{"id":30961,"date":"2023-10-28T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-28T12:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-spirit-of-manitou-springs-is-alive-with-the-emma-crawford-coffin-races\/"},"modified":"2023-10-28T12:30:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-28T12:30:00","slug":"the-spirit-of-manitou-springs-is-alive-with-the-emma-crawford-coffin-races","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-spirit-of-manitou-springs-is-alive-with-the-emma-crawford-coffin-races\/","title":{"rendered":"The spirit of Manitou Springs is alive with the Emma Crawford Coffin Races"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"An
An undated Emma Crawford Coffin Races event. (Bob Macdonald)<\/span>Bob Macdonald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In late October, coffins on wheels take over the main drag of Manitou Springs. Impersonators of Emma Crawford, a Manitou resident in the late 1800s whose remains famously slid down Red Mountain, ride the decorated coffins with a team of pallbearers pushing as fast as they can. The nearly 30-year tradition reflects the unique character of Manitou Springs and the people who live there while sharing some of the city\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

KRCC\u2019s Jess Hazel spoke with Jenna Gallas of the Manitou Springs Chamber of Commerce about the stories surrounding the races.<\/p>\n

On how the Coffin Races started<\/strong><\/p>\n

The coffin races started in the mid-90s around a kitchen table from some of the folks that were on the Chamber of Commerce board of directors at the time in a brainstorming session. What can we do in the shoulder season to encourage people to come out and see Manitou Springs, bring in the tours and bring in the fun?<\/p>\n

We are weird and kind of kooky here in Manitou. Let\u2019s play off something very interesting that no one else has. And the legacy of Emma Crawford came up and \u2018Hey, let\u2019s race coffins.\u2019<\/p>\n

In the first year, it was just the local fire departments and maybe seven or eight teams just on a Saturday and just rolling up the street. Coffins on wheels \u2026 obviously we\u2019re in the 29th year now. It\u2019s grown immensely since that early beginning, but certainly did start as something just kind of fun and offbeat.<\/p>\n

On how Emma Crawford Coffin Races reflect the character of Manitou Springs<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly something that Manitou Springs has become known for nationally and internationally. We have people all over the country doing something similar or looking to: \u2018Send us your coffin race specs. We want to do the same thing in our community. We want to have fun like that.\u2019<\/p>\n

The \u2018Keep Manitou Weird\u2019 vibe is certainly there. We toss fruitcakes and race coffins! That\u2019s kind of what people have come to expect, just the unusual and out of the ordinary. And for me, I like to say that we\u2019re all our own kind of weird, right?<\/p>\n

But Manitou is a real no judgment zone. You can be exactly who you are in Manitou and be accepted here, and I think that\u2019s unusual, especially in this day and age, to have a place where you can come and just let your freak flag fly.<\/p>\n

Escape and enjoy Manitou Springs, as we say at the Chamber of Commerce. [We] give people a reason to come here and have a good time, dress up in costume. Where else are you doing that? Especially as an adult, I\u2019m sure your kids dress up and go trick-or-treating, but when do you get that opportunity? You can bring the whole family down. So really looking forward to just, for me, it\u2019s seeing the sheer joy and excitement on everyone\u2019s face being at the event. It\u2019s a wonderful thing.<\/p>\n

On friendly competition and the Coffin Cup<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have had some real fun with the previously Nederland Frozen Dead Guy Day coffin races. They started about seven years after we did, and initially there was what we called a Coffin Cup, and our ex-mayor and dear Manitou-legend of his own, Bud Ford, had created that Coffin Cup and we kind of passed it back and forth. Our team would go up there and take the wheels off the coffin and grab a few extra people to run through their snowy obstacle course with their corpse. And then likewise, their team would come down here and put wheels on their coffin.<\/p>\n

So we resurrected the Coffin Cup back in 2017. It had, after those initial years, back in the late 90s, had kind of died off. And so the last five years or so, six years now, we\u2019ve been racing back and forth, but with the Nederland coffin races through Frozen Dead Guy Days moving to Estes Park now, while we did send a team up there in March, they are not sending a team down here for our races.<\/p>\n

At this time the Coffin Cup will be laid to rest for a second time.<\/p>\n

On the story of Emma Crawford<\/strong><\/p>\n

Emma Crawford was a resident of Manitou Springs. Her and her mother and her sister Alice all came to this community because of the mineral spring. It was when only the affluent of society were coming here in hopes of being cured by the spring water from whatever ailed them. Emma had tuberculosis and it was thought that she could be cured by the water. Unfortunately, that wasn\u2019t the case. She did die very young, the tender age of 26.<\/p>\n

Prior to her passing she lived near where Miramont Castle is today and she was looking out her window all the time at Red Mountain and she really felt this draw spiritually. She felt that there was Native American force that was drawing her to the top of the mountain, but everybody told her she could not climb it because she was too sick. And she didn\u2019t like that. Tenacity certainly seems like one of her strong characteristics because she did climb Red Mountain. And to prove it, she tied her scarf to a pinyon tree at the top. She told Wilhelm at the time that she wanted to be buried on Red Mountain. Now, he didn\u2019t own land there, but he did with 11 other men carry her casket in shifts up the side of the mountain to bury her on top.<\/p>\n

Several years after her initial burial, the landowner came and wanted to put an incline in. The kind of attraction that our own Manitou incline used to be as well. And they said, \u2018you have to remove this grave site and place her somewhere else.\u2019 And so they did. They buried her on the other side of Red Mountain. However, the second time she was buried, it\u2019s known that she wasn\u2019t buried appropriately, not very deep, not covered with much more than loose dirt and rocks. So after the second burial, maybe 20 years had gone by before she had slid down the side of the mountain. Now it\u2019s not known when exactly that did happen, but years later, the nameplate from her coffin, some bones and some of the handles were found by some boys hiking in the area.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when her remains at the time, whatever remains were found, were taken to the local city hall police department. And it wasn\u2019t until, I want to say 20, 30 years after that they buried her in Crystal Valley Cemetery here in Manitou Springs.<\/p>\n

Now, only a few people in town to this day know where her actual remains are buried because she did not have a headstone or grave marker until the Historical Society placed one there. So that was in the early 2000s, and that\u2019s not at the actual site where she\u2019s buried. So a little mystery still shrouded in that. But three burials for Emma, all in all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An undated Emma Crawford Coffin Races event. (Bob Macdonald)Bob Macdonald In late October, coffins on wheels take over the main drag of Manitou Springs. Impersonators of Emma Crawford, a Manitou resident in the late 1800s whose remains famously slid down Red Mountain, ride the decorated coffins with a team of pallbearers pushing as fast as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-30961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30961","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=30961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30961"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=30961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}