For the last five years, Ed Horvat has been the contributor behind The Durango Herald’s weekly And the West is History photos, and now, he’s taken his interest in La Plata County’s history and recently published a book: “Images of America: La Plata County.”
Horvat will be at Maria’s Bookshop on Thursday to talk about the book and sign copies.
For the Durango native, delving into the area’s history has been a labor of love. Horvat grew up just down the street from Animas School, which is now the Animas Museum. A 1977 Fort Lewis College graduate, he left town and lived in Farmington for 33 years for his career in the medical field. It was during his tenure in Farmington that his interest in history grew.
“I was in Rotary, and I’d go to the meetings, and every year, these people from San Juan County Historical Society would write a little book and come and do a presentation,” he said. “And it just piqued my interest in local history.”
Now retired and back in Durango (although he splits his time on the Front Range), Horvat has been volunteering with the Animas Museum/La Plata County Historical Society. He hasn’t lost his interest in history – if anything, it’s only grown now that he’s back in La Plata County. And when the Herald was looking for someone to compile a local history column/photo, Horvat was just the guy because he had been keeping up with a Colorado Springs newspaper that was doing something similar.
“They had an old picture in the back of the newspaper every Sunday. I said, ‘Oh, that’s great. I love that thing. I’ll see if I can do that for the Herald,’” he said. “I just started doing it, and it’s kind of a labor of love, because I love going through old pictures, and I’m constantly asking people to go through their pictures.”
Last spring, Arcadia Publishing Co. began asking if there would be interest in publishing a local history book under its “Images of America,” series. Horvat said the company first contacted the Durango Public Library, the library contacted the museum and the museum ... well, the rest is history.
Writing the book was a challenge in itself, Horvat said, especially when it came to the word count for the photo caption. He said captions were limited to 70 words per photo, and within that, all of the pertinent details – your who, what, when, etc. – had to be coupled with historical context. Not an easy task, he said.
“All last summer, I spent writing this book, these captions, 220 pictures, all from the museum,” Horvat said. “Ninety percent of the captions I wrote were way over. I got so good, I could work for Reader’s Digest, because I know how to cut words out of superfluous phrases. I got the book done, and it came out last July. It was a lot of work, but it was kind of fun for me because I liked doing it.”
And for Horvat, who’s giving all of the royalties from the book back to the Animas Museum, books like his – and things like And the West is History – serve to educate people about the history of where they live.
“Some people don’t realize the richness, the variety of history that our county has,” he said.
katie@durangoherald.com
