Vail Trail/Vail Daily Archive
40 years ago
17 August 1984
The Army Corps of Engineers issued a 404 permit allowing the cities of Colorado Springs and Aurora to divert approximately 26,000 acre-feet of water from Eagle County to those cities.
Opponents and supporters alike saw the Corps’ decision as a victory of sorts, Vail Trail reported.
“The Holy Cross Wilderness Defense Fund, the diversion’s main opponent, summed up its ‘victory’ with the words of its vice chairman, Dr. Jack Holmes: ‘We obviously believe the permit should have been denied. But we believe we won on the wetlands issue. The permit is replete with conditions that address our concerns about the risks to the wetlands. Without our persistent and irrefutable arguments, those conditions would not have been included at all.'”
50 years ago
9 August 1974
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Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as the 38th President of the United States following the resignation of Richard Nixon. After taking the oath of office, Ford declared: “I assume the Presidency under extraordinary circumstances… This is a moment in history that stirs us and hurts our hearts.”
Ford had been a homeowner and part-time resident of Vail since 1970. Before being sworn in as president, he had accepted an invitation to be the keynote speaker at the 4th annual Vail Symposium in August 1974. After taking office as president, however, it became “unlikely that he would be able to make the appointment,” the Trail reported. “He has promised to send a capable replacement.”
70 years ago
12 August 1954
Uranium grading 0.30% was found near McCoy in the Colorado River District of northern Eagle County, the Eagle Valley Enterprise reported. The find was on a tract of land a mile west of Bill Orgish’s ranch, Orgish said, noting that the uranium was found “in fossils and ore in the Morrison Formation on the Anticlimate.”
According to Enterprise, 68 mining concessions along the Colorado River region were submitted to the district administration within two days last week.
80 years ago
18 August 1944
First Lieutenant Richard L. Erickson, son of Mr. and Mrs. Herman Erickson of Gypsum, has surpassed 50 combat missions and participated in attacks on targets in Germany, Italy, France, Austria and the Balkans, the Eagle Valley Enterprise reported.
The Enterprise quoted Erickson as saying that most of the missions were difficult.
“I don’t know which was the worst,” Erickson said. “Of course, Ploesti in Romania and Wiener-Neustadt in Austria will always be the targets to worry about. The ground gunners in those places can really make the sky look black. At one point in Wiener-Neustadt, the Germans sent up every plane they could find in the area to stop us. The sky looked like a panorama of the Fourth of July with all the tracers and rockets the enemy fighters were firing at us.”
90 years ago
17 August 1934
Two highway projects on Highway 40 in Eagle County have been officially completed, opening “eight miles of first-class, safe highway,” the Eagle Valley Enterprise reported.
In Gypsum, a dangerous railroad crossing was eliminated by a small piece of new highway and a new railroad underpass, the Enterprise reported, and in Eagle, “the old concrete bridge east of town received the approval of inspectors, and motorists were delighted Thursday morning that they could now be diverted over that road.”
“This will eliminate two of the county’s worst railroad crossings, the death trap at the old concrete bridge and nearly seven miles of the county’s roughest and narrowest highway,” the Enterprise reported. “The new road is a feast for the eyes and a delight to all who for years were compelled to use the old road when there was a well-paved road at both ends… Only eight miles of dirt road now remain on Highway 40 South from Tennessee Pass to the Utah state line.”
120 years ago
18 August 1904
J. Ben Lewis, one of Red Cliff’s early miners who played a key role in organizing Eagle County, has died in Denver, the Eagle County Blade reported.
“Mr. Lewis was one of the pioneers of the Black Hills at Leadville, and later lived at Red Cliff, where he engaged in mining, and from which district he was elected a member of the legislature of the Fifth State,” the Blade reported. “He was born in Missouri, and was a descendant of General Lewis, member of the Lewis and Clarke expedition. He was always engaged in mining until the strains resulting from a trip to the Klondike in 1897 undermined his health.”
