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St. Elmo
was originally settled in 1878 and was made official in 1880 when gold
and silver began to bring many people to the area. Though it was
first called Forest City, the small town's name was changed when the
post office objected because there were too many towns with the same
name. The new name was derived by Griffith Evans, one of
the founders, who was reading a romantic nineteenth-century novel by
the same name.
The town was laid out in six feet of snow
and provided for the miners working in the nearby mines. Beginning with a high moral character, the settlement went the way of
other booming mining towns, reaching a population of more than 2000
and taking on all the trappings of a single male population with
saloons, dance halls, and bawdy houses. When the
Alpine Tunnel
was under construction, St. Elmo
became the scene of raunchy Saturday night sprees.
In 1881 it became a station on the Denver,
South Park and Pacific Railroad line where the tracks continued
through Romley, Hancock and through the historic
Alpine Tunnel. The
settlement was considered a main source of supplies arriving by train
for the area settlers and eventually included several merchandise
stores, three hotels, five restaurants, two sawmills and a weekly
newspaper called the Mountaineer. The miners worked at several mines
throughout the area that were rich in silver, gold, copper and iron. The principal mines were the Murphy, the Theresse C., the Molly and
the Pioneer. The Murphy Mine, situated high upon the mountain,
2000 feet above the railroad, shipped as much as 50-75 tons of ore per
day to the smelters at Alpine. Altogether, there were over 150
patented mine claims in the immediate area.
In 1881 Anton Stark, a cattleman
brought a herd to the railroad and was so taken with the town that he
and his family quickly took up residence. Anton became a section
boss for one of the local mines and his wife, Anna, ran a general
store and the Home Comfort Hotel, which later became home to the post
office and telegraph office. Anton and Anna raised three
children - Tony, Roy and Annabelle, who worked in the hotel and the
store. The hotel was said to have been the cleanest in town, the meals
the best, and the supplies at the store more plentiful than the other
establishments.
The
Stark family were part of St. Elmo's elite, a high-class group that
attended church regularly. Anna was said to have been a humorless
woman who severely controlled the children, believing that they were
better than the other townsfolk - miners, railroad men, prostitutes and
hard women. The children were rarely allowed to leave home,
forbidden to attend local dances or social activities and had only each
other for company. In 1890 a fire destroyed the business section and the
town was never entirely rebuilt. |
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