“If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not ...

“We cannot live with bitterness because it will first manifest itself in
our spirit, then in our emotions, finally in our bodies.”
- Tom Drout
Some Colorado Characters … (You may not have heard about)
A LONG HARD DAY ON SKIS
Merrill H. Doud had the contract to carry the mail between Mineral Point and White
Cross in the 1880’s. Mineral Point was a mining town located near the top of the divide
between Silverton and Lake City, at about 12,000 feet altitude.
The skis used were somewhere between eight and ten feet in length, and each probably
weighed about eight pounds. The skier used a single pole to control the slats. Doud left Mineral
Point before 8:00 a.m. and went to White Cross, returning that afternoon after climbing at least
a thousand feet.
When he arrived back, the postman learned that a miner had just blown a portion of his
hand off picking a “missed hole.” A missed hole was one in which dynamite was lodged but had
not gone off in the planned explosion. Medical attention was needed as soon as possible, so Doud
skied down to Silverton, about 15 miles away, to get a doctor. He and the medical man returned,
skiing up about a three thousand foot rise in altitude by around six the next morning.
In all the intrepid mailman had skied for twenty two hours and logged fifty two
miles! With today’s light skis on level ground, that would still be quite a challenge for both speed
and endurance.
A WORLD FAMOUS AERIALIST
One of the world’s most renowned aerial performers made his headquarters in Denver
during the height of his career. The man just could not resist walking both tight and loose
ropes across deep canyons or making parachute jumps from balloons before the era of
aviation. He performed his stunts throughout the U.S., Java, Mexico, Borneo, and Europe.
Willie Ivy was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1866 and moved to Denver as a
youngster. For awhile, he performed with a troupe known as the Baldwin Brothers and adopted
the name by which he became famous: Ivy Baldwin.