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    Meeker
    Meeker
    Meeker
    Ebook180 pages46 minutes

    Meeker

    By Kristin Bowen

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The free-roaming Ute Indians were the first modern-day people to live in the White River valley. After mounting tensions erupted into violence and the Indian agency near present-day Meeker was attacked, the Ute were soon evicted from northwestern Colorado in 1881. By that time, adventurous people were pressing in at all sides to settle the area. Settlers drawn by land speculation and ranching populated this rural area. Ranching, hunting, guiding, and coal, oil shale, oil, and gas extraction were the ways people made their livings, or hoped to, in this region. Meeker had it all with a touch of Wild West and a promise of the American dream and all in a setting that would lure Teddy Roosevelt himself. Inside this book are glimpses of the people, traditions, celebrations, and ways of life of those who lived here before us.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 1, 2014
    ISBN9781439647028
    Meeker
    Author

    Kristin Bowen

    Author Kristin Bowen is passionate about preserving history and sharing it with everyone. She has compiled an array of photographs from family collections--including those of Pagosa's most famous resident artist, Fred Harman--and the archives of the Denver Public Library and the Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College to produce this pictorial history of Pagosa Springs and Archuleta County.

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      Book preview

      Meeker - Kristin Bowen

      Museum.

      INTRODUCTION

      The early history of Meeker is linked to the Ute, the Native Americans who inhabited the area prior to white settlement. An 1868 treaty imposed geographic limits on Colorado Utes and founded the White River Indian Agency, east of present day Meeker at Danforth Park. Ten years later, in 1878, Nathan Meeker was appointed the agent at the White River Agency; Meeker immediately began an attempt to turn the Ute into farmers. He moved the agency west of Meeker, in the area that is now called Powell Park, as he thought it would be more suitable for that pursuit. Meeker ordered the Ute horserace track to be plowed for farming. He hoped to change the lives of the Indians by turning them into farmers and making them settle down in one location, stopping their hunting-and-gathering lifestyle that led them to move around seasonally for available food. The Ute were enraged, as in their culture the horses were prized possessions and they had raced them in this field for years. Meeker sent a message to the Army at Fort Fred Steele in Wyoming asking for help as tensions rose.

      Troops summoned from the fort, led by Major Thornburgh, were stopped at the reservation boundary at Milk Creek. When Thornburgh’s troops trespassed onto agency land, a battle broke out in which his troops were eventually defeated. The Ute sent a rider back to the Indian Agency during the first day of battle and told the Ute there to kill Agent Meeker. All the white men at the Agency were killed and a fire was set that burned the agency down. Nathan Meeker’s wife, Arvilla, and his daughter Josie Meeker, along Flora Ellen Price and her two small children, were kidnapped.

      Help arrived on October 8, 1879, when Col. Wesley Merritt brought 1,000 soldiers, but by then the Ute were already leaving. He was given orders to build a cantonment called the Military Camp on the White River at the location of current-day Meeker. One hundred soldiers lived at the military camp until the fall of 1883 when an auction was held and all the buildings were sold to the early pioneers who had been moving into the area, and the Army departed.

      In part to prevent a violent popular or state reprisal against the Utes, the Ute Removal Act and the Indian Bureau removed the Utes from all but the southwestern-most portion of Colorado, opening this area of northwestern Colorado to legal homesteading. Though largely removed to reservations in 1881, the Ute returned to the White River Valley every fall up through the early 1900s to hunt deer and trade with the settlers in Rangely and Meeker. Also, according to the Ute elder Clifford Duncan, who passed away in 2014, many Ute resisted and never moved permanently onto reservations.

      Communities and post offices scattered across northwest Colorado began to incorporate as true towns after the removal of the Ute. An 1881 record lists a number of towns and post offices, including Axial, Lay, Maybell, and Rangely. The garrison constructed along the White River after the Utes’ removal gave rise to the town of Meeker, Colorado, which was platted in 1885. In 1883, Garfield County was formed, covering what is currently Rio Blanco and Garfield Counties; the county was split in half in 1889 and Meeker was named the Rio Blanco County seat.

      While there was limited extraction of Gilsonite, oil and gas, and coal, early Euro-American settlement of northwest Colorado was largely associated with livestock operations. The region supported both sheep and cattle grazing; conflicts between the two began in the 1890s, continuing through the early 20th century. The 1900 census listed the occupation of the majority of people in the county as farmer or farm laborer. A few were storekeepers, saloonkeepers, and managers of livery stables and hotels. There were a couple roustabouts, horse gatherers, gilsonite miners, and coal miners. A few of the more educated professions like lawyers and doctors also showed up; however, the majority had to do with livestock and agricultural pursuits.

      Meeker has always been the business and banking center of a much larger community, spreading out in each direction from town. Hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation in general as well as livestock raising were the main activities upriver from Meeker. Downriver, and spreading down to the Piceance Basin, livestock raising, hunting, and mineral extraction have been the dominant land uses.

      Meeker and the surrounding community have remained, through ups and downs and booms and busts, and many remain loyal to this place. Like one of the earlier residents said in an interview for the This is What I Remember book series published by the White River Historical Society, It is my hope that Heaven, if there be such a place, will be like the White River Valley I have loved so much.

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      1880s

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