b'Jews continued from page 21"It was hard to tell in the army, when walking where you are. But he got to New Mexico, and fought Confederates at Val Verde and Pigeon\'s Ranch (Glorietta Pass), the only major Civil War engagements on Rocky Mountain soil, was shunted off under Kit Carson\'s command and dragged his shivering bones through the bleak winter campaign that broke the Navajos. Finally, in 1864 he was discharged, drifted up to Santa Fe, and got a job in a store. He was a good trader - so good that a rival firm hired him away and set him up in a business of his own. At least the store carried his name, but the backers held the reins, and at the ripe old age of twenty-four Otto Mears was through heeding other men\'s beck and call. Within a year he was drifting again, this time into Colorado, where his shrewd eyes fell on Fort Garland, which the government had built some years earlier as a damper on the Ute Indians of the San Luis Valley" (Ibid). There Mears built a gristmill out of lava rocks and a saw mill held together by strips of leather and wooden pegs to satisfy the Army\'s need for lumber and grain. He was quite successful at first, but as the Indian threat to the valley subsided, the Army had no further use for the huge quantities of grain Mears had been supplying them. No matter, Mears chose to move on north, to California Gulch, the early name for Leadville, but as he moved into the passes he discovered, to his chagrin, that no viable roads existed!For someone who was orphaned by four, abandoned by eleven, who learned how to fend for himself, learned trades, who went gold mining in the rough and tumble California mining camps, and then fought as a soldier at Glorietta Pass against the Confederates and subsequently against the Navajos, this was nothing. Taking an ax, a pick, and a shovel, Mears began to hack his way through the rock and granite of the mountains to make a road for himself when a fortuitous chance encounter with an ex-governor of the Colorado Territory, an ex-soldier who had discoveredDouble H Hat Company the region while serving as an aide to John C. Fremont on his earliest Westernspecializes in custom handmade expedition changed everything for him. The ex-governor was William Gilpin, andfelted fur hats in various styles it was to Gilpin that the cocksure Mears poured out his frustrations, but perhapsincluding western, gentlemen most importantly, his visions for road building through the mountains. and ladies hats. The shop is "To this dignitary the swearing young freighter delivered what was perhapslocated in under the longhorn Colorado\'s first diatribe on the subject of good highways. Gilpin grinned it We will custom build a hat toin Wickenburg. Jimmy the hat off, inspected Mears\'s work, and suggested that the builder charter the finishedfit your unique style. Variousman (our Master Hatter) also product as a toll road. And while you are at it," Gilpin went on, "why not make styles include hats for theoffers hat cleaning, blocking and the grade sufficiently gradual for a railway?" Otto blinked at that, for there wasn\'t Red Hat Society, western,total renovation. a locomotive within a thousand miles. Nonetheless, Gilpin\'s words hung in hisgentlemens and ladies mind. After he had wrestled his wagons over the pass and had sold his wheat, hats. We offer a variety of he went on to Denver and paid the legislature five dollars for a toll-road charter. embellishments, including It was the first sprout in the Rockies\' most fabulous transportation systemacustom inlays, for a unique hat system that in due course would branch out to include some of the zaniest custom designed for you.railroads ever built" (Ibid., pp. 94-95).Not only would the young determined builder get his roads built, but he soon became a partner with Gilpin, cultivated other prominents in the growing and expanding territory and he himself would soon become influential enough to determine where the county seat would be placed - right smack dab in the middle of his own town - Saguache! - and he was elected the county\'s first treasurer. But Otto Mears never was content enough to rest upon his laurels, and for the next decade or so he continued to build his toll roads throughout Southern Colorado, eventually building over 450 miles of them!There is a photo, taken sometime during the 1870s of one of his toll roads being built across the Rockies. Looking at it, one can see the vast, immense rock obstacles the men who carved the westernmininghistory.comroads out of the mountain passes faced, but like Mears, they didn\'t flinch, they carried on and went on to build those roads across the Rockies for the wagons and the trains. Doing so helped to conquer the West. In fact, as one glimpses closely at the photo, it clearly becomes a symbol of the taming of the Wild West a West that Otto Mears in his own small way helped to tame. Pick up our November issue for Part 5.ArizonaRealCountry.com October 2023 23'