If you ever wondered about this town you live in, tonight at 5:30 would be a good time to catch up on Fort Collins' 150 years of history as the Discovery museum launches its "FC150" exhibit. I am personally thrilled because our place was the homestead of a very important guy in the city's history, and will be part of the many personal stories featured by the museum. This is a party you don't want to miss. Get more details on the exhibit from The Coloradoan story. Cost: Adult admission is $9.50; $7 for seniors and students; $6 for children ages 3 to 12; free for members and those ages 2 and younger.
According to the email below, which we received from the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, we will be part of the upcoming FC150 history exhibit! Oddly, over the holidays, we were also given until March 20 to come up with an appraisal for our property slated to be taken for the Larimer County North Shields Street Corridor Project, which would change our street from this:
to something like this graphic from the project website. You can kiss these old, shady maple trees goodbye.
I now understand the mustangs as the helicopters close in over their heads.
Congratulations! Your nomination has been selected to be a part of the upcoming FC150 exhibit celebrating the 150th anniversary of Fort Collins which will open in August of 2014.
Thanks to you and many other community members, this exhibit will be a great look at What Makes Fort Collins Fort Collins. We received many, many nominations and a community task force reviewed each and every one. Between community nominations and museum staff nominations the task force was able to select the 150 stories that will go into the exhibit.
Now the hard work begins. We want each of you to be involved in introducing the story you nominated.
Over the course of the next few months the museum will contact each of you individually and discuss your nomination. There will be several things we’ll want to do with you to prepare your story. We’ll need to do some massaging and editing of your nomination to get it into a useable format; we may ask for your help in identifying objects to help illustrate that story; and we’ll want to get your picture taken so you can be on the panel identifying your story.
As you can imagine, with 150 stories to deal with this process will take some time. If you don’t hear from us in the next few weeks don’t worry, we’ll get in touch. I anticipate everyone should be contacted at least by the end of January, but hopefully prior to that.
I hope you are excited to be a part of the exhibit!
Joseph Messier did not have death on his mind when he halted on a piece of ground downstream from the military's Camp Collins in 1862. What he did have was an alias, perhaps a little gold in his pockets, and an eye for opportunity.
The hulk fainted
He was fresh from Colorado’s gold rush, which if you knew where to look, could be a very good thing. Joseph had learned another lesson: One should beware of a certain beautiful Native American maiden, especially when there was another man involved. That other man, a hulking mule shoer, had objected. It ended in a duel in Denver, but not in death. The hulk fainted as the combatants faced off, one newspaper reported.
True love it seemed, was not in the cards for this darkly-handsome young bachelor. At least not yet.
Land high enough to stay safe from floods, easy well digging, grass everywhere, and a shallow river crossing for horses.
Joseph surveyed his surroundings. He had first passed through the area in 1860 while traveling with the Captain Reynolds expedition to Yellowstone. Here, along the Poudre River, this place beckoned: land high enough to stay safe from floods, easy well digging, grass everywhere, and a shallow river crossing for horses.
It would make superb farm land, and sitting along the Overland Stage route, the property’s exposure would draw business. If things got really rough, he already had a neighbor: Laroque Bousque, left, another French-Canadian, had settled directly across the river.
The only snag in the plan
The only snag in this plan was the Native American woman who owned the land Joseph wanted. Her husband was dead however, and it could be she was ready to sell out. Joseph's good looks probably helped seal that deal.
"He was six feet in stature, straight and lithe in form. His complexion was tawny, but clear, his eyes were large, full and flashing, and his hair and beard black as jet." - The (Fort Collins) Express newspaper, February 11, 1881
At age 22, he became the proud owner of 160 acres of paradise. Joseph busied himself with the life of a hero, not to mention farming and empire building.
'Torrents of water' plunging like waves
In 1864, the weather got ugly. Winter snows fell deep, and spring melts flooded the lowlands. On June 9th, a rain storm sent torrents of water “plunging like the waves of the sea under the impulse of a gale”, according to Ansel Watrous, the area’s premier historian, left, from whom much of this tale emerged. Camp Collins, the military outpost a few miles up the river from Joseph’s claim, was instantly flooded to the tent rooftops, and soldiers barely escaped with their lives.
Joseph told the bedraggled crew they should move what was left of their camp to a spot south of the river, on his east border. It was high enough to protect from floods, and provide early warning in case any Native Americans, angry over being pushed out by the United States government, attacked. In a letter endorsed by Abraham Lincoln, the acting interior secretary ordered the move, specifically noting Joseph's claim. Perhaps as a thank you, Camp Collins named Joseph and his partner as sutlers (suppliers) to the new outpost. It could also be that Joseph spied an opportunity to attract new customers when he became the first postmaster a year later.
Into the horse business
Camp Collins did not last long, and was abandoned by soldiers in 1866. Ripples of the Homestead Act of 1862, which offered free land to settlers, had finally reached the Colorado Territory and Fort Collins. With Colorado’s 1876 statehood looming, the government threw open the camp property to pre-existing squatters and local entrepreneurs. Joseph, well into breeding and selling horses, in fact, well into any kind of horse-propelled business he could think of, had sold his farm to Henry Forbes, and moved on to acquiring more land, as well as putting Fort Collins on the map.
Love at last
In all the excitement, Joseph finally made room in his life for love. It could have been a fried chicken dinner or a breakfast of pork chops and eggs. We don’t know, but in 1867, while on a freight trip, Joseph discovered the superb cooking and companionship of young Luella, 10 years his junior. Luella worked for her father at his hotel on the Overland Trail in Longmont. The two were married in 1870, the second marriage in Fort Collins' history. In due course, Luella bore Joseph four children.
Sheriff on the hunt
The years saw Joseph’s star on the rise, especially his sheriff's star. Not limiting his politics to launching the Colorado Central Railroad Company, or convincing the populace to make Fort Collins the county seat, Joseph agreed to be the first county sheriff. He distinguished himself with bravery, especially in the matter of chasing down the woman-molester, Happy Jack, who after jail time, escape, and lengthy pursuit, mysteriously “disappeared”.
Newspapers followed the pursuits of Joseph’s trotting horses, and a particular horse “Sam” turned heads, sending one writer "busted and disgusted" out of Boulder, Colorado. In other horse pursuits, Joseph’s stage line to Cheyenne wooed customers with advertisements for convenient pick up at local hotels, and the newspaper and family documents duly noted his new livery sign and hay sales.
At one point Joseph paid the highest taxes of anybody in the county. Perhaps he needed a feed store for all of his livestock when he bought what is today Ranch-Way Feeds from Auntie Stone.
50 acres to start a university
Besides helping others get a start in the bustling metropolis of Fort Collins, with an 1878 population of 1,200, Joseph performed an immense act of generosity and donated 50 acres to help build what is today Colorado State University.
If Joseph had planned a career as a pioneer hero, he couldn't have asked for more. But Joseph never expected what happened February 9, 1881.
The horse balked
Coming home from a visit with an ill Mr. Sherwood, who owned land east of Fort Collins, a young horse brought Joseph and Luella's carriage to a halt, refusing to cross the Dry Creek stream. Luella jumped out and urged the team across the stream. Still the young horse balked. Luella returned to the carriage, took over the reins, and Joseph jumped down. He pulled on the problem animal's headstall. The team began to move. As the horses picked up speed, Joseph ran along.
If you know horses, you know that running over rough ground with a horse in tow is difficult. Joseph stumbled and fell.
Luella and her mother halted the team and turned back to Joseph. He lay still. The women went to his side and found him unconscious. With the help of bystanders, they loaded him into the carriage and bore Joseph home.
62 shards of skull
When they laid him down, they discovered the worst: Joseph had been kicked in the head.
“... the fracture was nearly the shape of a horse shoe, one heel calk cutting through the skull just back of the right eyebrow, and the other in a direct line back of the ear: the arc of the shoe extended from those points to a point a little above the turn of the head, or above the temporal bone.” -- Fort Collins Courier, February 17, 1881
Joseph swung in and out of consciousness. Local doctors pulled 62 shards of skull out of the wound. Joseph’s partner frantically summoned Denver specialists by train, but could not get permission for a special train run because the railroad owner was on vacation. Those who loved Joseph gathered round. At one point he rose and recognized friends and family. He was able to sign his will, but could last no longer. Joseph died February 11, 1881 at age 41. He left behind Luella and their small children.
Lost: The Father of Fort Collins
At Joseph’s funeral, citizens packed the church and poured out into the street. The population of Fort Collins, now 1,356 people give or take a few, produced a procession of mourners a half mile long. We had lost the Father of Fort Collins.
"Joe … was entirely devoted to the interests of Fort Collins and Larimer County. He was always ready to help newcomers get a start here - he would lend them money, fit them out with teams to till the soil, and assist them in a hundred ways,” reported the Fort Collins Express. “’He never thought of Joe,’ said an old friend of his … 'but always of somebody else.’”
Joseph who?
If you ask most people today about the French-Canadian named Joseph Messier, they will probably shake their heads. You see, Joseph changed his name when he came to this country. We knew him as Joseph Mason.
Joseph Mason’s grave was relocated in the great 1887 local cemetery move to Grand View Cemetery. The people I've run into in Fort Collins look blank when you mention Joseph Mason. I guess we've pretty much forgotten him, but Wikipedia remembers the Father of Fort Collins. At least we named a street after him. When you ride Fort Collin's new MAX rapid-transit system, look out the window. You are on Mason Street.
Found: The original farm
Joseph’s original farm, the heart of that river parcel he bought more than 150 years ago, exists today at our place, 930 N. Shields St.
The proof
A little Googling of Shields Street history will give you your first historic clue with a mention of Joseph Mason and Shields Street. Alvina Desjardins, the granddaughter of Joseph's neighbor, Laroque Bousque, more famously known as Rock Bush, remembered the property, which "bordered Bush's to the south" in an article she wrote for the April 13, 1987 Fence Post. Rock Bush's farm location is backed up by the 1915 map of the Irrigated Farms of Colorado. (Note: The specific map link, Northwest Quarter -- Townships 6-9 North, Ranges 66W - 69W;, will not load on computers low in RAM.) Joseph Mason and Rock Bush lived in Section 2 of Township 7, Range 69W. When the map was made, a Mr. Kenedy owned our place. To get your bearings, look for T.7N. on the left margin of the map, head right a little bit and stop at the intersection of the Poudre River and Shields Street.
Old red clay irrigation tile pieces are part of a line running to our apple trees, and hint at many more secrets still to be unraveled.
Ansel Watrous references Joseph's farm location in his book, "The History of Larimer County" (p. 320), as well as Joseph's sale of the land to Henry Forbes (p. 216). Ansel would have first-hand knowledge of the property, as his uncle, William Watrous, owned the property for many years, as well. If you use government land ordinance records to look up Henry Forbes, you can see the property on yet another digital map, and you can find Rock Bush's parcel across the river. Joseph's property location is also noted in the Fort Collins History Connection.
In the crosshairs
Fort Collins has spread, and Joseph's farm has shrunk to 19-and-a-half acres. The City of Fort Collins owns much of the former acreage in the form of Martinez Park, city offices and the city yard, which houses its big-truck, big-construction resources.
If you are walking or driving by, look for the farm at the southeast corner of the Poudre River and North Shields Street. Up the bluff above the river, many of the old buildings peek out. Once the Twin Willows Tea Room, with an old tale all its own, the farm is today Poudre River Stables, where people live daily the fabric of history that Joseph Mason first wove – a love of horses, haying, the harvest, and the land.
Horses grazing in the pasture, Poudre River Stables, Fort Collins, Colorado.
A sunset view of our old red barn - Poudre River Stables - original farm - Father of Fort Collins - Joseph Mason.
John F. Hoffecker, PhD, University of Colorado, Boulder; specialist in archaeology and human paleoecology, for alerting me to the connection between Joseph Mason and this property.
Mark Emery for solving the first clue in the property's history puzzle when he found the Twin Willows Tea Room menu.
Carolyn Blackburn, archivist, City of Greeley Museums, for her help locating the 1915 map of the Irrigated Farms of Colorado.
The archivist on duty at the Discovery Museum who helped me Saturday morning, August 24, 2013, with the Mason Family and Rock Bush vertical files.
FORT COLLINS, Colorado -- This old farm resonates with untold stories. Riding along our lanes, or harvesting willow and fruit from ancient trees in the summer, I'll stumble into one of our odd pools of cold air and wonder about those who came before -- not to mention the nagging Twin Willows Tea Room mystery.
When we arrived in 1989, a giant stump and a giant willow stood north of the house. I asked a local historian when he visited once, and I talked to remaining family members, but I never could verify the Twin Willows Tea Room story.
Over the years, I did wonder about the tea room. This year, as a $5 million project to widen and enhance Shields Street is planned on our west border, and a proposed housing developmenttakes shape on our east border, I wondered again about this old farm’s history. My archeologist friend, Mark Emery, took up the sleuthing torch and hit pay dirt when he unearthed the Twin Willows Tea Room brochure.
It turns out that the house we live in today, built in the late 1890's, was the actual tea room, and is still intact. The proprietors took great pride in their chicken dinners: "We raise our own chickens fed from the purest foods, and prepare them for serving. Milk and butter are produced on the ranch, cooled in spring water, served fresh and sweet." You would recognize the house in a minute from this tea room brochure photo, if you could see past the modern evergreens, below. The remaining twin willow "planted by the first president of the State Board of Agriculture" still stands. According to two separate hand-written notes, one of them at the bottom of this photo, this residence was the farm house of Wm. F. Watrous, a founding father of Fort Collins, who by the way, also used his line of credit to help start Colorado State University. In "1882 he sold the most of his town property and moved to a fruit farm situated on the river bank about one mile northwest of Fort Collins." And according to the brochure, this property was also a stop on the Overland Stage Route.
Stop on famous Overland Stage Route
"Twin Willows – The largest tree in Larimer County (28 ½ ft. in circumference) and its smaller twin give their name to the tea room operated by Mrs. Henry Burdorf, 'Twin Willows.' These two mighty sentinels provide a majestic and magnificent setting for a 'country chicken dinner,' the dinners for which Twin Willows is famous. A beautiful spacious lawn enclosed by shrubbery and lighted by electricity furnishes an ideal place for a dinner served out-doors (sic).
Patrons and visitors are delighted with this ranch on the banks of the Cache la Poudre River, with its wide-sweeping twin willows. It was at one time a station on the famous Overland Stage Route from Denver to Laramie. These trees were planted by the first president of the State Board of Agriculture, under whose supervision Old Main and several other college buildings were erected – Wm. F. Watrous. It was Mr. Watrous and another member of the board, John J. Ryan, who really started Colorado State College on its career of usefulness. When it was decided to open the school in the spring of 1879 it was found there was no money for that purpose. These two men went to Denver and borrowed $3,000 on their personal note. With this money the school was opened."
The upper reaches of the surviving twin willow are shown above, as Gregg climbs up to trim branches damaged in the October 2011 blizzard. This is not even the entire tree. Can you find him?
This modern photo, taken Sat., Jan. 18, 2013, duplicates the approach down the driveway of the old Twin Willows Tea Room brochure, above. However, the surviving twin willow, and the equally old cottonwood behind the kitchen at the back of the house, have grown so big that they show up better in this version taken farther away.
The Twin Willows Tea Room brochure contained other nuggets:
Brother of a judge, a wedding and Shakespeare
"Just a short distance up the river from Twin Willows, in a building which has since disappeared, occurred the first wedding of white people in Larimer County. A strapping young man named Cyr and a blushing young lady, the daughter of a Frenchman and an Indian squaw, were the groom and bride.
The next difficulty, after persuading the young lady, was to secure some one (sic) to perform the ceremony. Preachers were scarce. There were no justices of the peace. After two unsuccessful trips, the groom finally located a man whose brother was a judge, and he agreed to officiate. When the two arrived, however, the young lady could not be found -- she had disappeared. She was so bashful she had concealed herself under a huge fur. After she had been discovered, the ceremony proceeded. To make up for his unofficial standing, the judge's brother stretched the ceremony to nearly an hour. It was solemnized on a volume of Shakespeare in lieu of a Bible, a copy of which could not be found. Being unable to read English, however, the couple were just as well satisfied."
Origins of the Cache la Poudre name
The Twin Willows brochure also offers two versions of how the Poudre River got its name:
"One story is that a party of French trappers camped near Bellvue discovered a band of Indians coming. Their first concern was for their powder, and hence the exclamation "Cache la poudre!"
The other story is that in November, 1836, a party of trappers and employes (sic) in the service of the American Fur Company was taking a heavily loaded wagon train from St. Louis to Green River, Wyoming. They made camp near what is now Bellvue. During the night it began to snow, and it snowed for two days. The leader decided they could not get through the mountains with all their load. "Niege ... trop beau-coup" (too much snow), he said. An important part of the loads was 600 pounds of powder. This, with a lot of other heavy things, was "cached." A large hole was dug. The hole was lined with brush, the provisions packed away carefully, brush put on top of same, and the whole covered with two feet of dirt. The next spring a company with empty wagons returned to "the river where we hid the powder" and took the powder and provisions on to Wyoming.
Trappers and most white men always respected the caches of others, but wolves -- and sometimes Indians -- were not so scrupulous. So caches had to be made secure from the ravages of wolves and secreted from Indians. The one required work, and the other called for ingenuity.
In this place, with its romantic associations, under these giant twin willows, beside the river where they hid the powder, Mrs. Burdorf will serve you the most delicious dinners, either plate or country style.
Write or phone (329) for menus and reservations."
The next time you find yourself going by our place, especially if you are traveling on the Poudre River bike trail just east of where North Shields St. and the Poudre River intersect, be sure to stop a moment and wonder about those who have gone before. We are the big white house and the red barn sitting up on the bluff. If you know something about 930 N. Shields St., please do comment. I suspect the Twin Willows brochure is just the tip of the iceberg.
