Colorado Books

Dorothy Norvell Snyder's account of her father, Jim Norvell, and the early settlement of Routt County, Colorado is worth reprinting. I would like to find any other copies in print. It can be found in the library at Steamboat Springs.

I just had to say, i picked this up before i moved away from CO, and i am so glad i did. The pictures are absolutely beautiful, and it realy is like i managed to bring a little piece of Colorado with me to Japan. Yeah, this calendar is absolutely awesome, i definitely reccommend it for anyone who likes the real colorado, or even just has a love for beautiful landscapes and the outdoors. =)

I was delighted to read the newspaper bits, opinions, myths, lies, and speculations, as well as interviews with Doc, friends and foes. Fun and fascinating transport back to the time and place.

Fielder's Calendars have the most beautiful scenic photos I've seen in a week by week engagemant calendar.

Since I studied in Denver almost 20 years ago, I bought John Filder's Colorado-Calendar, and the 2007-edition is as beautiful as the ones before. None of these magnificent pictures gets boring, and by the end of the month I always hesitate to turn the page. Fielder has a eye for grand sceneries as well as for fragile details. However, its more than a calender: I always appreciate the concern Fielder expresses for environmental and political issues on the last page. Living in Germany, I show this calendar to friends who think that noone in the US cares for the protection of the wilderness. Tha started many interesting conversations about this an related topics as well.

This historical work is an excellent compilation of the life and times of residents and settlers of Kiowa County, located on the plains of southeastern Colorado, ranging from the late 1800's to 1976. The book contains stories, pictures and memoirs submitted by those who, themselves, their parents or their grandparents, settled and lived in Eads and the surrounding towns within Kiowa County, earning their livelihood as farmers, ranchers, merchants, educators or whatever honest endeavors one could imagine in order to scratch a living from the harsh eastern prairies of this Colorado county.
Their stories reminisce of the good times and bad, the survivals and the tragedies brought on by the blizzards and dust storms that were common events in their times. Sudden blinding blizzards such as the 1931 school bus tragedy that resulted in the death of the bus driver and five children when the driver lost his way, took a wrong turn and became stranded in a snow drift with no heat. Dust storms that blackened the skies, destroyed crops and choked livestock.
Having grown up in Kiowa County, I can relate to the authenticity of their stories and memories. I compliment the authors and the Kiowa County Bicentennial Committee for this fine piece of work.

Glad that Kip Carey kept up the tradition of this informative book! I have had a number of older editions by (Jim Kelly)and now glad to get the new updated version.

In the historical profession the term "Presentism" denotes writing a history book or article using the values of the present to judge the events of the past. For instance, apologists for the Confederacy--called neo-Confederates--have attempted to rewrite Civil War history. They attempt to prove--from their modern perspective--that slavery was wrong and had nothing to do with the outbreak of the Civil War because the "noble" leaders of the Confederacy could not have fought for so evil a cause. Much better to claim that they fought for states rights. Similar attitudes damn Presidents Washington and Jefferson for holding slaves despite the fact that abolition was an idea that had barely appeared in the American consciousness of their time. Similarly, other "presentists" damn the whites for taking land from the Indians at a time when taking land from aboriginal inhabitants any where in the world was then the norm. One wonders what sins our generation will be condemned for two or three centuries in the future because we did not have the wisdom to see that far ahead.

In this vein, R.C. Gordon-McCutchan, as editor of "Kit Carson: Indian Fighter or Indian Killer" has collected essays from modern scholars who have done their best to place Carson in his correct time and place. In short these authors have tried to let Carson live by the standards of the mid-19th Century rather than those of the 20th (the book was published in 1996).

Carson lived in a time and place where, since 1607, the Navajo raided first the Spanish, then Mexicans and finally the Americans. During this long period the Navajo also raided the resident Hopi, Pueblo, and Zuni, whose urban-agricultureal life produced a wealth worth stealing. There is some irony in the fact that both the archaeological and historical evidence clearly shows the Navajo were themselves invaders of the area.

The Americans were simply another group to raid as were any other non Navajos of the area. Kit Carson, as a man of the 19th Century, was in reality just carrying on an established pattern, and he did it, according to the research in this book, in a remarkably--for the time-- humane manner. The Navajo rendidtions of his cruelty are mainly, according to this book, legends that were spawned in the 1970 through the 1990s. They were not part of the Navajo opinion of the 1860s,

Timothy R. Roberts Ph.D (Univesity of Missouri 1976)

It may appear odd that there has been no synthetc history of Hispanics in Colorado, a state with a large Spanish-surnamed population and a Spanish name. Part of the reason for this is that there are actually two Hispanic Colorados. One is in the southern part of the state, a place ecologically and culturally more a part of northern New Mexico than the mountain West. When the Colorado Territory was formed in 1859, surveyors simply drew a rectangle around Denver forming the future state from Kansas, Utah and New Mexico territories. As a consequence those New Mexicans, whose roots date back to eighteenth-century Spanish days and who had been settling the San Luis Valley since the early 1850s, found themselves part of Colorado. Then, as irrigation facilitated the rise of the sugar beet industry around Fort Collins and the South Platte Valley, more and more Mexicans migrated from the interior of Mexico to find jobs there. Beginning as a trickle around the turn of the century, thousands came to Colorado during World War I and the 1920s. While the New Mexican Coloradans who were displaced from ththeir lands often mingled with these recent arrivals in the agricultural fields, and mines and factories of Trinidad, Walsenburg and Pueblo, they understood themselve to be different from the new arrivals from Mexico. Indeed, the "Spanish Americans," as they increasingly called themselves, experienced little prejudice in Colorado until the larger numbers of Indo-Hispano Mexicans began to threaten the lily-white future of places like Denver and Fort Collins. By the 1920s, often barred from restaurants and hotels, the Spanish Americans, quite like German Jews disliking the more rustic Russian Jews and "lace Irish" recoiling at "shanty Irish," increasingly distanced themselves from their southern brethren whom they often blamed for bringing segregation and discrimination. (...)These issues of ongoing mestizaje, or mixing, of cultural dynamism, and the diversity of experiences, spiritualities and political perspectives should be central to future chronicles of Colorado Hispanics. While it may be that the Boulder/Aspen/Broncos lifestyles are associated with the glamour of our state, it is actually the hidden histories of Hispanics, workers, cow punchers, farm wives, community activists and all the rest of those concealed in history that give Colorado its special, and most meaningful past. -Doug Monroy, Professor of History and Director of the Hulbert Center for Southwestern Studies

This survey of hispanic folk music of the Rio Grande may be regionally specific, but it will prove essential to any student of Hispanic music and provides a wide-ranging history which examines the religious music from 16th-century Spain, Mexican folk tunes, and melodies which are native to the Rio Grande region. Songs appear in Spanish and English and the book includes excellent black and white photos and historical notes.