The Elk Mountain Pilot (Irwin, (Ruby Camp), Gunnison County, Colo.) 1880-19??
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,191 issues from 1880 to 1924, published in Ruby Camp, Colorado, digitised for Chronicling America.
Irwin, Gunnison County, Colorado, was a mining town that in its boom years from 1880 to 1882 boasted 23 saloons, the only brass band in Gunnison County, and every manner of gambling device. Five thousand people lived in Irwin during the summer, and 2,500 wintered there despite the deep snow, as much as 20 feet. Some accounts have it that prospectors felled trees in the snow for their cabins, and once the spring thaw came there remained fifteen-foot stumps. Other Irwin inhabitants added segments to their stovepipes as the snow piled on the roofs, to find, in the spring, they had twenty-foot chimneys. But the harsh winters and treacherous terrain did not dissuade those who were drawn to the town and its highly productive silver ore mines.
Jonathan E. Phillips and Jonathan L. Lacey saw opportunity in Irwin and made their way there to start its first—and only—newspaper. Leaving their posts with the Rosita [Colorado] Index and ordering a printing outfit from Chicago, Phillips and Lacey hauled some of their Index equipment by ox team from Alamosa, Colorado, toward Irwin in May of 1880. After a journey of six days and 40 miles, they found themselves stranded at the snow line three miles from the town. They decided that once snowshoes could be made, they would carry the equipment across the range, through the deep snow, to its destination. With type blocks in their pockets, paper strapped to their backs, and pieces of the hand press tucked under their arms, Phillips and Lacey…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Ruby Camp, Colorado, United States
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress