Fort Peabody

Boston buys a mine and rewrites the handbook

The story of Fort Peabody starts in late 1899, when the New England Exploration Company of Boston took over Telluride's Smuggler-Union Mining Company. The new manager, Arthur L. Collins, made workers board at the mine, buy company supplies, and work under a contract system that paid by the fathom (an old mining unit for ground broken) instead of by the day. That is a job where the company also owns your apartment and the vending machines, and writes the rules for both.

In July 1901, Western Federation of Miners Local 63, led by Vincent St. John, went on strike. Accounts of the July 3 fight disagree, from "a brief riot" to a gun battle that left two men dead. The strike ended July 6 with a deal for "a full day's wage for a full day's work." On November 19, 1902, Collins was assassinated, and Bulkeley Wells took over the Smuggler-Union.

Five hundred troops for a peaceful town

On September 1, 1903, mill workers walked out for an 8-hour day, down from 12. Wells refused to negotiate. On November 24, Governor James H. Peabody sent in 500 Colorado National Guard troops, even though a state committee had reported that Telluride was peaceful. Let that sit for a second. The state checked, found nothing on fire, and sent the soldiers anyway.

Then came the arrests. Strikers were picked up for "vagrancy," which is a lot like getting written up for not being at your desk after management took your desk away.

Union man Henry Maki was chained to a telegraph pole in Telluride. His photo became a Western Federation of Miners poster that asked, "Is Colorado in America?"

A troop the boss paid for himself

Martial law came on January 3, 1904, even with reports of no disturbances. On January 11 a local unit, Troop A, was mustered in with Wells as its captain. The troop was his Smuggler employees, his friends and some cowboys. They were unpaid, they brought their own horses and guns, and Wells paid for their ammunition and food. Picture your manager forming a security team out of the sales floor and expensing the bullets. Armed members of the Citizens' Alliance rounded up 78 union men and sympathizers who had come back, and expelled them again.

On February 21, Wells took sole command of the district, and his sentries went up to the ridge above Imogene Pass. Their stone-walled guardhouse was 6 by 8 feet, with rifles, bayonets and a telephone line down to town. Two or three men slept inside a space smaller than most office supply closets. Two Troop A members, J. C. Reschke and J. E. Verna, carved their names on the rear roof beam inside, and the names are still there.

The merchant the governor would not see

Harry Floaten was a Telluride merchant who was deported from the county for his union sympathies. He and others spent three days trying to meet Governor Peabody about how an anti-union mob had treated them. Peabody refused to see them. In 1904 Floaten wrote a parody of "America":

Colorado, it is of thee, / Dark land of tyranny, / Of thee I sing; / Land wherein labor's bled, / Land from which law has fled, / Bow down thy mournful head, / Capital is king.Harry Floaten, 1904, as quoted by Peter Carlson

Meanwhile Wells blamed the union for the "murder" of a missing mine guard, William J. Barney, and put a skull on display in a shop window. Barney was not dead. That is faking the numbers for the quarterly report, except the numbers are a human skull.

Three governors in one day

Martial law ended June 15, 1904. Troop A was mustered out in April 1905 at Wells's own request, because he could not get the "cow punchers" to show up for drills. The private army went the way of every volunteer committee: nobody came to the meeting. Company employees kept guarding the pass until about 1908.

Peabody's exit was worse. On March 17, 1905, in a fight over a disputed election, he was put back in office and then resigned the same day. Colorado had three governors in one day: Alva Adams, Peabody and Jesse McDonald. His final term was shorter than most people's first day of onboarding.

Visiting Fort Peabody today

The Forest Service got the site from the Idarado Mining Company in 2002. Historian MaryJoy Martin and members of the Ouray County Historical Society stabilized it in August 2004, and it went on the National Register of Historic Places on March 30, 2005. On that listing, the Colorado Historical Society said this:

The site illustrates how quickly and often illegally mine owner management gained control of local government and the Colorado National Guard to run roughshod over the legal, political, and economic rights of union members.Colorado Historical Society, on the 2005 National Register listing

Fort Peabody sits on the ridge just southeast of the Imogene Pass summit (13,114 feet). From the pass it is a 250-foot climb on a foot trail, and no vehicles are allowed on it. You can drive up from Ouray past the Camp Bird Mine, or from Telluride on the Tomboy Road. The guardhouse, the flagpole mount and a small stone shelter downslope are still there. Some sources call the shelter a sniper nest and others call it a machine gun nest.

Even the name is unsettled. The National Register nomination says no record shows "Fort Peabody" was ever an official name, and the miners may have hung it on the place as a joke. If they did, the men who got thrown out had the last word, and it stuck.