Tony Vagneur: Saddle Sore

Hear the clickety-clack, clickety-clack, steel against steel, and the deafening roar and rumble, beyond life-size, as 600 or more railroad cars thundered down the valley, Aspen to Glenwood. “Silver, my ass, we're hauling spuds, boy, tons and tons of spuds.” In an ironic twist of fate, the 1893 demise of silver mining became a boon for the valley's farmers and ranchers and railroads, creating a symbiotic relationship that endured well into the 1950s. Ranchers, their market once limited to Aspen's miners, now had the means to transport produce and livestock to other areas. Silver mining had seen its best days, but in the fading light a new age was coming, a dynamic extraction from the earth of a different kind. Potatoes, oats, hay, horses and cattle nourished by the grass and loamy soil of our unique, high-altitude aerie thrived and quickly found a national market, generally bringing higher prices than similar commodities from other areas. It's a big deal, if you read about those idyllic days, how farm or ranch life was a “family enterprise,” as though that was something unique in America. What isn't so readily apparent, though, is the fact that the biggest contribution to this area of ranching and farming was the changing of the demographic from a population of mostly single, transient males into a serious, cohesive community of families, largely agrarian based...more