Curry (who rode with Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang) lie in a Pioneer cemetery.

This is a shot of the Glenwood Hotel where Holliday died in November of 1887:



That building burned in the early 1900's and was replaced by this one, which has been many things including a dry goods store:



The trailhead to the cemetery:



The walking trail today is the old wagon road gouged out of the shoulder of a steep hill, going up a fairly severe grade to a mesa area or shoulder on the mountain.  This is one of the widest spots...you could get an old Jeep narrow-track CJ up it, but nothing much bigger. (There's a back road to it now, driveable.)



Posted in the cemetery:



The entrance to the cemetery, which is surrounded by a chain-link fence and in places, old barbed wire:



Here are some of the grave markers which have been replaced over recent years.  As you can see, this is very rugged and rocky territory on the shoulder of a mountain.  Burials started here just a year before Holliday's death in 1887, and had almost stopped by the 1920's.  Most of the graves pre-date 1935, but the last burial was in 1997.  We only saw a double-handful of graves post-dating the 40's.



The metal markers indicate graves, but no carved markers are present at those points.  These metal markers are found all over the site, none of them with names that I could find.



Harvey Logan's grave is documented:



This cemetery had a large "Potter's Field" for indigents and those with no one to bury them.  Holliday was destitute when he died, and was buried in the Potter's Field area - but his actual gravesite is lost.  They know he's in this part of the cemetery.  Perhaps half of the graves in this entire cemetery are only marked "Occupied" in the records and drawings, as names and locations have been lost.  In some cases new and old grave markers are only 2-3 feet apart.






There is a very nice view from the cemetery mesa.

[uwe]

You should have invited him for a drink, I'm sure he would have gotten himself heard and seen!  Thanks for the scenic if slightly morbid tour!   

[Pilgrim]

You're welcome.  Now go and stick that Tombstone DVD in the player and revisit Val Kilmer's outstanding portrayal of Doc!

[patman]

Pilgrim...are you a Louie L'Amour/Zane Grey fan? Patman loves tacky western literature...and art for that matter...

Also ethnic music that involves banjoes, mandolins, dobros...you name it.  Which is kinda weird for a city guy that hates horses. Go figure.

[Pilgrim]

I've easily read 40 or 50 of L'Amour's books. I've also read some Zane Grey, although it can be a bit florid in places...and suffers from some of the prejudices of its time.

I've even read some of the old Clarence E. Mulford books such as Bar-20 in which the character Hopalong Cassidy was introduced. Mulford invented him in 1904.

Take a look at his titles and you'll be amazed at how prolific a writer he was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_E._Mulford

I've also read most of the Zorro works by newspaperman Johnston McCulley.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnston_McCulley

But perhaps my favorite western author is Will Henry (Henry Wilson Allen) who also wrote as Clay Fisher.  His historic novels contain so much research that there are important threads of fact woven through every story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Henry

[TBird1958]

Naturally I have a bit different view of Glenwood Springs........

It's a pretty famous destination for travellers on the Denver and Rio Grande Western RR., back in the '70s after the rest of the nation's railroads passenger service was nationalized under Amtrak's banner the proud little railroad rebuffed the notion of the government having anything to do with trains on their track........Thus they choose to run their own service between Denver and Salt Lake City with round trips taking two days. The train was named the Rio Grande Zephyr, in a nod to the many long past trains of previous times. It used primarily all stainless steel cars and 3 1950's vintage EMD (GM) F-9 locomotives. These were amongst the very last of this very famous type left running anywhere in the U.S. by this time, much less in active service on what was considered the best train and ride in the country for many years. The RGZ was always a first rate little train with the equipment being lovingly maintained - fresh Rocky Mountain Trout were always on the dining menu and right up to it's demise in the '80s service never faltered.
Glenwood was the halfway point in the trip from Denver to SLC, it was quite common for riders to get off the train and stay overnight there and catch the next day's return trip to Denver, as the scenery along that portion of the route was quite striking with Glenwood Canyon, Gore Canyon the 6 mile Moffat tunnel and the Front Range being the principle attractions..........
 
I have some beautiful HO scale models of the train, maybe when the weather is better I'll shoot some pics, meantime here's the real deal


     

[Pilgrim]

The Glenwood Canyon is indeed a gorgeous place (no pun intended...). Note RR tracks on the left side of the top pic...

[Highlander]

We need a soundtrack for this road-trip...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUrAePBn4rE

[Denis]

We watched "Tombstone" the other day. I love Kilmer's portrayal of Holliday!
Great pics, by the way.

[TBird1958]

I should have mentioned that Glenwood Canyon was the inspiration for an EMD (GM) VP riding in the cab of a Rio Grande FT during WWII that finally got this passenger car into production........
The most beautiful examples were built by Budd, constructed almost entirely of shot-welded stainless steel. The photo shows the California Zephyr passing a monument contructed to celebrate the invention......This is on the "highway" side of Glenwood Canyon in the early '50s when Alco PA's were used on the train, construction of the freeway pictured above forced the little monument to be taken down - Happily it was carefully de-constructed and reassembled at the Colorado Railroad Museum, fortunately the EMD F-9s in the first picture are also preserved there, the Alco PA's fell into great disfavor with the Rio Grande's management and met the scrapper's torch in the '60s after being uncermoniously traded in to EMD as credit towards new freight locomotives.

   

[Pilgrim]

Mark mentioned the Colorado Railroad Museum - so I will digress from our previous digression.  

A Denver landmark is the Forney Transportation Museum, which was until a few years ago located in a very large old city power plant building.  In the 90's the Forney Museum moved to a new site and the old power plant became a huge REI with its own kayaking stream.

In the early 70's I worked in Denver and (best memory here) the Union Pacific donate a "Big Boy" locomotive and coal car to the Forney museum. It is reputed to be the biggest locomotive ever built.



Story of the Big Boy:

http://www.forneymuseum.org/Featured_Exhibit.html

I recall clearly that the donation got a lot of local media attention.  The locomotive was so large that a curve in the rails leading to the transportation museum had to be re-laid to allow the locomotive to get to the building.  I stood next to it and it is at least two stories tall.

I recall that the papers said the locomotive weighed more than one million pounds.  I had never seen a million ANYTHING in one place, so I got down there to get a good look at it.

From the web page at: http://www.up.com/aboutup/special_trains/steam/locomotives/classes.shtml

"The world's largest steam locomotive, twenty-five Big Boys were built exclusively for Union Pacific, the first of which was delivered in 1941. The locomotives were 132 feet long and weighed 1.2 million pounds. Because of their great length, the frames of the Big Boys were "hinged," or articulated, to allow them to negotiate

Think about this...you run a railroad company, and out on some side track, you have an obsolete million pound locomotive taking up space and growing daisies.  Wouldn't you be happy to donate it to someone and get it out of your inventory?

[Denis]

The Duluth Train Museum has Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Steam Locomotive No. 227, built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1941. Biggest locomotive I've ever seen!

http://www.lsrm.org/Home/exsteam.html

The Mallet No. 227 was one of 18 yellowstone-type locomotives built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works for the Missabe Road during World War II, years 1941 and 1943. It was built in 1941, and named after the Frenchman who designed it- Mallet (pronounced Mally). Diesel engines were making an appearance around this time period, but were a relatively unknown entity. Since cost and logistics of fuel and maintenance supplies were not paramount on the design constraints list, the decision was made to stay with a coal burning steam locomotive. During its 20-year operating life, shortened by dieselization, the No. 227 hauled approximately 40 million long tons of iron ore from the mines on the Mesabi and Vermillion Ranges to the docks at Duluth and Two Harbors. Steam locomotives were rather expensive to operate, and the later proven diesel locomotives were a natural replacement, so the No. 227 was retired in 1960.

Weighing some 566 tons in working order, and stretching 128 feet in length, the No. 227 is one of the largest and most powerful steam locomotives ever constructed. Capable of developing 6,000 drawbar horsepower, it made routine work of handling 180-190 car trains weighing more than 18,000 tons. As a contrast, No. 227 had a pulling power of 30 times that of the WILLIAM CROOKS. The engine was designed to operate efficiently at 45 miles per hour. When working at full power, it could consume some 10 to 12 tons of coal an hour and evaporate water into steam at the astounding rate of 12,000 gallons per hour. The amount of coal the engine used in one hour would be enough to heat a home for two winters. It carried 26 tons of coal and 25,000 gallons of water in its tender.

The No. 227 is an articulated locomotive, meaning there are two engines, which are hinged together beneath a single boiler. The articulated evolved because engines with four, five, or six coupled axles became more and more difficult to build and maneuver. By hinging the driving wheels in two sets, a much larger and more powerful locomotive could be built that could travel easier through curves. The boiler was attached to the rear engine, enabling the front engine to pivot freely from side to side. The boiler rests on a sliding plate, which transfers part of the weight to the front engine. Due to the lateral wanderings of the front engine, the boiler would swing far to the outside of curves.

[TBird1958]

 Actually most railroads are very cold hearted about their equipment once it's outlived it's usefulness to them, steam engines were usually sold as scrap and melted down into something else, thus the railroad could recover some of it's cost.......Most modern steam engines including the Big Boy were retired early on - (Diesels really were better, operating costs, availability, crew  etc were far better even with 1940's '50 technology.) and mercilessly cut up, not one Rio Grande articulated survived the purge, they also posessed a class (L-131) that weighed in over a million lbs ..... Early Diesels fared no better, most were scrapped in the '60s, the F-9s gained much notoriety since they were on the RGZ after Amtrak's inception, they lasted well past their normal retirement age. The Rio Grande actually sold the engines to the museum...... $1.00 ea!
It's said that England is the Mother of all Railways, true enough, but things (animals and the works of man) often grow to fit their surroundings - thus the large steam engines of the U.P., D.M&IR, Rio Grande et al.