{"id":139702,"date":"2026-07-18T15:14:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T21:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/karen-pilcher-named-2026-mancos-days-pioneer-queen\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T15:14:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T21:14:15","slug":"karen-pilcher-named-2026-mancos-days-pioneer-queen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/karen-pilcher-named-2026-mancos-days-pioneer-queen\/","title":{"rendered":"Karen Pilcher named 2026 Mancos Days Pioneer Queen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"This
This year\u2019s Mancos Days Pioneer Queen Karen Pilcher and her husband Oren Pilcher met at Mancos High School. (Courtesy of Beverly Humiston)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Lifelong Mancos resident Karen Pilcher has been selected as the 2026 Mancos Days Pioneer Queen by the Mancos Colorado Days Association for her commitment to family, hard work and service to the community she calls home.<\/p>\n

Pilcher\u2019s selection continues a family tradition. Pilcher\u2019s mother-in-law, Gladys Pilcher, was named Mancos Days Queen in 1974, and her aunt Lois Humiston was the queen in 2007, according to her daughter, Tonya Fish.<\/p>\n

Pilcher grew up in Mancos with her parents Thomas Charles Honey and Sarah Emmaline Honey and her three sisters Wanda, Shirley and Linda. She graduated from Mancos High School in 1965, and was a member of Rainbow Girls, choir and band growing up.<\/p>\n

She and her husband, Oren Pilcher, met during high school and married on Oct. 23, 1965. They attended Oren\u2019s senior prom together.<\/p>\n

\u201cDancing has always been a huge part of their lives as husband and wife,\u201d Fish said.<\/p>\n

They lived in Provo, Utah for a brief time before moving back to Mancos, where they raised their two daughters, Lora and Fish.<\/p>\n

As a teen, Pilcher worked as a maid at the Welcome Motel in Mancos and a summer job at the hotel and restaurant near the Durango Train Station. She had hoped to be a nurse after high school, but was unable to enroll due to issues with paperwork.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough she could not complete formal nursing education, she fulfilled that calling in meaningful ways by providing compassionate home healthcare for elderly and ill family members and extended relatives from 1982 to 2008,\u201d Fish said.<\/p>\n

While Oren Pilcher owned and operated his business, Karen Pilcher worked as a bookkeeper and assistant mechanic. She also devoted herself to being a mother to their two daughters, teaching them sewing, cooking, canning and leather work. Pilcher served as a Girl Scout leader from 1975 to 1983 and as a Mancos Pom-Pom sponsor from 1985 to 1988.<\/p>\n

In 1989, her family took over the farm full time, and she took on daily operations of irrigation, bookkeeping, equipment operation, meal preparation, laundry, gardening, canning and assisting with calving, but stayed away from one specific aspect of the farm.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe drew the line at operating the hay liner, D4 dozer and backhoe, declaring, \u2018If I learn, I\u2019ll have to use them \u2013 and I don\u2019t want to,\u2019\u201d Fish said.<\/p>\n

Once Oren Pilcher retired, Karen Pilcher shifted her focus to yard work \u2013 something Fish said she enjoys, attending Celebrate Recovery and activities with her church. She also loves time with her daughters, three grandsons and eight great-grandchildren.<\/p>\n

bduran@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Woman born and raised in Mancos honored for hard work and service<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":139703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[364,28,83,60,29,6419],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-139702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-community","tag-headlines","tag-mancos","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-tj-trueanthem"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139702"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=139702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}