Southern Colorado Magazine 2004
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 Glen 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 into 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. When the immigrants stepped off the train in Cotopaxi, expecting to find farmland for an agricultural settlement; 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 Glenn's parents store. Mr. And Mrs. Carroll had no children but they raised a little girl, Ruby Keen-age five 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 of 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 stores 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, in 1954, 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 the Indians. 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.
The local school operated irregularly from the 1870's on. By 1883 school operated for six months out of the year. What kid today would not jump for joy with school in session for only six months out of the year? Mullin himself taught school for a period of time at the older school where the cafeteria now stands.
In 1954, there was still no church yet in Cotopaxi. Occasional church services were held at the school. These started out with periodical, unscheduled ministry and eventually, later, circuit rider ministers maintained services once a month. In between, faithful people would conduct Sunday school services in the school building. Most people put a value on church and there was no internal strife about separation of church and state.
Until 1879, the only transportation to and from Cotopaxi was stagecoach and oxen freighters and until 1900, a stagecoach drawn by horses were maintained between Silver Cliff and Cotopaxi, carried passengers and mail back and forth. A new era opened up for Cotopaxi when the railroad built the route from Texas Creek, seven miles east of Cotopaxi, to Salida, 23 miles west. However, freighters drawn by horses were still the major means of getting their supplies. There was a huge train depot not far from Glenn Mullin's house that has since been dismantled; he participated in the destruction of the historic building much to his sorrow. Now there is no train service past Parkdale (20 miles east of Cotopaxi) on the line, which goes from Pueblo over Tennessee Pass to Minturn.
In 1915, Fred Jones who was a blacksmith and sometimes worked on cars and sold gas and tires built the first Cotopaxi garage. In 1919, Dall McCrory, 19, converted an abandoned creamery building into an automobile garage; his business boomed as automobiles became more popular and he expanded to dealership of Model T Fords, selling seven the very first day. Then he stocked electrical appliances, and he expanded even more selling tractors and farm machinery and hay balers. By 1952, this man who started his business at 19 took sixth place in the selling of tractors in a four-state area.
In 1954, the Denver & Rio Grande Western railroad employed a number of residents. The town consisted of the train depot, post office, two grocery stores and two garages, cafes and filling stations within one mile of the town, a modern cottage court, a grade school and high school, There was a strip mine for lime north of Cotopaxi, owned and mined by Colorado Fuel & Iron, railroad but no gold. The lime was intended to prepare food for stock and also for fertilizer.
Presently, there is a small grocery store with a filling station—I call it the Cotopaxi Mall—a post office, a somewhat larger school providing education to all the surrounding towns and villages with an eight-man football team and their own meager football field, and a small antique shop. Where Dall McCrory's garage once stood, directly across the street west of the Cotopaxi store, now stands Cotopaxi's first apartment complex. The town of Cotopaxi is now much smaller than before and employs few employees. Don
't count on getting a job there anytime soon, except maybe in the school system, always in need of good teachers, or with river raft companies in the summer season.
However, the mountain scenery is beautiful and breathtaking—truly God's country. Hunting and fishing draw sportsmen from near and far, and there is lodging and camping with fairly good facilities a mile or two, directly east of Cotopaxi—the Arkansas River KOA & the Loma Linda Motel right on the river between April and October.
Glenn Mullin never married and leaves no children. He has returned to work he enjoyed at an earlier age, working at the new school as a teacher‘s aide. He lives a very simple life. His favorite chair is placed next to the stove that has always heated this historic site, as he frequently reads into the night. The old safe holds nothing now but personal paperwork—no gold, but maybe only the documentation that followed him through the golden era of his life. He's a very humble man and really doesn't give himself credit for what he's contributed to Cotopaxi, which is more than he thinks. He's been a responsible, stable link in the history of Cotopaxi and once more he does his share, as one of Cotopaxi's lifelong residents, to keep its history alive.