100 years ago: “That Santa Clause remembered to stuff the stocking of the La Plata mining district with good things for this Christmas became apparent when great excitement was caused among the great throng of merry makers on the streets of Durango by the news that very rich strikes had been made on the Chief and Idaho mines in the Valley View section.”
75 years ago: “Eddie Dowds, son of Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Dowds of Durango, is home for the Christmas holidays from the school for deaf children at Colorado Springs, where he is a third-year student.”
50 years ago: “Holiday skiers will find excellent conditions at all the San Juan Basin’s facilities – provided they can find them under the deep snows left by the area’s latest major storm. Southwestern Colorado’s ski areas all had plenty of snow for good skiing before this week’s storm brought them 18 to 36 inches of new snow to the mountains. The big job facing all operators now is getting the runs packed to provide first-class skiing. This week’s snow was exceptionally heavy, the type that makes for difficult skiing until it’s packed.”
25 years ago: “Fort Lewis College students will be part of the first group in the NASA-established Space Grant program to fly an experimental rocket into the atmosphere. Blast-off is tentatively planned for 1992. The FLC group, which calls itself the Space Grant College Rocket Team, is developing experiments to measure photons in the ozone layer to determine how much and if the ozone has been depleted.”
Most items in this column are taken from Herald archives, Center of Southwest Studies and Animas Museum. Their accuracy may not be verified.
