100 years ago: “Judson Clevenger returned to the Big Three property on Sheep Mountain. He says they are in shape to ship two cars of ore a week during the present summer and expect to begin shipments on the first of June, as the trail will be in good shape by that time. Ore will be packed on burros from the mine as far as the Bandora and from there to Silverton will be hauled by wagons.”
75 years ago: “Dr. Herbert E. Bolton, head of the history department of the University of California and a foremost authority on history of the Spanish in America, was in Durango. He was following the path of the Escalante-Dominguez expedition of 1766 as outlined by the diary of Father Escalante.”
50 years ago: “If astronaut Gordon Cooper completes his scheduled 22 orbits he will have traveled more than 600,000 miles. How far is that? It’s certainly more than most people travel in a good, active lifetime. Wendell Biggs, operator of the Durango Diner, spent 18 years driving Continental Trailways buses ... he racked up only a little more than a total of a million miles, even though he was on the road almost every day.”
25 years ago: “A fire that burned a steep 100-acre mountainside four miles west of Durango near Highway 160 may have been the work of copycats attempting to re-create a still-moldering fire northeast of Durango. Both fires were controlled and contained. However, a helicopter continued to dump water on ‘hot spots’ in the fire west of Durango, and firefighters were to inspect the burn site in Durango Hills northeast of Durango.”
Most items in this column are taken from Herald archives, Center of Southwest Studies and Animas Museum. Their accuracy may not have been verified.
