By Judith Martin
Cotopaxi, now a very small town in the Arkansas River canyon between Cañon City and Salida, boasted its peak years in the early to mid-twentieth century.
Recently I explored some Cotopaxi stories with lifelong resident Glenn Mullin who lives in the former store and post office that he inherited from his mother, Orilee Hendricks Mullin, born in Cotopaxi in 1892 and the former postmistress.
Wandering through what was once the store in the left front and the post office in the right front and the family living quarters in the rear of the store, I felt as though I was drifting back in time. The huge steel safe still stands in what once was the post office, standing next to the largewood-burning stove.
Cotopaxi
was named by a prospector named Gold Dust Tom (see
sidebar), Mullin told me, and he sold his best mining claim in 1875 to
a man named George Saltiel. During that era of immigration from Eastern Europe,
Saltiel had convinced the leaders of a Jewish group that he could help their
countrymen from Russia and Poland start new lives farming in the American West.
The immigrants stepped off the train in Cotopaxi, expecting to find farmland
for an agricultural settlement, but Cotopaxi is capable of ranching but never
agriculture.
After a bumpy wagon trip over dry streambeds, the Jewish immigrants were introduced to their new homes, which amounted to four walls of wood and a roof but no doors. Saltiel had been paid $8,750 that was to be applied to the land, building of houses, supplies and stock. The houses had no wells, barns, supplies, or stock.
After their first crops were planted in August and September and doomed to fail because of early frosts, the men had no choice but to work for Saltiel—his ulterior motive being to obligate them to working in his mines for less than the going wage. They were paid not in cash but in credit at his store, which he figured left them little opportunity to go elsewhere. They did manage to get jobs with the railroad, building track when the railroad ventured west. After many died from the harsh winter, they migrated north to Denver in the West Colfax Avenue district and formed the nucleus of the Orthodox Community where some of their descendants can still be found.
In 1883, Mr. and Mrs. O.B. Carroll arrived in Cotopaxi and bought the store and hotel, next to Glennn's parents store. Mr. and Mrs. Carroll had no children, but they raised a little girl, Ruby Keen, 5, whose mother died shortly after her birth, and her father and an older sister died enroute to the Cotopaxi area. Flora Jane Satt, who presented her master's thesis, “The Cotopaxi Colony," to the Department of History at the University of Colorado, stated Ruby Keen, married to Charley McCoy, was the oldest living pioneer in Cotopaxi in 1954. Glenn has favorable memories of Ruby McCoy and a healthy respect for her. McCoy, a cattle rancher, owned a store and saloon directly south of Glenn's parents' store, which bottomed out in the twenties with the days of prohibition. There is an old Indian burial ground on his ranch north of Cotopaxi where the renowned Ute Chief Ouray's sub chief and a group of Ute Indians had a camping ground on the McCoy ranch.
Mullin recalls stoires of Otis Witcher‘s father, T. Witcher who arrived in
Cotopaxi in 1867 from Cave Springs, Georgia, traveling with an oxen freighter
as far as Pueblo. At that point, he walked to his brother's ranch at the mouth
of Phantom Canyon near Canon City and lived with his brother until 1872. T.
Witcher introduced ranching to Cotopaxi area, making a 
trip
to Texas for a trail herd of 5,000 cattle, then a second trip for 3,000 cattle,
and his last trip in 1879 for 4,000 cattle that he ranged in the upper northern
country of Cotopaxi all the way to the outskirts of Salida.
An additional pioneer of Cotopaxi was Mrs. Cora McCrory whose father William Stout forged his way from Madisonville, Texas with his parents in a covered wagon drawn by oxen in the 1800's. Cora related stories of Ute Indians in the area and their travels crossing the river just above her father's home and camping on a hill just above their home. Her mother delighted the Indians with potatoes and white bread and continually maintained a friendly relationship with them. The big ranch house in the lower part and east of Howard up on the hill still stands. Cora's oldest child, Mattie married Donald Augustine, initial owners of present day Cotopaxi Store, and the Modern Cottage Court, motel, just east of the store made of brick and stone--still standing.
NEXT: The history of Cotopaxi lives
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