Hugo Selig’s Early Recollections

Marilyn Cox

A Step Back In Time

It was 125 years ago that Joseph Selig helped found the town of Montrose. We will be celebrating that anniversary on May 2 and May 5. Keep reading the Montrose Daily Press for details.

In 1886, Selig died of stomach cancer at the young age of 36 and was buried in Baltimore, Md. In order to administer the estate, his brother and wife, Leopold and Pauline, came to Montrose in December of that year, along with another brother, A. L. Selig. The next July, Hugo, son of Leopold and Pauline, joined his parents and was admitted to the bar for the practice of law in Colorado in December. He practiced law in Montrose for the next 50 years.

Hugo was elected district attorney of the Seventh Judicial District in November, 1904 and served for four strenuous years. This was during Governor Peabody’s regime—the period of the strike of the Western Federation of Miners. The state was under martial law with mine owners and miners clashing with each other in Telluride, Ouray, Gunnison and Lake City.

In “Early Recollections by Hugo Selig,” written in 1938 following his retirement, Selig tells that he was in his early 20s when he arrived at 3:30 a.m. on one of the two daily trains to this embryo city. He said, “The train was packed and people flocked from it at the little frame depot building at the foot of Second Street, now North First.”

He told that most were bound for the mining camps to the south, full of talk about getting rich. As a young man full of his own expectations, he said, “I was thrilled as I listened to these narratives and had dreams of acquiring a lot of that wealth myself…Father met me at the train. We wended our way up the railroad track in the darkness to Father’s home. He had taken up a homestead south of the townsite…After leaving the main line of the railroad at the Y, we followed the new grade to a point where the family lived in a crude dugout for a period of six months until Father could prove up on the place and borrow enough money to put up cabins, corrals and fence the place.”

At this time, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad was all narrow gauge and Montrose was on the main line between Denver and Salt Lake City. The spur to Ouray had just been started.

Selig spoke of the need for water, saying, “Neighborhood ditches would be built with joint efforts on the part of several ranchmen. Overnight the headgate would vanish—someone else was getting the water below. Priorities were unknown. A ditch might be No. 1 in the day time but at night ...a maverick ditch running wild.”

Domestic water was hauled in barrels from the flour mill site, run by McCall & Clark. They diverted water from the Uncompahgre River and sold or leased it to the ranchers. Selig stated, “It was a mighty dry country for water before the Cimarron and Gunnison Rivers were utilized for water as the Uncompahgre River was often nearly dry before the first of June.”

Cattle camps in the Coal Creek area and on California Mesa dug wells and stored water in reservoirs. The principal crops raised were alfalfa hay, wheat and oats. The main market for the crops was the cattle companies who wintered their cattle in the valley.

Gold, silver and copper mining was flourishing in the west end of Montrose County in the communities of Paradox, Naturita and Pinion (the town that started Nucla). The money was spent in Montrose. Of course, the mining of precious metals also flourished in the San Juans as well as Gunnison and Lake City, providing a market in the Montrose area for food and supplies.

Selig stated, “This was all new to a raw, eastern youngster, who had never been west farther than Cincinnati. The adobe hills, the far-away mountains, swift mountain streams, placer mining and agricultural irrigation were wonderfully fascinating and colorful. The rough and ready life of the cowboy, who occasionally came to town and shot out the kerosene lights, driving the pedestrians into the saloons…The saloons, dance halls and gambling places maintained restaurants, hired out cots or permitted one to sleep on pool tables.”

Oh, if Hugo could come back and walk our streets today!