click any photo for enlargement

  Paul Huntley, February 1974

Paul Huntley wrote the book "Black Mountain Cowboys".  Mr. Huntley was for sure a cowboy.  He was so bow-legged from a lifetime of riding horses that in 1974 he could hardly walk.  As you can see in the photo, he's leaning on my dad's 1966 Chevy pickup for support.  As I recall, Mr. Huntley had both knees or hips replaced.  Mr. Huntley lived in Coaldale for a long time, but in this photo he is for sure in Cotopaxi.  He's Cotopaxi people.

That's Mr. Huntley's car in the background. He often stopped by to chat with Dad.

One time my dad drove that 2-wheel drive pick-up truck made it over Hayden Pass to Villa Grove.

Mom and I got out and walked through the slide rock on the other side.  We came back through Salida!

Roy Nolls (Knols?) and Leon Moore.

Roy lived across the RR tracks and down Plum street in Glen Mullin's house.   This house Glen owns...#0115.   I lived in this house for about 10 years or so later on  after Roy left Cotopaxi.  Jim Mestas lived there for a little bit before I did.  I remember when Jim moved in he threw away a truckload of papers related to mines that Roy had left. 

I wish I had latched on to more...

Glen lives (Dec 2020, heard he was in a nursing home, he heard he was back in Cotopaxi) on the corner of Plum and CR12, in a same house he always has lived in, except that Glen was born in the next house to the east (down Plum Street), where Edna Church currently (2009) lives.  This house (Edna's) was originally built as a boarding house.  I think E.S.Hart built it.

In Cotopaxi lore you have to mentally separate the RR boarding house, this above mentioned boarding house, Hart's hotel, Dyers' Hotel and then later Augustine built a motel on the other side of the river.

Anyway, every so often, Roy would get dressed up in a suit and tie and walk over to Dad's (Leon Moore) Texaco Station.  He always had a leather briefcase.  There he would wait for the Continental Trailways bus to get a ride to Denver.   There he would somehow go to a "meeting" and I think get some financial backing for his "endeavors" at the Cotopaxi Mine.  I'm not certain which mine, the first one up the gulch or the next - the Cotopaxi mine.  At any rate, he would get a grubstake every now and then.  Roy was all business when it came to going to those meetings.  I have a feeling someone was being kind to Roy, but I don't know who.  Perhaps Mr Brock.  Mr. Brock had a fake arm  with a weirdly colored - yellowish - hand.....and it was sure hard for a young boy not to stare at it.  I think Mr. Brock had controlling interest in the Cotopaxi mine.

This photo had "Mr. Rumple and his dog" written on the back.

I never knew Mr. Rumple, but here he is.

That's life in Cotopaxi.

A.K.A. Six Gun Vic

See the string in his hand?  It's a self portrait!  What a hat!

I think this was probably taken at the cabin he built on his homestead north of Cotopaxi.

I was there with him once or twice.

He left this property to the Colorado Boys Ranch.

ok, here's a Vic Miller story or two

Vic had a white 1964 (about) Jeep with a metal cab. In the summer he took the doors off.  One day he pulled up to the gas pumps at the station and as I walked by I noticed he had a pistol stuck in a holster that was attached to the steering column.  I said something about it, "nice gun" or the like, and Vic's eyes got real big, he quickly grabbed the gun and shoved it under the seat.  "I'm not supposed to have guns since I got out of the hospital" he says.  He had been up north at his ranch and apparently forgot to hide his pistol when he came down to Cotopaxi.

Vic shot his wife and her new husband during a divorce settlement proceeding.   Killed her but not the husband, so his saying was that his momma always told him "never gut shoot a coyote!" He wrote about killing his wife in a little book, "A last Homesteader".

When I was in 7th or 8th grade some huckster got our teacher to have us kids sell magazines. The clash of Capitalism and public schools. Or something evil.  Anyway, I went over to Vic's place.  None of the other kids went over there, because he had just recently got out of the State Hospital after killing his wife. .

I probably wasn't the sharpest kid around, but I've already mentioned public schools.

Vic was cooking something for supper.  That reminds me, one time I went over to Ray Zabrisky's  place...another old bachelor...but he was burning something for supper!  And not just a little....the smoke was rolling out of the house.  Now Zabrisky chewed.  And not just a little.  He chewed Beachnut by the bag full.  It was an amazing sight to a young boy to see a wad of chew on the road in town and know that the tennis ball sized mass had somehow been in Zabrisky's mouth, all at once. 

Unlike Vic, Ray's truck had doors, but he never shut the driver's side door.  He'd be driving down the road and it would just kind of swing open...then a huge black Niagara falls mass of tobacco juice would fly out the opening and let me tell you, you didn't want to be anywhere in the vicinity when it landed.  Needless to say, the entire side of his pickup was permanently covered with a continuously growing mass of the stuff.  Anyway I always liked Ray.  He offered me some of his charred whatever it was for supper, but I wisely passed.  Hunters used to donate hides to us school kids.  They left them in barrels over by the store.  I'd go pick them up after we closed the garage and take them over to Ray's and rub salt on them and roll them up.  Dad let me drive the our '48 Willys over there...I wasn't old enough, so that made rubbing a dead animal skin ok.

Anyway, back to Vic Miller.  He didn't buy any magazine subscriptions but he sure talked my ear off.  He showed me a bunch of leather crafts he had made while he was in the "hospital".  He had a bunch of Indian artifacts too.  We visited a long time.

  I don't suppose he had many friends.

That's bound to happen when you get a reputation for killing folks.

Duke and Nova Boller

They get their own page...

click any photo for enlargement

more to come...

Back to Cotopaxi Colorado History Page

♪  Back to Cotopaxi-Colorado Home  ♪