Looking around at his menagerie of antique cigar snippers recovered from an abandoned cabin near Boulder, Spanish colonial spurs, Civil War-era swords, smooth leather, turquoise and rare topaz, Appaloosa Trading Co. founder Michael Gibson muses, “I’ve been a packrat my entire life, but I think I’ve finally graduated to collector.”
Next month, all of it will be gone.
After 35 years in business, Appaloosa Trading Co. is meeting its end as a result of Gibson’s divorce. The County Road 203 property, including the home he lived in with his family since 2006, was listed in December, and the merchandise may be auctioned at the end of April.
“I’m so in love with Mike’s things,” said five-year customer Anita Davis, whose wrist was adorned with one of them – a bracelet of a Nevada turquoise called pixie. “It’s really sad, such a loss for Durango.”
Heavy with the smell of leather, the shop today – the last of three to close – is excessive, hectic with the pending closure and loaded with artifacts Gibson has accumulated throughout his life in the West, which began in 1965.
He was 10 when he said he took a grocery bag of clothes and a kitchen knife from his home in Lebanon, Ohio, and stole away to meet his father under a bridge. He left his mother and three sisters sleeping, and the two went West.
“My dad was an outlaw, but he never hurt anybody. Just bad checks, theft. I put two and two together,” Gibson said. “It was 1965. We were both so excited.”
A charming auto mechanic, Gibson’s father, Pete, was able to get work anywhere, which brought the pair to a truck stop in Oklahoma City in summer 1966. There were two cots in the back room, and Pete worked the night shift.
An old man, Paul Roberts, worked there too and entertained a 12-year-old Gibson with stories of riding on horseback from Yellowstone to Rocky Mountain National Park along the continental divide. He canoed in Maine and Canada. He was a World War II B-29 tail gunner in Europe.
One day, Roberts brought Gibson a little cardboard box of leather rolls and basic leatherworking tools. “He said, ‘I know you’ve got nothing to do,’” Gibson said. “I just took to it, and have never done anything else.”
From there, Gibson and his father traveled everywhere. Pete would become manager of a gas station, then the night would come when Gibson would be shaken awake by his father, who had emptied the cash register and was ready to move to the next town.
“He would say, ‘Where are we going?’” said Gibson, who would consult maps for the criteria: someplace they could get jobs and “camp” undisturbed. “Back then, you called them ‘bums,’ ‘hobos’ and ‘vagrants.’ My dad said we were camping. It wasn’t until years later it occurred to me we were homeless.”
They finally settled in Boulder, where Pete got a job with Coors and married a woman in Eldorado Canyon with Appaloosa horses. Gibson went to Boulder High School.
In 1970, a junior-year Gibson opened his first leather store for $75 a month on Pearl Street with a glass-blower, pottery maker and macrame artist. They called it Artifactory and held after-school and weekend hours.
It lasted nine months, but the previous six years had cultivated plans for lifelong self-employment, and provided an education Gibson said he couldn’t have paid any university to get.
“My mom smoked four packs a day; I never had a smoke. My dad was a big liar; honesty is really important to me,” he said. “Some people fall in the tracks of their parents. Others kind of do the opposite.”
In 1981, Gibson left for Durango with a business partner he’d known since high school, Mark Jaramillo, who runs the World According to Mark on east Eighth Street. They opened Appaloosa Trading Co. downtown, and Gibson eventually expanded on his own to County Road 203 and to Telluride, which attracted celebrity customers such as Tom Cruise, Sam Elliott, Faye Dunaway and Harry Carey Jr. Business became so big and labor so expensive, he opened a factory in Tlaquepaque, Guadalajara.
“There, I could design my head off, and it would be possible,” Gibson said. “We made beautiful stuff. Hardly anyone makes their own stuff anymore. I call it my once-proud Appaloosa.”
Eventually, the factory closed, as did the Telluride and downtown locations a few years ago when business couldn’t sustain them. At its peak about 10 years ago, Appaloosa sold to clients in Japan and Europe after gaining their business at stock shows in Denver, Las Vegas and San Francisco.
“I came from nothing. I took chances because what did I have to lose?” Gibson said. “Mostly it paid off. Until recently.”
Deb Gibson, his ex-wife, said she started working as Appaloosa’s bookkeeper in 1988 and married Gibson in 1990.
“I was the sole bookkeeper until we parted in 2013,” she said. That year, the former couple’s 21-year-old son, Shane, died from a drug overdose. “It went downhill after that,” she said.
“Michael was an incredible craftsman. He had lots of energy and three beautiful stores. I think he’s one of a kind in many ways. But things have gone downhill between us.”
Gibson declined to speak on the record about his company’s backsliding, his divorce or his son. Only that he’s done with Durango, and appreciates his customers of 35 years.
Now, the shop is aflutter with his last ones.
What’s left after the property sale – Gibson will retain the business name – will be liquidated. His son’s Appaloosa horse, Hollywood, recently left his post in the front yard for a new home in Mancos with a friend of Gibson’s. And Gibson has no more business plans.
His daughter lives in Denver, but he “doesn’t like it there.” His sole prospect, he said, is returning to what he did before marriage, his family and Appaloosa: travel.
“I never thought I would be starting over. I’m not going to start over like 1981,” Gibson said. “I used to be really lucky. I think the only way to get that back is to leave.”
jpace@durangoherald.com
