University of Calif ornia . Berkeley

University of California Bancroft Library/Berkeley

BESSIE LAUNDER RICHARDS
(MRS. EDWIN R. RICHARDS)
MINING TOWN MEMORIES—COLORADO AND MEXICO

An Interview Conducted by
Mel Erskine

Berkel ey
1967

All uses of this manuscript are covered by an
agreement between the Regents of the University
of California and Bessie Launder Richards, dated
December 4, 1967. The manuscript Is thereby made
available for research purposes. All literary
rights in the manuscript, including the right to
publish, are reserved to the Bancroft Library of
the University of California at Berkeley. No
part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication
without the written permission of the Director of
The Bancroft Library of the University of
California at Berkeley.

I NTRODUCT I ON

Mrs. Richards lives by herself in a small apartment in
Berkeley, California. I interviewed her in her apartment in the
fall of 1967. There were three two-hour recording sessions over
a three-week period. We, Mrs. Richards and I, were both somewhat
nervous about the experience in the beginning, since neither had
participated in an interview previously. Mrs. Richards was, through
out the interviews, intimidated by the tape recorder, and talked In
a more relaxed way both before the recorder was turned on and after
it was turned off.

Mrs. Richards is a very interesting talker who has observed
acutely throughout a busy, active life. She was raised in a small
Colorado mining town during its boom and subsequent bust in the
Silver Panic of the I890's. As the daughter of a widowed hotel
keeper she saw, perhaps, more different aspects of life in the min
ing towns than other people.

She married, in 1904, a mining engineer and raised her family
in the mining towns of the western United States and Mexico. The
Richards arrived in Mexico before the revolution and returned at
times during the "continuing revolution." Mrs. Richards' comments
on this period are a good description of a way of life no longer
possible.

My only qualifications as an interviewer of Mrs. Richards
were a knowledge of mining and of the St. Elmo-Tin Cup area where
Mrs. Richards was raised. But for the willingness of Mrs. Richards,

and her many interesting stories, this would have been a poor
interview indeed, but Mrs. Richards' charm and eye for interesting
detail make it a delight to read.

Mrs. Richards went over the transcript of her tape re
cordings with care and added considerable material in writing
which enhances the origial transcript. She also provided photo
graphs to illustrate the manuscript.

The Regional Oral History Office was established to tape-
record autobiographical interviews with persons who could give
eyewitness accounts of the development of the West. The Office,
headed by Mrs. Willa Baum, is under the administrative supervision
of the director of the Bancroft Library.

Mel Erskine
I nterv fewer

25 March 1968

Regional Oral History Office
Room 486 The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California

Mrs. E. R. Richards
Chronology

Father's name: Edward Bell Launder
Mother's name: Emma Laura Crymble

I was born in Zanesville, Ohio, on October 12, 1885.

My father died when I was three years old, and my mother
moved to St. Elmo, Chaffee County, Colorado in 1892, bringing my
sister, brother and myself with her, I being the youngest. That
was my home until I married. However I made two visits back to Ohio
and one to Boston, where a sister of my father had lived for many
years. In one visit to Ohio and the one to Boston I attended school
whi le there.

I was married In August, 1904, to Edwin R. Richards who still
had his senior year to finish at the Colorado School of Mines.
After he received his degree (1905), he worked for a Government pro
ject with headquarters in Montrose, Colorado, then for a smelter in
Grand Junction, Colorado.

In 1907, we moved to a mine ten miles from Lincoln, California.
Same company sent group from there to Kennet, California for limited
time. Next move was to Guanajuato, Mexico in 1908. Due to overthrow
of Diaz and the many years of revolutions that followed we left.
This was in 1911. This was most unfortunate for us as our future
there seemed most promising and assured for a long time.

The next several years were spent in Utah and Nevada neither
of which was recorded on your tapes, I believe. All were in the
mining world.

In 1921, we decided to establish a permanent home in Berkeley

so the older chi I dren cou I d continue in High School and College.
They justified this, I think, as all five have degrees from the
University of California. After that the family was often divi'ded
but Berkeley has remained our home.

In 1923 I took the three younger children and joined Mr.
Richards in Monterrey, Mexico, where he was employed by a large
company with headquarters in Monterrey but property in many other
parts of Mexico, and his work required much traveling. However the
family stayed in Monterrey. After several years there we moved in
1927 to the vi I I age of La Noria near the smal I town of Sombrerete,
state of Zacatecas where we lived an exciting life during Mexico's
last revolution. Could not receive mail or telegrams or send either
for a long period. And we finally endured one very real bandit raid,
This I told Mr. Erskine at least in part, but not sure recorder was
on.

We came out for final time in 1929. After that we spent some
time in Nevada, always in mining camps. The last years of my hus
band's life, he worked for an engineering company in San Francisco.
He died in 1947.

I should have had someone help me with this, sorry for appear
ance. I have only limited vision and it doesn't help.

Mrs. E. R. Richards
May 5, 1967

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FAMILY BACKGROUND I

Zanesvi I le, Oh ig I

Move to Colorado 2

LIFE IN COLORADO MINING TOWNS— ST. ELMO AND

BUENA VISTA 5

Running a Hotel 5

Travel Conditions 10

The Mary -Murphy Mine 22

Anecdotes About the People of St. Elmo 25

Recreation 38

Hardships and Joys 39

Description of St. Elmo 42

Flowers in St. Elmo 43

Unusual Aspects of Life in St. Elmo 44

The Jail at Buena Vista 46

Going Away to School — Zanesvi lie and Boston 49

MARRIAGE TO EDWIN R. RICHARDS, 1904 54

MEXICO 1908-191 I, 1923-1929 60

GuanaJ uato, 1 908- 1 9 1 1 60

Train trip to Guanajuato 60

Life at the Pinguico Mine 68

New Assignment at La Luz 82

Mr. Richards Gets Pneumonia 85

A Hoi iday at Lake Chapala 87

Revolution Forces the Richards to Leave Mexico 87

Return to Guanajuato, 1957 90

Monterrey, 1925-1928 91

Sombrerete, Zacatecas, 1929 99

Trip Down 99

Home and Social Life 101

Life in La Noria During the Revolution 104

Bandits 108

PHOTOGRAPHS

View of St. Elmo, Colorado where Mrs. Richards lived Page 42
as a child and young girl.

Juan and basket. Page 68

Ore bins and little train that took ore around hill
to mill - Pinquico Mill.

View of La Luz near Richards' second home in Mexico Page 82

and where they bought much of their food,

Revolutionists (not bandits) in early days of revolt

against Profirio Diaz. Mr. Richards persuaded the

man who had the gun pointed at him to turn away and

allow him to take this picture.

Mr. and Mrs. Richards at Monterrey, Mexico, about 1924. Page 91

Mill at La Noria, Mexico referred to in story of bandits Page 104

raid.

Mr. and Mrs. Richards and daughter Carol in garden by

corner of home in La Noria, Mexico, about 1929.

FAMILY BACKGROUND

Zanesvi I le, Ohio

Richards: Before we came West we lived in this little town in Ohio
of 35,000: my mother and brother and sister and I. My
father was dead; he died when I was three.

Erskine: What's the name of the town?

Richards: Zanesvi Me. You know who Zane Grey is, I guess, and that's
his birthplace and the town was actually named for his
ancestors. It is a big center for pottery and tile also.
And in the early history of glass making in this country —
In a book my daughter had out in San Francisco once when I
was over there about glass — I was surprised to find how
prominent a place this little town was. It was surrounded by
lots of farming land also, and my father's folks lived there
and I spent a great deal of time with my grandparents — they
had built out at the edge of town. I think I was lonely for
my father, and my grandfather and an unmarried uncle who was
there gave me a great deal of attention. They had a woman
housekeeper that seemed like one of the family so it was a
pretty nice set-up for children.

Richards: To go from Ohio to Colorado was a great change, so much
so that my mother — there was a little one-room school in St.
Elmo — and my mother couldn't quite take that. She herself
had passed the teacher's credential in Ohio. They lived in
this little town of St. Clairsville that was just across the
Ohio from Wheeling, West Virginia, and it had a little
academy there. I Imagine it was just about like high school
is later. They were poor, but fortunately she was very
bright and her sisters — one or two of them — I know one taught
school and I'm not sure if the second one did. Anyway she
couldn't make a living for a family on what school teachers
were making, so she had to look into something else.

Move to Colorado

Richards: My uncle, Hugh Crymble, had been in Colorado before we came,
I remember him telling my mother quite a few of the things,
experiences, you know, of the early period there. When he
came to that town, Buena Vista, first he started a little
hardware store, and he used to take his. assets (whatever he
had gotten during the day) home with him at njght. He'd
walk in the middle of the street with an overcoat on and a
gun in each pocket.

Erskine: This is In Buena Vista?

Richards: Yes, in Buena Vista, Colorado. He was sheriff there when
we came to Colorado, and that's how my mother
come. My father had died, and also her mother, who had lived
with us quite a bit of her later years, and she wanted to come
out and visit these two brothers. Her youngest brother was
out there also. (That thing's Qtape recorder] running and
I'm afraid of it.) Well I thought perhaps you'd give me an
idea of what you wanted — this isn't what you wanted?

Erskine: Yes, It certainly Is.

Richards: Well, that is what — my mother thought she would like to

come out and see these two brothers. She and my father were
both born In Ohio.

Erskine: This is when you were age six, about?

Richards: I was in my sixth year, really getting close to the seventh,
I guess, when we came out. I think her idea at first was
to come out on a visit. She had to make a living somehow for
four people. I was the youngest of three children, but we
were born very close together. I think they perhaps talked
It over, my mother and her brothers, and there was this
little hotel In this little town of St. Elmo. It was about
twenty-four miles from Buena Vista, St. Elmo was, way up in
the Rocky Mountains. It was ten thousand feet elevation and
seven miles from the top of the continental divide. So

Richards: there was quite a change in our way of living when we got
to that little mining town.

My brother had been ill. That's really one of the
reasons my mother came. Some other folks who were coming
out had taken him ahead, and then this uncle — you speak of
Nathrop — my mother's youngest brother had a ranch out from
Nathrop in the Arkansas Valley there. They met us as we
got off the train at Nathrop when we first came from Ohio,
and there my brother was, and he had on overalls, which my
mother had never seen him in — the little boys back in Ohio
wore suits — and she didn't recognize him at first.

And he looked so well, and she thought this was going
to help his health. But it didn't, because he had a very
serious heart condition and the high altitude was very bad
for him. He was a scrappy little boy — he was small for his
age, because of the illness he had had, but he was very scrappy.
He came up to St. Elmo In a suit, when my mother was looking
over the possibilities, I guess, and some of these local kids
came along and said, "Look at the dude." One of them was a
big bully, so my brother was too small, but he saw a stick and
got that and hit him. He always went with the older boys
from then on. He proved himself just like that.

LIFE IN COLORADO MINING TOWNS— ST. ELMO AND BUENA VISTA

Running a Hotel

Erskine: About when did you arrive in Colorado?

Richards: In 1892.

Erskine: 1892. Just before the si I ver crash.

Richards: That's exactly what made the terrific difference in our
lives, because my mother Invested, as she thought, in a
place where she could make a living for us. This hotel
had a full staff— she just managed it and she had all
these — a cook, and an assistant cook, and dining room
girls, and upstairs girls and all that sort of thing.
Actually she had one French cook there who was a real French
cook in that little bit of a town. His trouble was drinking
so he'd gotten fired from some large hotels in Denver — he'd
work his assistants to death — but he'd gotten fired from one
place after another. She would send down there to some
employment place in Denver for help — that was the routine
that had been established, so of course the French cook
didn't last too long. And I remember then that my mother
paid him in gold. And he'd go to the saloon and start

Richards: drinking. There was one story that 1 recall — they say he
really just passed out and the other men scrambled and
picked up the gold that fell out of his pocket.

Erskine: Mrs. Richards, could you give here more details on the
running of the hotel?

Richards: Regarding the hotel, in the first period of our life in

St. Elmo it was a busy and prosperous town. Everyone had
work and many miners came to town from the mines and mills
where they worked, for recreation and a change. Some spent
much of their hard earned pay on drink and gambling. During
this period my mother had some food shipped in from Denver,
packed in ice, such as fresh lobsters, oysters, etc.

It was a custom after a dance to serve a supper at the
hotel. Even though I was quite young (six years old) at the
time, I do recall some of the food set out on the long table
in the kitchen ready for serving: cold cuts, ham, roast beef,
lobster and salads, so many delicious looking things, cherries
in gelatin, something special of the French cook. Too many
things for me to remember in detail. When I went through the
kitchen the French cook threatened to throw things at me. I
was afraid of him. He used to take our beloved pet dog out
and try to get him in fights to bet on.

During this first period dishes were served individually,
but after the Panic they were served family style, to save work.

Richards: Butter was in a wooden container shaped like a pail, but

without a handle and with a wooden cover. When you opened it
you turned it upside down so it rested on the cover and then
you lifted off the pail part. Each container held at least
twenty pounds of butter. We cut it in chunks for the table.

After the Silver Panic, as times got harder, my mother
had to take over much of the work, such as the cooking. As
my sister and I got older we had to help. My mother had a
hired girl when we were not home.

Regarding the prices and menus after the Panic. Meals,
except for Sunday dinner, were thirty-five cents or three
persons for a dollar. Special Sunday dinner was fifty cents.
Many people came just for Sunday dinner. People ate as much
as they wanted and serving plates were refilled as soon as
they were empty.

For breakfast: hot cooked cereal, ham or bacon and
eggs, pancakes, hashed brown potatoes, toast, butter and
coffee. If someone took five eggs off of the plate, they
were replaced.

Dinner was served in the middle of the day. Menu: soup,
roast meat, potatoes, vegetables in season, tomatoes, cucumbers,
etc., homemade bread and pie, in season strawberry shortcake.
When fresh fruit, cantaloupe, watermelon, etc., were in
season they were served. There were many pickles and sauces

Richards: like Lea and Perrlns on the table.

For supper: steaks or chops, fried potatoes, French
fried and other ways, vegetable, hot biscuits or hot rolls,
homemade, butter, jelly. For dessert, fruit and cake.

Leftovers were never saved and served at another meal .
Butter and lard were her favor ites There wasn't

any bakery in town so all bread, rolls, cakes and pies were
baked at the hotel .

When you went shopping at the grocery store you had a
little book and the grocer wrote the purchases down in the
book and you paid at the end of the month. When my mother
found "spuds" written down in the book, she went to the store
to see what she was being charged for because she had not
heard potatoes referred to as "spuds" before. Sugar was bought
in hundred pound sacks, eggs by the crate. Liver, boiling
beef, and soup bones were given free to customers by the '
butcher. Boiling beef was never served at the table.

The floors of the hotel were plain pine, no linoleum
covering. They were a source of much hard work to keep them
clean.

Cooking was all done on a coal range.

In the early days a big wooden whisky barrel was our

f

hot water tank and the water circulated in pipes through the

Richards: fire of the coal range to be heated. The water always

smelled a little of whisky. Only a few places In town had
running water at all. Later we had metal tanks.

My mother bought her coal by the carload lot in the
fall before winter set in. All lights were by kerosene
lamps. When we bought kerosene at the grocery store they
would stick a small potato over the slender spout of the
special can so the oil wouldn't spill out.

Funerals were often held from our hotel. I remember
staying alone, for a brief period, with the body of one of
the men who had been my friend, a young Irish boy who died of
pneumonia. I'd heard that a body shouldn't be left alone. I
was a very young child at the time. He and his brother had
come from their home in Ireland and were so young, one only
seventeen; everyone felt sorry for their parents so far away.

There were no doctors in town and when people got

sick, or there were emergencies, they had to take care of
themselves or go out to Buena Vista to a doctor. Pneumonia
was dangerous in the mountains. The sick men without homes
were usually brought to the hotel. Deaths by accident were
frequent. There was never any insurance.

The cemetery was in a beautiful little grove of trees.
There was an outside cemetery for those who "had died with

10

Richards: their boots on" (in fights). We used to decorate the
graves with wild flowers on Decoration Day, now called
Memorial Day. We had programs at school too. The Civil
War dead were especially honored.

Things were booming when we came there. I remember
when my mother would try to release even the room we were
sleeping in to accomodate and we'd go into a smaller room —
there were that many customers and people.

Let's see what else did we do... You know, some fairly
prominent people came through there sometimes on their way
over to Tin Cup, for the mines over there — some of these
people that somebody had sold some shares to or something.
So we did sometimes meet people of some importance. I would
love to have some of the old registers that were in that
hote I .

Travel Conditions

Erskine: You traveled to Colorado by train?

Richards: By trai n. . .There were no airplanes then. I know we used to

say it took three days and two nights or the other way around,
from Ohio to Denver. On the train from Zanesville to
Chicago the conductor got to talking to us children and

II

Richards: found out he had known our father. So our dog got the best
treatment, because he had the best scraps from the dining
car people. This was the Baltimore and Ohio.

Erskine: I just noticed in what I wrote up — the last part of it must
have been on the Denver-South Park-Pacific Railroad?

Richards: We called it the South Park. [Mr. Erskine: The name seems
to have changed several times. In later years it was the
Colorado and Southern.]

Listen, I have this book here that was published a few
years ago. Historic Alpine Tunnel, by Dow Helmers. Did you
ever work as a mining engineer?

Erskine: Yes.

Richards: Where did you work?

Erskine: I worked in various places in the uranium district and also
a I I over Canada.

Richards: Oh, you worked in Canada?

Erskine: That's where the mining boom is now.

Richards: Yes. You see that boy up there — that's my grandson and he's
been up at Fairbanks on the Arctic Circle practically, and
he's home now on his first leave (probably very close to the
end of it). And he was telling us that one of the boys there
went AWOL and came back with $40,000. And I said that
anyplace where I ever lived that would have started a gold

12

Richards: rush. He (the soldier) is in Leavenworth now, but when he
gets out he'll still have it. daughter] Shouldn't I stop
awhile and let that thing rest?

Erskine: Oh, it's perfectly happy. It just wanders on.

About how many people were in St. Elmo when you first
came?

Richards: Well, that's what I try to remember because that's as I told
you, I'm not good at statistics. Oh, I want to say some more
about the Silver Panic. It came up in the campaign between
McKinley and Bryan. Bryan made a strong issue of the govern
ment having devaluated the price of silver and naturally was
supported by a I I the people whose living depended on the
production of silver. This Included my mother, even though
she was a Republican and McKinley had been a governor of Ohio.

My mother was very interested that Colorado had women's
suffrage because In Ohio she hadn't been able to vote.

Just after that there came a blow to the price of silver
(and it was a silver camp, of course) and, do you know, Mr.
Erskine, that people left there then. Of course they'd
just leave like rats leaving a ship or something, and many of
them never sent back what they owed to my mother. And that
seems hard to believe because she did need it. That made a
very terrific change in her life, more than we children, I

Richards: suppose. But that first year she boarded us in Buena

Vista, which was the county seat of Chaffee County, and
quite a little town — it was a city compared to St. Elmo.
[Laughter] 1 spent much time down there in later years
because I had these relatives — it was a large family — and
I loved to be down there. And they always made us so
we I come .

Anyway, as I say, this was a complete change. She
boarded us down in that town of Buena Vista. We went to
school down there. That first year we were so lonely . And
this little train must have gone out in the afternoon,
because we'd go home on Friday afternoon and then go back
(I don't know when we'd go back) for school at the beginning
of the week. And do you know that right here in Berkeley 1
met several of the old friends I went to school with that
year? One of them actually lived here in Berkeley, and
others have passed through and come to see me.

Erskine: That train ran summer and winter though?

Richards: Well, you might say sometimes in the winter, because the
snow was terrifically deep. That tunnel they put through
the Continental Divide up there — that tunnel is supposed
to have been a great feat of engineering. You know the
book I spoke of made me so emotional because it brought

14

Richards: back so many memories. I say you can almost take the
transportation, it seems to me, and get the history.
Especially a little town like that — a little narrow gauge —
I was on it several times when it "ran away." At the time
that we used to go through there, the Alpine Tunnel was
supposed to be the highest altitude tunnel of any in the
world (11,500 feet). There was a tourist tunnel in
Switzerland they said was a little higher, but this one was
the highest one that carried freight through. And they ran
on coal, of course, in those days. And over through on the
west side, there was a place (Baldwin) where they had very
excellent coal, and that's one of the reasons that the
train ran through as long as it did. Then it would pick up
the freight and ore and things that were available and
bring them to someplace else.

Erskine: You said you were on the train a couple of times when it
ran away?

Richards: Oh, that little narrow gauge. Yes indeed. It was very —
you see the snow — I had one very beautiful picture of the
snow plow that they would bring up. It was throwing the
snow down over St. Elmo. Sometimes they couldn't even clear
the roads with the snow plow. But of course these times
that I was on it, it ran away going downhill, and a man

Richards: who had been conductor and had a long record with that
company, he ran along, because they had these brakes on
top of the cars of course, and these were all mixed freight,
you know, and a little coach on the end, and that was an
accomodation coach. Half of it had seats in and half ot it
capried baggage, mail when they had the mail. The passenger
end was heated by a coal stove. This train did run away and
he got up on top and helped the two brakemen set the hand
brakes, and he was quite a hero for it. I'm sure he deserved
it. There's pictures in there (the book about the tunnel)
showing some of the track hanging on the side of the mountain
below St. Elmo. This was a steep grade, and it took real
courage to run along the top of the train when it was running
away.

Then once coming out of the Alpine Tunnel, we had a
visitor with us, the half sister of Mr. Morley, the man who
revived the place there, she was visiting; in fact she super
vised his home while he and his wife took a trip to France.
That was in Buena Vista. They had help, but she looked after
the children. Then she came and visited my sister and her
husband. Her brother was my brother-in-law. We took her on
a trip through the tunnel — that was quite something to do, and
when we got out on this side of the tunnel (we were on the

16

Richards: east side, I mean our side of the Continental Divide) it
ran away and it broke off a lot of the pieces of the rail,
and she took one of those clear back to Illinois with her
as a souvenir. That's twice I remember. I think I was
more frightened on the one down between St. Elmo and Buena
V i sta .

Erskine: Just the main engine lost its brakes so they had to use hand
brakes.

Richards: Inside of the tunnel, when the train would start to run away,
the engineer would blow a signal for help from the brakemen,
but there wasn't room to stand on top" so they had to wait
until they were out of the tunnel.

They always used hand brakes, it was so steep. I don't
think they ever went downhill without them partly set anyway.
And of course when it got bad they had to run along and jump
from car to car and set those hand brakes. There were regular
men called brakemen who did this. It was no business for a
child. The tunnel when built was lined with redwoods, from
this state. Quite a history of it there.

I'll tell you also, there's another little camp that
was over the other side of the Continental Divide — Tin Cup.
I'd love to get hold of the book that was written about that —
I believe that it was a limited edition, but I haven't been

17

Richards: able to get It. I believe some doctor wrote it.

Ersklne: I've seen that.

Richards: Have you seen that book?

Ersklne: Yes.

Richards: Well, a good many passengers had to cross the Continental

Divide there, and they'd stay overnight in St. Elmo and take
the stage on over in the morning. I was older and remember —
I think we had quite a few people on their way over to Tin
Cup.

Erskine: They didn't go through the tunnel and then go north?

Richards: Oh no, that would have been far Out of their way. It was only
fourteen miles to Tin Cup from where St. Elmo was. It was
seven miles straight up hill and then, just about even, seven
miles down. It took a long time.

I had one memorable trip, well, two, over that Continental
Divide. Oh, about that tunnel and all. We kids (well, this
is when we were older), I think there were about six of us —
three girls and three boys, we got the train people to hook
up the hand car on to the back of the train in St. Elmo and
take us up to the entrance to the tunnel and then leave us
off there, and then we would coast back down around all those
curves. No charge for this, of course.

Erskine: Oh my.

Richards: Yes, that was real exciting. And all we had for a brake

18

Richards: (the hand car was the kind that could only be pulled or

pushed and had no brake of its own) was a great big heavy
piece of wood — I guess this was the property belonging to
the railroad — a big thick thing like that and the boys put
It against the wheel .

After the train had gone on into the tunnel, we dis
cussed "Why don't we go through the tunnel?" The tunnel
didn't air out easily because part of it went uphill and
part of it went downhill so that there never was a draft
to clear out the smoke that hung in the middle of the tunnel.
I recall one experience where the engineer was suffocated
in there. It was all dark in the coach (well, I guess they
lit some lamps or something) but you would feel the change
in the tunnel when you stopped going uphill and started down
when you crossed over the Continental Divide. They always
had lanterns hung up there at the entrances for the use of
the railroad people. So the boss lit a lantern or two, and
we crazy kids went through.

And I don't know how long it took us to get through,
but on the other side — and that was Alpine (there was a
little town below St. Elmo about four miles also named
Alpine) — and this book shows pictures of the old building
over there. It was an old stone boarding house and a

19

Richards: turntable, I guess, .and a little station. The buildings
were all R. R. property. I think they were a little sur
prised to see six kids walking out of that tunnel. Of
course they sat us down and fed us. And then we had to
walk back through it, but by then the air cleared a little
bit. And then we got on that hand car and what a wild ride —
going around those curves, you know, on that steep grade.
They used to say that you could get off the train and
walk a ways to rest yourself and then get back on going
up-grade, coming up to St. Elmo from Buena Vista, and it
was really true — that's how steep it was.

After I was married I took another trip through that
tunnel. I had been visiting in St. Elmo with my baby
daughter. My husband, when he got out of college for the
summer, had taken a job (we were probably the first couple
that ever married while somebody was still in college) and
he was planning to stay out and work, before he went back.
But we couldn't face that long, so we figured out that two
could live as cheaply as one and we'd save the money together.
Then it happened that somebody loaned us some money so we
went back that year. This daughter was born about the time
that her father graduated. And he had worked in the summers
for a government geological survey. They were putting this

20

Richards: long tunnel through a mountain in Colorado — the Gunnison
Tunnel — to carry the Gunnison River over to the western
slope of the mountains to irrigate a lot of farmland over
there. So we were on this I ittle accommodation coach at
the end of this train (mostly going through that way they
took these big long trains of empties) and then they brought
them back loaded with coal and took it into Denver, most for
their own use, and the remainder sold on the Denver market at
the highest price — it was the finest coal — but anyway we were
in the car at the end of this long train and this one little
accommodation coach with little red plush-covered seats, so
I got on, the only woman on the train, with this new baby, and
I was nineteen years old. I got the best of care from the
crew though, but it took us hours and hours. I was going to
change at Gunnison, although my husband was over at Montrose,
so that's where I was headed for. I was going to take this
little train to Gunnison and then stay all night in Gunnison
and then take the D. and R. G. (Denver and Rio Grande) that
ran from—well, it made a junction in Sal Ida with the Main
Line through there and then it went over to, I guess, the
town named Grand Junction. Anyway, this crew, some of them
said, "We don't like to see you go to a hotel with that
little bit of a baby. Why don't you come to the private home

21

Richards: where we stay at this end of our run. Oh she'll make room
for you." It was a family, you know. And sure enough, the
train crew carried the baby and the suitcase and the things
for me, and bless their hearts, they took us in. The
daughter of the family held the baby while I ate in quiet and
and comfort. And as I say, I think those things have changed,
You don't have those things done for you any more. So
then I went on to Montrose and had a happy reunion with my
husband. He was running a survey route at that time. Maybe
I'm saying a little too much that he was running it — he was
running the instrument crew. You know, when they met in
that tunnel (it was many miles through the mountains) it
was almost perfect the connection from the two sides — it was
really quite a wonderful engineering thing too, I think. It
brought the water over there for a big area. But that was
what he was working on.

The little railroad was an important part of our lives
and we knew many of the railroad men. "Cur ley" Col I igan
was an engineer and very popular. Once my girl friend and
I had walked up to Rom ley, a few miles above St. Elmo, to
visit my sister who had married and was living there. We
planned on coming home on the train that afternoon. It
was late and the "helper" engine (which had been used to
help pull the loaded cars up the qrade from the west to the

22

Richards: top of the grade inside of the tunnel) arrived first.

Curley was on it and we asked him if he would take us back
to St. Elmo and he told us to climb on. We stood on the
f jreman?s side. Some distance below Romley there was a
stretch of the track that was covered with ice and Curley
knew it was dangerous. So he opened up the little engine
to its fullest power and called to us^ "Well kids, i f we
go, we'll all go together," and we made it. This was my
only ride on an engine but one to be remembered. After
Curley retired, he wrote many stories for a railroad magazine.

I had one ride on a caboose from Buena Vista to St.
El mo, something was out of order on the regular coach. There
just happened to be quite a number of passengers that day so
we were really crowded.

The Mary-Murphy Mine

Erskine: LLookinn at pictures] That was the Mary-Murphy Mine? The

main mine?
Richards: That was the Mary-Murphy Mine, the main one. One of these

t

clippings is a picture of the old mill. A man came in there
in later years and certainly I'm not following this

23

Richards: continuity or whatever you call it.

Erskine: Oh, that's all right, that's fine.

Richards: In later years, after the mine had all been closed down so
long, a Mr. Morley got interested in the Mary-Murphy. He
had graduated from the military academy...

Erskine: West Point?

Richards: Yes, West Point. I think it was through people that he
still knew from West Point that he raised quite a bit of
money. He got a lease on the old Mary-Murphy and reopened
it and reopened the mill and built a smelter in Buena Vista
where he treated all the ore from there, and also custom ore
from around. So he was quite an important person there.

His name was Ben Morley. Later he was killed in the
mine. When he was going back to a board meeting or something
and he wanted to take a last look-through, and I think they
were temporarily closed down, but I'm not sure about that, I
guess not. Because he took this big, very big giant of a
man, a Swedish man that he had there, a foreman I think or
a shift boss or something, through with him while he took
a last look to have a fresh view of it when he went back, and
they were overcome by the air in there, and he was a slight
man, Mr. Morley, but this other man was a large man, as I
said... When they found them, apparently he had tried to
carry Mr. Morley out, but they both died in there. Mr.

24

Richards: Morley's death was a great loss to the entire area as
wel I as to his fami ly .

Erskine: Can you remember any of the interesting people or events of
St. Elmo?

Richards: Yes. There was a young woman who was from St. Elmo, and 1
attended their wedding — a priest came from Buena Vista. 1
had never attended a Catholic wedding, and it's here that I
wish that I had the ability to write, because it was early
in the morning, frost al I over the trees and it was just
beautiful. We all walked up the hill — it was up on the
hill, and the same house where the friend had knocked the man
down for saying my mother couldn't read or write — this was
later the home of this other family. It was a large family,
and a large group of us, including the priest, all walked
up there for that wedding. Well, they afterwards lived up
there at the Mary-Murphy.

Matt was the foreman up at the mine. We kids would
hike clear up there, and they'd let us sleep on the floor and
stay al I night, and they'd feed us. Anyway, we'd watch
those miners when they came out at night, and they'd just sit
on a shovel or something, and zoom down to the boarding house.
It was terrific.

They had a mule — there was a tunnel entrance down near

25

Richards: where these folks lived — and they kept the mule there. It
was a mean one. Annie would go over there sometimes and
water that mule or feed it or something. Anyway, it was
exciting and dangerous to go over there and help her get

the mule out. Most of the miners went down throuah the
shaft up there. ,

Later on the government gave the mail to the stage
because they would usually come through from Buena Vista.
The train more often had trouble. And later on also, my
mother was the postmistress. I have her old certificate
here.

Anecdodes About the People of St. Elmo

Richards: And there's a character that will always be one of the, oh,
I don't know what, something very dear to me; the man who
had that stage line to Tin Cup. He was French-Canadian, I
guess it was. He was very dark, but he had fine features.
His name was Alec Parrent. His brother had been there with
him, it seems, but he must have died or gone before we came;

I don't recall him. But Alec took that stage over there
except sometimes when he would have to go on skis in the

26

Richards: winter all by himself. He'd leave the rest of the mail
and take the first class leather bag on his shoulders.
And he was covered with an avalanche one time, snow
slides we called them, and as he went down he just happened
to have one arm up like this—it was his right hand, it
must have been, I think he was right-handed (it was mostly
shot off with a box of caps one time) — but he had a hand
up anyway. And he began to work that arm, and got air
coming down through the hole so he kept breathing, and so he
finally dug himself out.

But as I was older — I was invited over to a home in
Tin Cup so I went over with Alec. We were able to go with
the sled all the way that time. He always took such good
care of his horses, and they were very spirited, you know.
When we got to the top of the range he said, "Let's just
let them go." He trained his horses for snow. They'd stake
out the road in the heavy snows to see where it was packed
underneath. We had the most enjoyable trip that time and
the snow was flying up over us — you could hardly see anything.
And then when we got down where there was a beautiful mountain
lake—the most beautiful, I'm sure, in the whole world— he
drove that load, that heavy sled and the two horses, and
whatever baggage he had, he drove right over that lake and

27

Richards: the local people had never sounded the depth of It. I

suppose in time the government people came in and took a
sounding of it, but it was just a little, deep mountain
lake, you know, and to drive over that, the ice being
heavy and thick enough, was quite an experience. This
A I ec . . .

My brother loved horses — my father had them in Ohio.
They have all these county fairs, and all, where they had
races, you know. Something over from Kentucky, I guess,
but they loved horses in this part of Ohio, and my father
always had horses. So my brother hung around Alec with the
horses, and they formed this wonderful friendship, and
that's how I became fond of Alec, I guess—through my brother.

Alec was a bachelor and that brings me up to something
that I've often thought of my early times there, and that is
how many men alone there were in that camp. So many. And
do you know there was never a record in all the years we
lived there of them ever bothering a little girl or big girl
or anybody, and I figure that for many of them, that we
children of the town were about the nearest they ever had to
a fami ly.

Why, when I was about fourteen my mother had a chance
to send me on a visit to Ohio with a young man named George;

28

Richards: and it never occurred to anyone there (or to my relatives
in Ohio) that there was anything strange about that. My
mother had told me not to get an upper berth so when I
couldn't get a lower, poor George sat up all night in the
chair car, and took off his coat to put over me because the
train wasn't very well heated. I was carsick too; I don't
suppose I ever had better care.

He insisted on taking me right to my grandparents in
Zanesville, though he was going to Marietta; and my grand
parents made him stay over, and he used western phrases, you
know, that del ighted them.

A stranger who had been in camp long enough to find
out when the butcher might have some cash on hand came
into his shop one night and pointed a gun at him and told
John to give him his money. This made John mad, and ne
grabbed his meat cleaver and ordered the man out of his shop.

The man took a shot at John — I don't see how he
missed him, the shop was so small—but it only grazed along
the side of his head— and then he ran. I suppose he thought
he'd killed John — John had fallen down.

The men made up a posse and took off on foot in the
dark after this armed man. They borrowed every gun in town,
including my mother's. This left those of us in town with

29

Richards: no means of defending ourselves and if the man had come back
he could have robbed us all. My mother often had cash on
hand and the store did too. It was a scary thing when it
happened, but I've often been amused since to realize how
helpless the men left us when they went off with the guns.
John's wound was washed by the storekeeper's wife and
bandaged and he didn't have any tetanus shots or see a
doctor — but he got along fine and he still had his money.

A lady whose husband worked in the mines was cri Doled with
rheumatism and in pain much of the time. She came to our
house and asked me to go across the street to a general store
and get a bottle of morphine for her, to ease the pain of
the rheumatism. The bottle was about the size of a vaseline
bottle and fehe had been getting it for years. It cost fifty
cents. I was about eight or nine years old. When I went over
the store owner told me the price was fifty-five cents now,
and I had to go back for the other nickel. This raise in
price made her very angry and she said she wouldn't buy any
more from him, but that she would send out and get a dozen
bottles at a time. She would dip into this bottle with the
handle of a spoon and take what she considered a dose.

I never remember one of the single men being cross to one
of us. They always seemed fond of us, you know. I remember
one, called Johnny Reviqno. He was really a little Italian,

30

Richards: very short, and I believe he never had taken out citizenship

in this country, and some of the men used to tease him, saying
he wasn't an American, and oh, nothing made him more furious —
he was an American. But when I went back on a trip to Ohio
and then came back, Johnny was just. . .seemed so happy to see
me and I think I was just as happy to see him. He talked
about how I had grown, and I said, "Johnnie, you didn't grow
a bit while I was away," and that amused him. All of these
men, most of them, had a history back of them.

I remember the cobbler. He was Welsh — oh, I've forgotten
what he was, but he was from Europe, and I used to stand in
the door and visit with him. Then we had a fire; there was a
fire that had burned the town pretty much down before we
came, and then before we left there was another fire. The
front of this building we lived in caught on fire, and the
cobbler came over with a big shovel (his little shop was next
door, really) and broke the windows in, and of course that
just let the fire in, you know. But afterwards (he helped put
them back in) he kept saying, "I did it for the love of that
child. I did that to save her home." [Lauahter3 Most of the
people didn't think it did very much to save it.

We had a one-room school, and the teachers were from
close towns usually, and two from St. Elmo. A few were from

31

Richards: the Middle West In the first years. They applied through
the mall. We must not have been there very long at a I I
before my mother was put on the school board. I don't
suppose that she ever got off of it. [[Laughter] And that
first time was exciting — sort of a campaign. A nephew of
hers came out (I think several of the relatives came out and
then were too lonely for Ohio and went back, but this one
of them was a very energetic young man. These nephews
were were nearer her age — an older sister's family — and not
the aae of us kids.) Anyway... the town folks wrote my
mother's name in for the school board. She said she didn't
want to be bothered with it, but. . .Anyway, there was a mi I 1
running there and the man, Mr. Hoi tschnelder, who owned the
mine and had this little mill they had just for his mine, and
his wife wanted to run for the school board. She wanted the
job; why, I don't know. She spread stories around that my
mother couldn't even read and write. All kinds of things.
So her son went up on the hi I I to ask a young couple that
lived there to vote for his mother; and they were especially
fond of my mother. (The wife had worked for my mother in the
hotel.) So the son of the mill owner said to them, "Do you
know Mrs. Launder can't even read and write?" So the husband
let him have it — they were standing on the porch, and he hit
Joe so hard he rolled down the hill.

32

Richards: The mill owner told his employees to go down and vote
for his wife in the school election; gave them time off
with pay. One of them was a German, and he never bothered
to vote in local elections because he wasn't interested,
not having a family. But this time he said, "No man can
tell me how to vote!" and he voted for my mother.

That night this cousin and a gang of young fellows
marched around town singing, "Marching Through Georgia"
and other songs, having a real good time. The wife of the
mill owner said they were drunken bums and all sorts of
things. But no one could do anything about it, they
weren't breaking any law and had not been drinking.

The men sitting on the election board counted the votes
and the mill owner's wife sat right there watching. So they
made the most of it, saying, "I have another one for Mrs.
Launder. Here's another vote for Mrs. Launder. There don't
seem to be many for the other candidate" — and enjoyed her
discomfort, for she was sitting right there. Later she
went to Buena Vista and she ran against my uncle down there
and he beat her. So it was kind of amusing, but my cousin
got the most fun out of it — those boys marching around.
CLaughterD

One time this same cousin — my mother said to him, "Who

33

Richards: is that fellow who sits over there in front of that saloon,
that bum who just sits there and leans back, just seems to
be a bum." And this cousin said, with indignation, "He's
not a bum, he's from Ohio." Later on, of course, my mother
told this man and he got a big laugh out of it. And you know,
we lived out in Nevada in several places in later years, and
too late, after we left there, I found out he, Arthur Jett,
was some county official in the county that Tonopah was in.
I would have loved to have seen him, of course, but I found
out too late.

The way we went to school — this one-room school that
was most inadequate — all grades, and as the town became
smaller there was sometimes one in one grade and maybe some
grade didn't have anybody, you know. Anyway, we had one teacher
and generally they were inadequately educated (mostly a high
school education and then pass the county examination) and
they didn't pay them very much. They were really bright
girls and some were good teachers. Now we would be con
sidered very underpri vi 1 iged children of course.

And I say we didn't know enough to know we were, I guess.
Now the people would come and go — some of them would stay
there awhile and go away. We were some of the ones who stayed.
For quite awhile this nice family lived there—they were

34

Richards: related to the main merchant In town — this lady was his
sister — half sister. Their children were very nice — one
was too young for school, but the other two little girls
were very lovely. Their father had a team of horses — he
must have made his living with them when he could get jobs.
Sometimes in the winter when the snow was the deepest, he
would come with — what did we call those — toboggans — they
were just like a boat that you would paddle on the water —
one of these f I at-bottomed boats .

Ersklne: Did you call it a stone boat?

Richards: No, well anyway, It was just a flat-bottomed thing that you
could sit in. Sometimes they used them over the Continental
Divide — I went over it once in one of those too. Over to Tin
Cup.

Erskine: Just on skids on the dry ground?

Richards: No, it didn't have any skids; it was just flat. They were for
snow, not dry ground. Flat, waxed wood, I guess. More like
a wide ski would be. He would hitch up the horses to that
and come around and collect us kids — that was a red letter
day — and take us over to school. It was only about two
blocks, but you could wade in awfully deep snow going over
there. Some days when it was particularly stormy, the teacher

would declare It a half-session day, and we wouldn't go

35

Richards: home for lunch. We'd stay until about 1:00 or I :30 or

whatever, and just make that trip of two blocks two times
instead of four. So it was pretty rugged. The long winters —
we hadn't any TV, to say nothing of radio.. What it would have
meant! And If some big event occurred, it came in over the
telegraph lines, I recall, but then I was older when McKinley
was ki I led.

Erskine: Assassinated.

Richards: Yes. A group of us had been up to Grizzly Lake fishing and
picnicking and all, and came back and heard that news. The
mail was more sure to come In by the stage than the train.
There was a stage that went from St. Elmo to Tin Cup, over the
Continental Divide. I told you about this wonderful character,
Alec Parrent. It would get way overdue for him to be in, and
the men in the town would get together and get a sled and
some horses or something, and go up to try and find Alec. And
they'd come In— my daughter says, "Oh Mother, when you were
young everybody wore beards." Well, they didn't—there were
a few beards but not many, but they did wear moustaches, and
Alec used to leave his whiskers grow some for the protection
of his face. They'd come in with frost, of course, all over.
Anyway, it was a rugged life. And it became very lonely,
because In the winter there wouldn't be as many things we could

36

Richards: do as in the summer. I tell you one thing too, what made
for more activity In the summer — so many people had claims,
and they'd come in, you know. They'd raise a little money
and they would come in and use that in the summer trying
to hit the vein, you know. And sometimes they'd get some
good showing, and then when the weather got too bad, they
would, of course, close down. So winters, some of them, were
very dreary.

I recall once when there wasn't anybody there, in the
hotel. We were alone and this big boy, an older brother of
my friend, had dropped in to spend part of an evening, just
to visit. There was a big storm on, and the snow was whirling
and drifting — I don't know if you've lived in the mountains
at all.

Erskine: Oh yes.

Richards: Where?

Erskine: Oh, I've lived in the Sierras, and I've lived way north in
the state In the Klamath Mountains.

Richards: Oh yes. When I first came through the Sierras in those snow
sheds and all, I thought I had never seen snow, because it
was so much heavier than in the Rockies. Anyway, it was
swirling and drifting outside, and of course, the men often
came from camp to camp looking for work, but that would be

37

Richards: in the summer, and there really wasn't any work. And this
man came in, and I've often wished that somebody that had
the ability to write could have been there and experienced
that, because It made me think of what Poe wrote, you know.
He couldn't have come in out of that storm — he couldn't have
lived out In that storm. And he was very nice, clean-looking —
his clothes looked nice — and he wanted a place to stay. While
I was frightened to death, truthfully, because it was a stranger,
and we were used to strangers, but it was the wrong time — he
couldn't keep living and come through that storm.

Of course my mother took him in. You know, long after
wards, a man came back, and he said, "I owe you some money."
My mother said, "Oh you don't owe me any money." She didn't
recognize him. And he recalled to her about that night. He
had gotten work someplace, and he'd come back to pay her. And
he said, "Cast your bread upon the waters."

My mother would never turn anybody away hungry, no matter
what she had, because she had been taught that way by her
mother. And this uncle, her brother, who was sheriff, whom
I told you about, when he would be away from home, he'd
always Instruct his wife, don't you ever let anybody go away
from here hungry. So they always fed anybody who came in,
and they didn't all appreciate it like that man. And I was
real ly frightened.

38

Recreation

Richards: Then for recreation, when there were enough people around,
we'd have dances. And oftentimes, right in our house,
because the dining room was quite large. They'd push the
tables back, and we had an old-fashioned — what they called
a square piano, which was oblong — and somebody would sit
down and play and there 'd be a dance going.

Then there would be public dances also. They were
planned, and for music we had a piano and a violin. A hat
was passed around to collect money for the musicians. Then
we played cards; and we had songfests around the piano — a
crowd got together and we'd sing from old-fashioned song-
books — "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms,"
"Kathleen Mavaurneen" — all those old songs. Those certainly
are a change from the ones they have now. ClaughterD

Sled riding of course was one of the pleasures in the
winter. And as you got a little older, if you had a little
boyfriend at school, he'd maybe pull your sled up the hill,
which was quite nice because there were no ski pulls. You
walked up.

39

Hardships and Joys

Richards: Well, the thing is though, about a place like that where

there are so many hardships — I think of my mother and what
a hardship it really was to her, but I think it is something
to know that we feel such a love for the old place.

In the evenings there was an active whist club which
my mother was asked to join. There were both men and women
members. Among the refreshments served was shrub, a sweet
fruit drink.

There was also a little afternoon Shakespeare club.
This was for ladies only. They met, read and discussed
Shakespeare. My mother belonged to this also.

I don't recall a church in St. Elmo. Several women
organized a Sunday school and we children always went.

The first Christmas we spent in St. Elmo I'll never
forget. They had it in a large hall. On the stage there
were two beautiful large silver spruce trees, decorated,
covered with tiny lighted candles, and a present for every
child in town. There were candy, nuts and fruit on the tree.
A program was put on by the school. My sister and I took
part in the entertainment even though we weren't going to
school there. My sister, brother and I were very generously
remembered by the single men at the hotel. I think they were
sorry for us because our father was dead.

40

Richards: There was a lot of interest in spiritualism among the
grown-ups and they had seances — we didn't use the word then
but that's what they were — and we kids were often present
so naturally we began experimenting for ourselves.

One afternoon at the Clark's we had our hands on this —
well, it had been a chair but the back was gone and they used
it to set the washtub on. There were about three of us girls
and we joined our hands on the chair so our fingertips
touched.

We got George Washington's spirit. I guess we decided
to go pretty high and he answered us with raps and then the
stool started jumping around and we stood up and kept our
fingertips on it but it went into the other room. Mrs. Clark
had just come home and was so startled to see it jumping around
by itself — we had let go of it by then — that she jumped up on
the bed. She kept saying, "You crazy kids — make it stop that
fool ishness!"

I don't expect anyone to believe this — we were startled
ourselves by the effect we produced — but it did happen whether
anyone be I ieves it or not.

Another time four of us girls were hiding from each other
in pairs — hide-and-go-seek — and there was this old shed, and
my friend Christie and I saw the other two standing in the

41

Richards: door of the shed. We started toward them when suddenly
the real girls came towards us from the left and when we
looked back the apparitions of them at the shed door had
faded out. The strange thing is that we both saw the
vision — and were so utterly sure it was our friends. We
were upset about it — because there they were — and then they
weren't — like a mirage, you know. I still don't understand
it.

During our first weeks in St. Elmo a little girl who was
born there, and I became friends, and this friendship has
lasted a lifetime. Her name was Christie Clark and she is
still my closest and dearest friend. Every experience I had
in St. Elmo she shared. At the present time she is finishing
a history of St. Elmo, a work of devotion.

Once when some of us young people went on a picnic to
the mountains, some miners invited us into their cabin and
cooked pancakes for us. The cabin had a dirt floor. They
had a saw-buck near the stove holding dynamite on it that
they were thawing out! Probably not as dangerous as some
things young people do now.

On the Fourth of July there was always the reading of
the Declaration of Independence, usually by Mr. Clark, a Civil
War veteran. There were foot races for different age groups.

42

Richards: I sometimes won the race in my group. The prize was money,
which was soon spent. There were single and double drilling
contests. Firecrackers of all sizes all day — a big picnic
lunch at noon, and fireworks at night.

One of our entertainments was to go together, a large
group, on sleigh rides. They would hitch horses on to a
sled — take the seats out, put something, hay I think, on
the boacrds so that a lot of people could sit there. We put
old blankets and quilts over us to keep warm. Bells on the
harness. We took rides, going slowly up through the heavily
forested parts. It was beautiful on starlit, moonlit nights,
everybody singing. Sometimes we went on a sleigh ride to a
dance in a neighboring town.

Description of St. Elmo

Richards: St. Elmo is situated in a narrow mountain valley. There
were only two main streets, and they ran parallel to each
other. There was one cross street. The street that held all
the business places was — the backs of the buildings were
right against the mountains. Up on the mountain, back of the
stores » is where the railroad ran. On the other side it was

43

Richards: not far to the lovely creek that ran through the center of
town.

On the one cross street there was a bridge over the
creek. It was the only bridge except for a foot bridge
farther up the creek. When the snow melted the creek some
times ran over the bridge. The other main street had homes
along it on either side and at the end of this street was
the wagon road that led up to the top of the Continental
Divide. It was called the Toll Road, as it had been, before
our time, a to I I road.

In many places these mountain roads were too narrow for
wagons to pass, so the drivers had to back up or pul I out
over the edges to pass. It was very scary to me when I was
a passenger. There was usually a canyon on one side. When
there were sidewalks they were wooden.

Flowers in St. Elmo

Richards: In the summer we had an abundance of beautiful wild flowers.
One of the earliest was a dear little crocus which we called
the snow flower because it grew by snow banks that were melting
in the warm part of the spring days. The blossoms of our wild

44

Richards: roses were much larger than those of lower altitudes. Our
state flower, the Colorado Columbine, was so lovely and
plentiful. One of my favorites, and it was more rare,
needing shade and moisture, was the little wild cyclamen.
There were many other varieties and it saddens me to think
what the tourists may have done to all this beauty.

We also had some wild fruits, strawberries, so de
licious but very small — raspberries, wonderful and plentiful
in certain patches which we knew well. Some gooseberries
and further away black currants, a flavor that I have never
forgotten.

Unusual Aspects of Life in St. Elmo

Erskine: You didn't have any fresh food at all in the winter time?

Richards: No, and even in the house, my mother bought eggs by the case,
and they'd freeze right inside the house, and the water,
when it was extra cold, she thought she'd leave it running,
and it would just knock you down. It was like a fire hydrant
almost — the force, because it just came a little distance
from a stream, and it had the terrific force, and she left
that running one night full force, and it froze. The pipes

45

Richards: were in the ground six feet down, and they would freeze.

Erskine: No problems with refrigeration, but lots of...

Richards: Oh no. Snow would blow in around the window where we

slept when there was a real wind going with it. I think
maybe I put a little picture here someplace, that of how
St. Elmo looked...

We could start out in the morning and take a little
lunch with us and go all day, and not a human or animal ever
bothered us. You could have fallen and broken a leg or an
arm or something and it might have been bad, but one of us
would have got back to town and given the alarm. I think
it was quite a privilege. The little schoolhouse was
surrounded by aspen trees, and then of course they cut some
down when they built the schoolhouse. Later pictures they
show me — this friend sent me some pictures she took too —
the trees have reclaimed the school playgrounds. The
school's not been used for years, you know — and they've come
right down to the building, and even the fir trees have come
down. The tourists were going to use that building for
something, and I said, "I hope it falls down, and is just
taken over by natural things."

46

The Jail at Buena Vista

Erskine: What about your uncle, did he have a jail?

.Richards: When we first came to Colorado this uncle was the sheriff,
and we stayed with him of course, for a visit, and the jail
was right in the same building with the sheriff's living
quarters. So this aunt cooked — there weren't very many
people of course — she cooked for them. There was a door —
you could see right through from one part of the building
in there where these prisoners were — it was all, of course
you know, protected, but they were in there. They trained
those children — they never called them prisoners. The younger
sister was just a little girl then, and she called them her
boys. Then when my uncle's term was up, and they were going
to move, I think, she told them, "Boys, we're going to move."
The prisoners said, "We're going to miss you." She said,
"Don't worry, I'm taking you boys with us." CLaughter]
That was kind of nice.

She'd say, "Oh, my mother's making cookies." Of course
things that the family had were not allowed on the allowance
my aunt was given to feed them. She was a wonderful cook —
everything they had was good. I ate so many of -her meals.
She was Pennsylvania-German background, and served mighty
good food. She sent in cookies to the prisoners and other
family things, you know.

47

Richards: One time there was an escape attempt. A wife of one

of the prisoners in there insisted to my aunt that she would
like to help her work if my aunt would just let her stay
there awhile to be near her husband. So they got soft
hearted and let her stay. Well, she made a plan of the place
and handed it to the people in there. There was an upstairs —
it was a two-story building — and there was this room that
folks didn't use much, but to store in, I guess, kind of like
an attic. One night the prisoners cut a hole through the
ceiling downstairs and climbed up — put the small fellow in
there — just made the smallest hole and he climbed through.
Well the folks woke up — somebody did — and it happened that
the knob was off that side of the door, and he was having
difficulty opening it, so my uncle got there, and he was to
get the keys, see, and go in and unlock them and let them all
out. My uncle made him climb back through this same hole —
it wasn't big, and it was hard getting through. The prisoner
pleaded to go downstairs and in from there, but he made him
go back through the hole they had cut. Nobody got to stay to
be near a relative after that. [laughter]

Another time there was an attempted break. I don't think
it was at the same time, but that aunt went outside with the
rifle and stood guard outside while my uncle took charge inside,

48

Richards: and believe me, she was a good shot. She would have made a
wonderful general, I always thought, because of her ability
in running her home and family. I never heard her raise her
voice to her children — a look was enough. And did they mind!
I loved her and was always happy in her home.

There wasn't much crime in St. Elmo, though a boy I
knew there later killed a man in Pitkin(a town between St.
Elmo and Gunnison). It was hard for me to realize he could
kill anyone because on some of those loneliest winter nights
he'd spent the evening with my brother and me and play
tiddleywinks and other games with us. And we could get him to
do things in the entertainments at school that the other boys
wouldn't do. One time we wanted to have a tableau — "Just
Before the Battle, Mother" — and we got a piece of sheet iron
and built a little campfire on it and Tim sat beside it, with
a soldier's cap on, looking down at the fire, while we sang
"Just Before the Battle, Mother" offstage.

His mother had epilepsy, his brother-in-law was a
terrible bully, and Tim had a sad beginning. And if he had
had any money to hire a lawyer he never would have been con
victed because the first thing he said when the first person
got to him was, "My God, I've killed my best friend." A
lawyer could have proved he wasn't responsible because he

49

Richaras: was fond of this man, and the man had been his friend.

The sheriff at Gunnison was sorry for him and befriended
him. Later I was in Gunnison and I went down to see Tim at
the jail and when I explained to the sheriff how 1 had
known him, he just let Tim out of the locked part and we
visited alone there.

I said, "How could you have done such a thing, Tim?"
And he said, "I was crazy. I don't know." He cried that I
should see him there. Well, the end of that story is that
they finally put him out on trust, road work outside the
prison, etc., and many thought to give him a chance to
escape, because they knew he wasn't really a murderer.
Dear Tim, to think he had a man's life on his conscience...

Going Away to School — Zanesville and Boston

Erskine: Could you tell me something more about your education?

Richards: When I was fourteen I went back to Zanesville and spent

one winter there visiting my grandparents and relatives and
attending a girl's school — they called it a lady's seminary-
so I got a little snobbish over there, I think. So when I
came home the next summer my brother would say, "Oh, I

50

Richards: suppose that's the way they did things at the seminary." I
don't know, I loved everybody more than ever when I got back
to them in Colorado, but I think the experience had made me
a little bit stuck-up, because only the elite of the town —
only their daughters — went to the seminary. They had some
boarding facilities. Some girls were there from Columbus
and other places. Two sisters, the younger one was in my
classes, were from Columbus. We went to different rooms for
different classes. That was something very new for me. I
really enjoyed this school and the teachers. I was a day
pup! I .

One year, when I was in my teens (sixteen) I went back
to stay in Boston with my Aunt Letty Launder, my father's sister.
That was a contrast to St. Elmo, as you can imagine.

She was a professional musician and that was a long time
ago when it wasn't so common for women to have professions.
She was a friend of Ole Bull, the famous Norwegian violinist,
and later taught his daughter, and spent one summer with
this daughter at their beautiful home in Norway. Ole Bull
was a colorful person and I have read in some of early San

Francisco histories of his appearing in concerts there.

Somebody wrote, I understand, a few years back, it was

in the Christian Science magazine, and claimed that the1
quartet that my aunt belonged to was the first women's string

51

Richards: quartet in this country. Women didn't do that sort of

thing very much, you know, but this aunt was gifted. Well,
that's a long story and I won't go into it, but she entered
when she was very young the Boston Conservatory of Music,
and graduated there, and then she went to Germany and
furthered her musical education.

Well, I think maybe she had thought if I showed enough
promise she might help me. But she insisted that I take the
courses in school that led to college. And I knew my mother
could never afford that — I wouldn't have accepted it from
her — she couldn't possibly have afforded it. That's what I
would have liked to have done. So I insisted upon taking the
course that would lead to maybe a business training, so we
didn't agree on that at all, but my aunt had been appointed
admin istratress of what had been left of my grandparents'
estate and so forth, so she charged me; I had to keep an
account of everything, and I still feel very happy that I
got away with a ride on the swanboats on the Boston Commons
Park and one ice cream soda. And how I managed to juggle my
accounts, I don't know, because she was pretty tight. CLaughterU

Anyway I went to the girls' high school there, and they
weren't going to allow me in, because they were crowded and
didn't need anybody, so it even got so bad that my aunt

52

Richards: determined (she was a fighter) I would get in there. So

they even carried it up to the principal of that big school,
and believe me, from a one-room school up in St. Elmo, that
was quite a change for me. He had a personal interview to
definitely frighten me out of going. He said, "You couldn't
possibly do it," and besides I came in late. So I was angry.
I was determined I would. They gave me a written examination,
and there was one other girl there doing the same, and the
whole family was there with her, I think — three or four people
of the family. My aunt said, "Now you remember you go down
this street, and around over there, and this way, and you get
there." I'd never been in a really large city like Boston.
Well I got there with no backing, except my aunt was a fighter.
They made us take these written examinations which I passed
and this girl didn't. She cried — I felt real/sorry for her,
but anyway, that was quite an experience.

My aunt lived not far from Copley Plaza. Have you ever
been in Boston?

Erskine: No, not in Boston.

Richards: Well, it's a big center there, where that beautiful library
is, designed by a famous architect (Bullfinch I think). The
famous Trinity Church also was on Copley Plaza. The Boston
Museum of Arts was close. Well I thought I was in... I couldn't

53

Richards: imagine there was such a wonderful place — I just couldn't
believe it — and you know, recently on TV, on channel 9, I
saw a picture — a man talked about the Boston Museum of Arts.
I wondered if anybody who ever went there was so impressed
as I was at that time. One of the teachers at school — I think
she was the history teachei — had said, "You look like you've
brought a breath of the Rocky Mountains with you." Well I
had high coloring, my sister also did. I thought that was
quite a compliment — there wasn't anything that she could have
said that would have made me happier than some connection
with the Rocky Mountains.

54

MARRIAGE TO EDWIN R. RICHARDS, 1904

Erskine: Was your husband from St. Elmo?

Richards: Oh no, he was born in Michigan, and his mother had been

born in Canada of Scotch parents — all Scotch ancestry hers.
And his father with the name of Richards — his folks had
been Cornish and excellent miners, as they had the reputation
of being. I think he was born in Minnesota — I remember I
used to think he was born in Wisconsin. But anyway her
folks moved over to northern Michigan, and her father became
a citizen and this made citizens also of all the children.
Then my father-in-law's folks also lived there, so that's
where they met. My husband's parents were in northern
Michigan — Marquette, Houghton, places like that. Up there
he had several relatives who went to the Michigan...

Erskine: School of Mining?

Richards: Well yes, one I am sure of. I guess the others went to the
university or something. But he did have one cousin who did
graduate from Michigan School of Mining. And we've known
others from there too — one in Mexico we were quite closely
associated with.

Anyway, his mother always had the feeling that people
should own some land — it wasn't his father's — and he was

55

Richards: what they call a captain, I believe, at the mines there
then. I don't know if it's equivalent to our foreman or
what, but he was an excellent miner.

His mother was a strong personality, and they and
several other families came together to eastern Colorado
and took up land to dry farm. And you know the history of
that dry-farming. So my father-in-law had to leave the
family there on the... oh no, when they first came, my husband
was just a baby, that's right, and then they did live in
Idaho Springs. Later, when they were on that farm, his father
would have to go back to the mines, and as my husband was
growing up he had to take a man's responsibility because he
was the oldest of four brothers. They had real hard going,
and then they finally moved back to Idaho Springs and that's
where he graduated from high school. In order to help the
family (the father had a bad accident on the ranch to begin
with — you know the tongue that's between the two horses went
down and he fell and injured his back. Now, I'm sure it
would be taken care of very well, but it wasn't then. And
then when he was back in the mine, somebody was on the ladder
above him, and slipped back and hit him and hurt that old
injury). My husband had to work, so he had to stay out of
high school. He had three years out of the four, I believe

56

Richards: actually. He had to work in a mill there, a stamp mill,
and shovel ore, and he was of very slender build.

This little town of Idaho Springs was just big enough
so there was a lot of rivalry there, and some of the mothers,
I think of two girls in particular, demanded that he not be
given the valedictorian spot, because he hadn't been there
all the time. Well, the principal of the school stood
firmly by him. The principal afterwards became the lieutenant
governor of Colorado. He and my husband corresponded for
many years. My husband — what he would have loved to have
been was a doctor, but they were poor, and he knew that they
could never make that, so he took engineering. But you
know one nice thing about it — there were so many hardships
connected with It — poor pay and all that — but he loved it
really. I think a person who is in the wrong profession or
work is very unhappy, but he wasn't... he loved engineering
rea 1 1 y .

When our son Keith was in engineering here, he got his
father a group of boys to coach, free, so the son made a big
hit with these friends to be able to offer his father's help.
We had a good-sized dining room and large table, and they'd
sit around there. One place he drew the line — he would not
use the university's books. He kept his old books from

57

Richards: Golden — he'd get those out. I think he would have been a

good teacher. But woe to anybody who didn't study. Students
now don't seem to take It too seriously — many of them anyway.
Our children were all good students. It cost us quite a
bit financially, and we had to break up the family in two
parts and all, but we felt that we never could leave them
any wealth, but if we left them an education it would help
them. And that is why we came to Berkeley, because we were
at camp after camp and there were no facilities anyplace for
college, and the older ones were getting into high school.
My husband finally said, "Well, I may have to continue this
kind of life, but I'm going to settle the family someplace
where they can go on to school." So that's how we chose Berkeley
for a home.

We have five children and they all graduated from the
University of California. Well, as you know, engineering —
I don't know what year you graduated?

Erskine: I960.

Richards: Well my husband graduated in 1905 and you may have some idea

of how the picture has changed. In those years you could hardly
get a job. You had to have worked for nothing for several
years to get a little experience. In the engineering journals

»

there would be ads for going out of the country, signing a

58

Richards: lease, a contract to stay, for little pay, so it was a real
hard business at that time.

Our children of course more or less grew up around mines
and mills. My husband would usually go on ahead to a new
place and I'd stay with the children where there was a school,
and when vacation came — or if there was a school they could
transfer to in the new place — we'd follow him.

At one little camp in Nevada — Buckhorn, it's not on the
map any more — the company established a little school — there
wasn't any — bought the equipment and put it In what had been
the old court building, I guess, with the jail in the back —
very small. My husband gave them a place over the change
room over by the mine, if they had to lock anybody up, in
exchange for letting them use it. One time when the teacher,
who did her own janitor work, came in in the morning she
heard somebody knocking on the door to the jail, saying,
"Teacher, please let me out." Somebody, by mistake, had put
a drunken man in the jail. CLaughterU And they had an old
mine bell on the outside (I have pictures of that) that they
used to call classes.

Erskine: I think that's probably enough for right now.

Richards: I think it's probably too much. I said I have nothing to

give, and so many people know so much and were there so much

59

Richards: earlier than I was, you know. Some of these clippings go

way back beyond then.

Erskine: Would you like to talk another time about Mexico?
Richards: Well, what do you think?

Erskine: I think it would be well worth having here.
Richards: Do you think you have anything there that will be of any

value to anybody that I've said today?
Erskine: I think so, yes. A great deal.

60

MEXICO 1908-191 I, 1923-1929

Guanajuato, 1 908-1 91 1

Train Trip to Guanajuato

Erskine: There. We're recording, Mrs. Richards.

Richards: Now this is about Mexico. Does it make any difference
how close I am?

Erskine: No, this is fine.

Richards: Mr. Richards needed work, and having met Mr. Rose while

working in California and knowing he was now manager of a
company in Mexico, applied to him for employment; and Mr.
Rose responded with an offer to come to Guanajuato.

Always the plan was for my husband to go first to the
job and see if it was going to be all right, you know, and
so forth, so he was already in Guanajuato. Do you know where
Guanajuato is, or anything about it?

Erskine: Yes. It's on the Mexican plateau — up high — just north of
Mexico City.

Richards: It is high, and as I say, I still think it's very inte
resting, and it's off most of the highways. So many people

61

Richards: drive you know now or go — of course most people fly, but I
think it's well worth anybody's trip to take the side trip
over to Guanajuato. That's the way I still feel about it.

Ersklne: How did you go down the first time?

Richards: Oh, train. There weren't planes — it was 1908. There wasn't
any way to go but by train.

Erskine: Did the train go through Guanajuato?

Richards: It did not go through Guanajuato. Actually, you had to get

off at a town named Silao and then take the side trip on this
funny little train right up to Guanajuato. This was in
August, 1908, and I left the high mountains of Colorado, and
I had two little children — two little girls. One was three
and one was a year and a half. It was cool up there of
course. We had two night changes — one at Pueblo, Colorado,
and the other one in Arizona. I had to begin to take more
of the clothing off of the children as we got down to the
hotter areas, and when we got down into Texas it was very
hot. We went down through El Paso. That's the route to
take to go Into the Guanajuato area. Guanajuato was at
that time considered about nine hours north of Mexico City
by train. The train didn't go very fast.

Then we arrived in El Paso. We were eating at the
Harvey Houses, and I think any mother who had two little

62

Richards: children and tried to get them to eat something — you

know the strangeness of it all"-will understand, because
you're on limited time. You got off the train and ate at
the Harvey House. The train didn't carry a diner. So
Mother didn't get too much to eat, and I'm not sure how
adequate it was for the children, because they were so
distracted. Our train got into El Paso late, so there
wasn't time to eat there and feed the children.

My husband had written quite full instructions of how
to go through the customs in El Paso. I didn't know one
word of Spanish, and of course I had to go through the
Mexican customs. That was quite an ordeal. I didn't have
time to feed the children, who hadn't had any breakfast.
You got what they called the cargadores who came along to
your window as the train slowed down and tried to get you to
let them take care of your luggage (they each had a different
number) because you had to have your trunk unroped for the
inspection there. And I had overloaded my trunk so that I
had to pay many dollars for its being overweight. And they
did that right in the room where you were supposed to be
with it, and I had packed the trunk so solidly you may imagine
what it was to try and repack it. I had this one and a half
year old baby in my arms, because the other trunks were being

63

Richards: thrown around right there around us, and It was dangerous.

Out in front of the station there were all these
Mexicans — a line of them — sitting along with their chickens
and birdcages, and all of these things, and the little three
year old (that was Mrs. Shattuck, by the way) was so intrigued
by this. She had never seen Mexicans before. She was very
blond. She went out there to watch those folks, and I tried
to run out and get her once in awhile, and she'd squat down
in front of each of them — right close, watching. It was very
amusing. These folks didn't seem to mind, they're all like
children. Finally a young man came up to me and said, "If

you don't mind, would you trust me to watch Dora for you?"

..••

He had heard me talking to her so much by that time. I'm

having a wonderful time. As it happened he was one of the
group of three young engi neers,and they had been back and
forth many times, you know, so he didn't have much to take care
of — just out on a little trip, I guess they were. So that
took quite a worry off my mind. And he got the picture that
she had never seen Mexicans before. These were poor Mexicans

*

and they were waiting for a lower rate car that had not been
attached to the train yet. When I finally got through in
there — got the trunk re-roped and all the papers examined and
everything, I was able to buy some bananas at the station for

64

Richards: the children, and got back on the train.

There was an official going down just on a trip to
Mexico City and back, it turned out; he and his wife boarded
the train at El Paso. He had some important position with
the railroad. They were putting on supplies there on the
train — food — and so he instructed the proper ones on the
train, as soon as they pulled out and could, they were to
cook something for the children and me, and that made It
very nice. At that time — and I don't know how they do now
after all these years — of course the train doesn't get much
business — but at that time they didn't carry a diner. They
brought a little table and put it up at your seat, and served
the food there. There wasn't much choice on the menu, but it
was adequate — you could get along on it.

f

Erskine: Very different food from what you'd experienced in Colorado,

though probabl y. . .

Richards: Well, what do you mean — on the old narrow gauge?
Erskine: Well no, on the...
Richards: Oh, on the regular. On the regular trains, going back and

forth to Ohio for instance, there would have been a diner.

This, as I say, was fairly comfortable, being right at your

seat.

It was quite a long trip. I don't recall how long

65

Richards: right now, but there was a lady on the train with whom I

became acquainted. An older woman — oh she wasn't old — but
she had grownup children. We found out that we were both
going to Guanajuato. She said she was going to have to go
on horseback way out to this place where she was going, and I
said, "We can't be going to the same place, because my husband
hasn't written anything like that." But as it happened we
were. But my husband had thought, he said, if he had told me
any more I wouldn't have come. Slaughter] Anyhow, her
son — as it happened, one of her sons — their name was Rhodes —
was already well known and writing stories for the Saturday
Evening Post, and this other son in Mexico was quite a
character. He was running a mi 1 1 at that time. She was
going to the mill, and I was going to the mine.

There were two men to meet us at Silao when we got off
the train, her son and my husband, so I began to learn a little
bit more of what was In store. Then we took this funny little
train up to Guanajuato, and then we took a street car up to
the hotel. And that street car was — well to begin with, the
streets of Guanajuato — it's just in this little narrow canyon —
and very mountainous around there, and the streets were very
narrow, and they had this little street car that was pulled
by two mules. The man who drove them stood on the platform,

66

Richards: and he had a little horn of some kind that he kept in his

pocket, and he wore those very tight charro-type pants. So
going around curves he'd blow it to tell people we were coming
and to get out of the way.

I had never seen Mexicans before either, just like my
daughter. To believe this was real — let's see, I was twenty
one, possibly twenty two, at the time, and I just couldn't
believe it. And this little street car — and my husband had
told me, "Be careful, they're very sensitive people, and if
you seem to smile about it or anything you may hurt their
feelings." It was very difficult not to. I was transported
to a different world — I just could not believe it, coming
over that border. And even the trip down: the little Mexican
huts, and when you came through a town, they came there to try
to sell things at the train as it stopped — hand work and
things they did — little things they'd made, also — food and
things. Anyway, the little hotel was run by some Americans.
In fact, there were quite a few Americans living in the town
of Guanajuato. And that's where the mine offices and head
quarters were, so some of the company people lived there also.

Erskine: What was the company name?

Richards: Sorry to be so stupid about it. I have a book in there with
some of the pictures — I tried to find a special book that I

67

Richards: think the company had gotten up with the idea of raising

money or something, and it gave quite a nice little record
of the ore production, history, etc.

Erskine: This is silver mining?

Richards: Oh yes. At one time they claimed — in there, I think, and
I thought that might interest you — that at one time,
Guanajuato produced one third of the world's silver. It
was a tremendously rich...

Erskine: This was just a small, local company there — not associated
with something larger?

Richards: I think it was local — I guess it was, but Mr. Hugh Rose,
who later became, supposedly, the most prominent engineer
in Mexico, was in charge of it, and that's how my husband
happened to get that position. I was mentioning something
about it. Mr. Rose, at the time that we first contacted
him, had an important position with A.S. and R., [American
Smelting and Refining Company] I think it was — a U. S.
company — for the whole coast of — all the area out on the
west coast. He had been In Canada, also. Oh, I know that
name so well, but... Well, 1 have it in there, and I'll
try to get it.

Erskine: That's al I right.

68

Life at the Pinguico Mine

Richards: The Guanajuato Development Company I bel ieve it was.

Anyway, I don't know whether we just stayed overnight at
that hotel — I guess that was it, because my husband had
work to get back to. He went down there as an engineer for
the company. He had been out of college a very short time.
Actually, as I told you, in those days, if you ever see the
old journals — the mining journals — see what they offered boys
graduating at that time.

Then we took the trip out to the mine. I think on the
first trTp out 1 had to ride on a burro — on a kind of a
wooden seat — well it makes me think of a pack saddle — the
things they used to pack back in Colorado — it was made for a
seat, and many of the Mexican women who had -to travel went on
those. Anyway, we got out to the mine, and our home there was
a duplex — It was brand new — it had never been lived in except
there was somebody on the other side when we got there. It
was made of stone instead of adobe. Uur neighbors on the
other side were a couple from England. I'm wondering if an
English company owned this at that time; I don't think they
did, but they had several English people there. Their name
was McDermot, and his father had been or maybe was at the

69

Kichards: time president of the Royal Engineers of Engl and. . .She was
so charming. Her father was a minister, an Episcopal
minister in a small town in England, I think. She had come
into my side and put on the table there some magazines and
a little vase of flowers. A real lovely person, you know, and
I enjoyed her very much. They got packages from home all the
time and that sort of thing, and she told me a good bit of her
life in Egnland, and that was very pleasant.

Then The company changed while Mr. Rose was still in
charge of it, and his assistant was Mr. Strout. Mr. Strout
was from Stanford, and his wife also was very nice. Mr. Rose
at that time was not married. I think he was from Stanford
too; I can't recal I .

trskine: I hey would be contemporaries of Herbert Hoover then?

Richards: I never thought about that. I really don't know. I don't
remember what time President Hoover was. Anyway, we were
way out at this mine that was very isolated. As I say, the
roads were impassable for anything but horseback and some of
the Mexican carts. The Mexican carts brought supplies up.

Erskine: There was an actual mill that recovered silver on the property?

Richards: Well, where we were — we lived at the mine, and they had a

little railroad — a little engine that pulled the cars around
the hill to the mi I I — qu ite a I ittle d i stance around . I

70

Richards: don't know why they did that. I've got pictures in there
of it all, but I don't want to take your time.

hrskine: It had to, over near a source of supply of water perhaps?

Richards: That could be. One of the processes, cyanidation — was largely
developed in Guanajuato — one of the leaders of developing it.
But that would have been too early for flotation, wouldn't it?

Erskine: Yes, that would have been before flotation...

Richards: Yes, that must have been, because some people came there
specially to study the...

Erskine: Cyaniae process.

Richards: Well anyway, my husband didn't know any Spanish either, and
one of my first shocks, I think, was that if you crossed the
border you couldn't do your own work — an American woman — on
this side of the border, you see, you could be a quite hono
rable woman and still do it, but when you got over the other
side you must have a criada. There were only two women up
there when I arrived, and the other one — I guess her husband
was kind of a foreman — he was uneducated, I mean he didn't
have an engineering degree, but he had worked a good bit in
mines, and they were from England. She had gotten a criada
for me before I arrived. This criada was named Paulina. I
shall never forget Paulina — she was dirty, she smelled of
tobacco — and women didn't smoke in those times — the American
women mostly didn't, I mean.

71

Ricnards: My husband's first JOB was to re-survey the mine.

And he did that mostly at night, because there were less
crew working at night, so I was left alone there. I put the
two children to bed early, of course. One thing I did was
go out on the front porch and look out toward 'the United States
and wonder if I'd ever get back there again. It seemed an
awfully long ways, and it was very lonely to have my husband
away in the evenings.

They were constructing a boarding house at that time,
quite close to where we were living, and a lot of those work
men didn't go down to Guanajuato at night. It was a long climb
straight up coming back. They slept under part of the con
struction — what would be the porch. And they sang — It seemed
to me they all had tenor voices — those old Mexican songs that
I've learned to love — "La Golondrina," "La Paloma" — they're
all plaintive and sad, you Know, and if anything made me more
lonely this did It. You could see for miles and miles
because we were up on the hill. Then I'd go out In the kitchen,
and this crlada slept on a straw mat on the kitchen floor. I
learned to say "Como se llama" so I'd just ask her, "Como se
llama esta" over and over and over until I began to learn the
names of a few of the things I had to know.

We also had a mozo; you had to have a mozo.

72

Erskine: What's this now?

Richards: He did the errands. An errand boy is a mozo. Because our

supplies, our food and everything, had to come from Guanajuato.
He'd go down there and buy them and carry them up that long
distance. His name was Miguel, and one of vhe first things
this child (Mrs. Shattuck) learned to do was stamp her foot
at him when she couldn't open the door and say, "Sabe Miguel
oppy door." He was so delighted with that. He would tease
her a bit, you know. He was just fifteen, I think, and a bright
boy, and he'd been to school .

My husband got some books — he didn't speak Spanish — he'd
had Latin and German. He had Miguel help him, and he got a
start in learning a little bit of Spanish. He was really a
very bright man, and he learned pretty fast. He had a need
for it because he had to learn some quite quickly. Miguel
asked my husband to help him get a job in the machine shop; he
wanted to learn mechanics. And you could hardly refuse the
boy — he was bright and ambitious. So my husband did. Then
we got an older man. He wasn't old, but he wasn't a boy, and
his name was Juan. And we grew to love him, and I still say
he was the dearest person in Mexico as far as1 -we were con
cerned. He lived in Guanajuato. This English neighbor
showed me a little book she had that had helped her when she

73

Richards: first came to Mexico, so I got one of those and it gave me

translations and the names of the main foods and things, you
know, so I'd make out an order for Juan, mostly groceries.
He'd go home at night, and go to the market in the morning and
buy and bring out the supplies. He was most reliable. His
father was a gardener, and they had worked for some of the
leading families in Guanajuato. Juan had grown up in those
gardens with his father. He knew all of those people too.
Later on, when we'd be downtown, and Juan with us, as we
rode along they'd call to him if they were out on their porches.
He was really a very fine person and most reliable. I have
pictures of Juan — he had a thing fitted over his head — you've
seen that perhaps — and a basket on his back. We got a camera
when we'd been there just a short time, and I sent pictures
back to my mother and folks, so I had those if I didn't have
an extra copy for myself. I see that I've written on the
backs of lots of them, and that's nice. Everybody should make
a note, I think, of the time and the age when you took a
picture.

Erskine: It means a lot more that way.

Richards: Oh yes. Well the experiences there... We had a little stove —
It was a little modern range there.

Erskine: All this sounds as if the mine was just reopening or something.

74

Richards: No I don't think so.

Erskine: Maybe just an expansion in the operation or something of
that sort?

Richards: No I don't believe so. It was all built — everything was
built there and the mine was fully developed, you know.
They had a custom there — the miners — that might be of a
little Interest. They used candles in those days, and
somebody would take the candle home to use, or something.
Anyway, they were very careless — life didn't seem to be
very important. So there'd be an accident. Somebody would
fall and get killed. Then they'd put a shrine up in the
mine where that person had been killed, and then they'd
use candles to burn at the shrine and go around in the
dark, and it was pretty hard to break those habits. They
were deeply religious in a way, but of course the old in
heritance from the earlier civilizations that were in
Mexico held on. It's a strange mixture.

Erskine: Catholic and...

Richards: Yes. That was imposed on them really. I read a book, I do 1 s
Behind the Shrine, or something like that, one time. Very
interesting to me, because they never quite dropped all of
the! r ol d idols.

One thing in Guanajuato that was rather famous — one of

75

Richards: their prides I guess — it's still referred to in articles

about Guanajuato — is a theater there. It was Teatro Juarez,
named for Juarez, one of their heroes. It was Moorish in
design. It was claimed to be one of the most beautiful
theaters on the North American continent, and it had
statuary on the outside and inside. Of course the streets

|

were all cobblestone, narrow and crooked. One of the first
things was to get equipment so you could ride a horse and
get back and forth on horseback. The company had two horses.
Then they did change some of the people, and these two
neighbors that I had when I came, moved away, and we got
the house that had been the foreman's house. We moved down
there. We were right next to the office. While we were up
on the hill though, this little girl ran away. She went down
to the office and told them she didn't know where her mother
was. It was not easy for Mother to escape from her very far,
you know. She just wanted some action. She wanted to get out
and see the world, or something.

Erskine: This is Mrs. Shattuck?

Richards: Yes. So they put her up at the desk and let her run the

typewriter. She had a ba I I down there, you know, and I was
frantic, looking for her everyplace.

Erskine: What foods were available to you in this market place?

76

Richards: Many things. Some of them were new to me. The first avocado —
they call them "aguacates" — that I ate was at that hotel, and
they just cut them in half and served them with a little vine
gar, and that's still my favorite, only I use lemon. I love
them. I liked the first one I ate, and most people don't.

Erskine: They're very strange.

Richards: I think we had most of the things we have here. I don't

think we had as good apples, peaches, apricots, etc. but the
oranges— I love those sweet Mexican oranges. Florida oranges
are more similar. And of course bananas, pineapples, limes,
tangerines, guayabas, chirimoyas, strawberries, cactus and
other fruits. There was an abundance of vegetables, some new
to us. We bought our coffee as green beans and roasted it
in the oven of our stoves.

Erskine: What you were used to was mostly available there?

Richards: Yes, but not the meat. Meat was the big problem. They'd

kill their meat and use it fresh; they don't age it, and most
Americans don't like that. In a city where there had been a
bullfight on Sunday many avoided buying beef the first days of
the week. I went out in the kitchen once and found Paulina
sitting on the floor washing the dishes and putting them around
on the floor. It was their custom I guess. The floors were
made of Mexican — well it wasn't hard tile, but anyway it was

77

Richards: red and they used a red powder to scrub into it. Made

quite a pretty floor really. But that's the floor, and I
had to try — imagine not being able to speak her language — and
to try to tel I her not to do this. And she was so dirty that
I finally insisted that she take a bath, and some years later
I met one of her relatives, and I asked for Paulina, and she
said Paulina had never been well since I made her take that
bath. CLaughterD Gives you a si ight idea of what a young
American woman. . .

We rode the horses with divided skirts — even now you
see the styles — they have divided pajamas that are so wide
they look almost like a skirt. The Mexican women did not
ride astride a horse, so they didn't think very highly of the
American women who did. Later — my husband had been advancing
in position(by this time he was mine superintendent) — he had
a man working up there — I guess he was foreman. Anyway, he was
up there at the Pinguico mine, and his family — he had a wife
and two stepdaughters — and they had been living in Guanajuato
and they moved up to half of the duplex. The daughters were
about my age, so the younger one of them — they had I Jved down
there and knew the town well — so she was delighted to have
the use of a horse. The company had two horses. We'd ride
down to Guanajuato to shop.

78

Erskine: About how far is this?

Richards: As I told you I'm not any good at the — Actually it wasn't
so far, but it was so steep. A lot of the people who lived
in Guanajuato worked up at the mine and they walked. To
come around by the road, it was a little farther. We rode
back and forth — just in part of a day so it couldn't have
been too far. Sometimes the Mexicans we'd meet on the road
would try to frighten the horses because they didn't respect
women riding alone.

Oh yes, this was the time of Porfirio Diaz, and
Guanajuato was one of the tough towns. Well that's where the
revolution against Spain had started. Do you know the history
of Mexico?

Erskine: I know some of it.

Richards: It was just a little village outside there, and he led his
group into Guanajuato, released these prisoners — political
prisoners, I guess they were, because they were opposing the
government or something. They beheaded Hidalgo and some of
his leading followers and they put their heads in these
wicker baskets and hung them on four corners of a building.
Hidalgo is the most beloved hero of Mexico — the Father of
Mexico. Because that revolution — although they'd killed
him — had started, and it continued on until Mexico won its
freedom from Spain.

79

Erskine: Maximilian was emperor then?

Richards: 1 guess he was. We could see from our front porch millions
of miles, it seemed to me, and away in the distance there
were two little towns. One was I rapuato and the other one
was — I'm sorry — my memory — I just can't recall it now. Any
way, that was the town where they killed Maximilian. I
don't recall whether they took him up there. Perhaps the
most delicious food we had in Pinguico was the strawberries
from I rapuato. Queretaro was the name of the place where they
executed Maximilian.

Erskine: Pinguico is the name of the...?

Richards: Of the mine up there. Pinguico. The Guanajuato Development
Company was the name of the company. But Pinguico was that
particular mine where we first lived. Now the company owned
other property besides that. One that was farther away was
named Peregrina. Those two anyway were the two main ones, at
that time. After Mr. Rose and Mr. Strout left there, Mr.
Mclntyre, who was superintendent at Peregrina and was my
husband's immediate boss for awhile — the man he was responsible
to — was made the new manager. That was quite a step up for
him.

By this time my husband was superintendent of both the
Pinguico mine and mill. Mr. Rose wanted my husband to go

80

Richards: with him to the new place he was taking charge of but the
Guanajuato Company gave him a raise in salary to stay.

The company also owned some land, they called it the
company ranch, and I think they got a good bit of their
timber off of it. Well I am going to take too much time on
Pinguico. I can do better than that.

There was a young man at the ranch — I think he and his
wife were raised in New Mexico or Arizona, and he had charge
of that place, and they gave a big party where they had us
all come and stay all night. They had a variety of enter
tainment — cock fighting, races, and all sorts of things. One
thing about this man — somebody had attacked him with a knife —
and he had shot the fellow in the arm holding the knife and
the Mexican dropped the knife and took it up with the other
hand. Mr. Anderson then shot him in that arm.

Pretty good shot I think. And I also wonder now why
they have to shoot directly and kill people. These trained
officers and all — why can't they do something [ike that, you
know. While we were there some of the fellows who were at
this cock fighting got to fighting so Mr. Anderson said, "You
know what I did to that fellow. Never do this again, or

you're going to get the same treatment." "si senor." It

>

happened that my husband and I were sleeping in the Anderson's

81

Richards: room, and there was this big rifle he kept right by his bed
all the time. It was quite primitive — they were way out
there by themselves. And she was such an expert horsewoman.
She used to take her baby in her arms and ride horseback
around those hills and mountains.

It seems to me that Guanajuato — as I tel I you, people
down there — the area they came from they called their "tierra"
and I always called Guanajuato my tierra because it always
remained my favorite place. Well you can see the change, the
tremendous change it was for me to be thrown into all that.
This little daughter learned Spanish faster than I did. She
used to tell me when they came to the door peddling things.
She'd tell me what they said.

This little Pinguico mine was very satisfying, making
money al I the time.

Oh yes, one of my first experiences there was: the
company had put in some new rules which my husband had nothing
to do with. I think they were going to have to go down into
the mine on their own time or something, so the hill near our
house was full of workmen and they were very angry and were
shouting something. This Paulina (the criada) was shaking
and shivering and I tried to find out what they were saying.
I finally got the Idea that they were shouting "Kill the

82

Richards: Gringos!" We were Gringos, of course. It was very
frightening with the children and all.

New Assignment at La Luz

Richards: The company later bought this group of mines over near a

little town named La Luz, about five miles out from Guanajuato.
That was the place that I told you was so fabulous. My
husband had been superintendent of the Pinguico mine and mill
for quite awhile, then when they bought this property over at
La Luz, consisting of a group of old mines and a large mill,
he was sent over there to take charge of that. Some soldiers
of Cortez found the first mine here in 1547. That Is where
I told you they had the inclined shaft with steps and the ore
had been carried out on their backs in those big Mexican
baskets and they used containers made from oxen skins to un-
water the mine. They drove horses or mules around the whim
to pull them up the shaft.

Well anyway, that was so romantic over there, that whole
area. The owner of one of the richest mines in the group long
years before had I ived down beyond the I ittle town of La Luz

83

Richards: down a canyon. It was like a fortress down there. And he
had these little towers with little slits for the guns to
shoot through at people stealing his ore. They said that
he used to import theatrical groups clear up from Mexico City
to give private plays for him and his friends. You could
see what an impossible idea it was to me, the transportation
problem. Our house there was adobe — the real thick-walfed
adobe. I have pictures of that house and that area. The
door into the living room was secured with a great big thick
piece of wood (I guess it was at least four by four inches)
and it slid into the wall and then you pulled that across after
you closed the door, into the other wall for safety's sake.

Ersklne: A double door with a...

Richards: The door was all in one piece. It was a thing that you put
across the door. There was a hole built on each side of the
door into the thick wall. You closed the door and then you
pulled this across for protection. It was quite a dangerous
area at one time. The big high fence at one end of our yard
had been the front of an old, old church. You could see
where they had filled It in, you know — the shape of the
arch was there still. It was just all rocks out in the yard
there. We took Juan over with us from Pinguico — this mozo
that was the gardener — and gave a little cottage that was

84

Richards: close to our house to him and his wife so they could stay
out there because it was so far from Guanajuato. There
was a little town near where we got our food called La
Luz. My husband sent somebody over to dig every one of
these little rocks out. A millionaire had lived in that
house that we were in before us, and he didn't care enough
about the yard or garden I guess. And then we filled in
with good earth and planted a garden and a lawn. And Juan
broke his heart almost because we wanted a piece of it for
a lawn for the children to play on. He wanted to make It all
flowers.

We had a young American doctor out there and that was
Interesting. His first experience any place as a doctor
maybe, but he was an American. He used to stop every day on
his rounds on horseback and play with the two little girls.
They'd roll back and forth on that lawn from one end to the
other. I wondered if in after years he didn't remember his
time in that wild area. When he would have to go into a
little cottage and try to sterilize anything he'd pour some
alcohol into one of those Mexican pottery things, a cazuela,
and light it, and then he'd have something to work with.

85

Mr. Richards Gets Pneumonia

Richards: One experience I had at PInguIco also: there was an acci
dent In the mine and somebody was covered up, and so they
had the doctor come out. His name was Dr. English. He had
to ride horseback from Guanajuato. He was the company doctor.
He came out because they thought maybe they'd get somebody
out alive and he could help. He and my husband were in and
out of the mine, and It was very hot In the mine, and they
would come out into the cold, you know. My husband came home
and had a terrible chill, what happened was he really got
pneumonia. When I phoned the doctor — I was out there alone
in that house — well I had a criada in a little room there — I
don't know whether she was there that night. I guess she
wasn't. I phoned the doctor, and he said, "He can't be that
bad. I was with him this afternoon. I'll come out in the
morning." It was a long hard ride for him and not too safe
either. My husband had this terrific fever, and suddenly he
went cold. That was an experience for a young woman in those
days in Mexico — that's why I'm telling you this. I ran and
got the doctor again, and he said, "My God, pour some whiskey
down his throat, and I'll be out as fast as I can get there."
He -just couldn't believe it. He was a nice man and all, but

86

Richards: he was tired and it was a long hard ride. That was quite
an experience for me. I was frightened to death of course.

Then over to La Luz, there's so much to tell about
there that I don't think I'd... I'd better skip over that.

A Holiday at Lake Chapala

Richards: We had a holiday over at Lake Chapala, which is very famous
still. I mean it's quite a resort — a lot of people retire
down there now. At that time It was not so — but one fnter-
restlng thing there was all of the children that were
there of English speaking parents — there were lots of English
people in Mexico during that period of time, as well as
Americans, and quite a few properties were held by the English
companies. The children played together on the lawn of the
hotel there, and they spoke Spanish exclusively. Once In
awhile one would break into some English. Then we were going
over across the corner of the lake in a little — some little
power boat anyway — and they went over to the little town and
got the mail and things, and this day the little boat was
full of guests that wanted to go over. It broke down on the
way over. No help at hand and we were just floating. They

87

Richards: couldn't seem to fix It, but we finally got over.

One time the company had some big party down in town
that just the menfolk could come to, I believe. So the jefe
politico who was at the little village up near Pinguico sent
a soldier over to guard the children and me. The soldier
told me he hadn't had any supper or anything to eat, so I had
to cook something and feed that soldier. I was frightened to
death of him. I said afterwards, "If you ever have to go
again all right, but don't leave me any soldiers to guard me."
I felt much safer without him I can assure you.

Revolution Forces the Richards to Leave Mexico

Richards: Let's see, I had two trips up to Colorado. My sister had

died, and I came up to be with my mother, and then (that was
while we were still at Pinguico) when we were at La Luz my
mother was ill In the hospital, and I was the only one left.
It was while I was up on that trip that the revolution broke
out against Porflrlo Diaz.

The local people said Porfirlo Diaz always kept one of
his strongest friends as governor of the state of Guanajuato
because he had come there once himself and his carriage — you

88

Richards: know It was death to anybody — they stoned it. Juan said
something, you know, for an uneducated Mexican that I
always remembered; I thought It wise. He said, "I think
(that was before the revolution) it would be better to
leave Porfirio in because once he has made himslf and all
his friends wealthy maybe they won't be so hard on the poor
Mexicans." Isn't that something like our own politics?

So that was when the revolution against Porfirio
started. I had come up and gotten on this side of the
border the day before it was called. Later they ordered
all women and children out of Mexico — all American women
and children. This country ordered them out. I heard the
experiences of some of them on the trip out. They were
loaded into railroad cars of all kinds just to get them out
in a hurry. They wouldn't allow me to go back. We had
thought that our third child wes going to be born in Mexico
(that was a son) but then I never got to go back, and I
wasn't back until 1923. My husband came up to be with me
when the son was born. The company sent him wires all the
time. "Why didn't he get back?", "Hurry and get back" and
so forth. The revolution was on then and I think I told you—
1 have a picture there of some of them who came up there.
That was wild country between Guanajuato and La Luz. Every

89

Richards: once In awhile they found some Americans killed. They had
over the years.

My husband's mother came over to see him while he was
there in Colorado (they were living somewhere else) and she
and I got him to promise to resign after he went back, be
cause we couldn't see any reason why he should go back there
and risk his life. His father never forgave us because they
offered him so much money to stay — ten thousand dollars — that
was a lot of money then. But he did resign, and he had to
give them several months! not ice. I think I told you how they
cut a hole in the ceiling of our bedroom amd stored ammunition
up there? They had practice and had some very good shots
among the Americans up there.

Ersklne: You were very much aware that the revolution was going to
happen then?

Richards: Oh yes. There were indications of it—had been for awhile,

but I had had every expectation when I came out to go back. I
never thought 1 wouldn't go back. Then my husband came out,
and we didn't go back until 1923.

Erskine: ' Was this during the Mexican Revolution— 1910, 191 1?

Richards: Yes; we were there during the time of Porfirio Diaz. I got
over the border the day before the Revolution broke out but
my husband went right back down (he had come with us to El

90

Richards: Paso) and It was a pretty bad situation. They were isolated
from Guanajuato. My husband took some personal pictures of
the group of revolutionists who came to La Luz.

Return to Guanajuato, 1957

Erskine: When was the last time you were in Guanajuato?

Richards: Well, some years ago. I forgot to check with my son. He

could have told me that too. He and his wife and little boy
drove down and took me along. He was real proud of the way I
stood that trip. So we drove clear to Mexico City. We de-
toured over to Guanajuato and actually we found this dear old
mozo Juan we loved so much, still iving. He was crippled up
and quite elderly. My son took pictures of me with Juan. It
was wonderful to me to see Juan again. Let's see, that boy is
eighteen now, going to be nineteen next month, and he was a
little boy then. His mother took his books along and taught
him on the trip because we went during the school year, still
in the spring.

Erskine: Was that after World War II?

Richards: When did World War II end? Oh yes, I think so. | »m sorry, I

91

Richards: could have checked that date. It was in 1957. Anyway I
saw Guanajuato again.

Erskine: Was there very much difference in the — between when you

first went to Mexico and say, 1957, in the general living
standards? Could you see a change?

Richards: I didn't really see so much change but our time there was
too short to see much. There wasn't room for much mew
building. Mining was not active.

Of course there were automobiles then, in 1957, and how
they were managing to get through those little narrow streets — !
I told you when we rode horses back and forth there were little
narrow sidewalks and when you heard the streetcar coming you
had to put your horse up on that sidewalk. Many places the
streets were that narrow. You'd put them in a single row, the
streetcar would go by, and then you could get back down on the
cobblestone. Anyway later on the picture changes a little
bit there.

Monterrey, 1923-1928

Richards: On our second stay In Mexico we went to Monterrey, which was
the third largest city in Mexico. I think it still is. It

92

Richards: was an Industrial city, and the Penoles was quite a larqe
company there. It was a subsidiary of the American Metals
Company, and they owned a lot of their own rolling stock on
the railroad. It was really one of the three largest
American mining companies in Mexico. The A.S. & R., the U.S.
and the Penoles. It was such a contrast to having lived in
Guanajuato. This daughter who's teaching now—we arrived
there on her fifth birthday; that was her first experience
in Mexico. Her brother Keith was two. He was very blond, and
along the streets the Mexicans would follow and touch him—
they thought it was good luck to touch a blond. Curls and
blue eyes and very fair complexion. We gave Carol a peso or
two and took her up to the market and let her buy some of
her birthday presents. It was a little girl's heaven to go
in there—little potteries and all the things that a child
would enjoy. She says, "I will never forget that day."

Then the wife of the assistant manager for the Penoles
company helped us find a house, a place to live. Here again
my husband was down there before us and the Harbords had
made friends with him and they had him in every Sunday night
at their home for a family dinner. He had taken an interest
In their older boys. He gave them supervisory help in re
building a tennis court there. Mrs. Harbord's father had

93

Richards: been the Episcopal bishop for all of Mexico. Bishop Aves1
children had been raised down there really. The Bishop
played, I think it was chess—no, that was my husband's
game. The Bishop played dominoes. He was very shrewd,
could make quite a game of it. My husband would play with
him and they liked that too. The Bishop came down on visits.
He was living in Texas but he was retired at that time. Mrs.
Harbord had a company car and a chauffeur but they had one
for the family also. The chauffeur's name was Jose, a plump
Mexican, goodnatured and all. We had our older boy with us,
Edwin Jr., and the Methodists ran a little school there of
sorts but he was so homesick for all the sports and things
at home here so we had him come back up here. Then he was
homesick for us. But anyway he was the one that I made the
trip back to Mexico with In 1957. We didn't get to Monterrey
because it was terribly hot, that is down south of San Antonio,
You go through San Antonio to go to Monterrey. It's almost
due south of San Antonio in the state of Nueve Leon. And
the Madera family — of one of the revolutionary presidents —
their family home was near here. Monterrey is a beautifully
situated city. There are mountains in the distance. One of
the most spectacular storms I ever saw was while sitting on
our porch there and watching the lightning break over those
Santa Catarina mountains.

94

Richards: There are many things of historical interest about
Monterrey, but I don't believe I'm going to have time to
tell you all of that, or you don't have the time. Would you
I i ke to stop now?

Erskine: Well it's up to you. I have just a few questions. .. 1923,
after the revolution — could you see any differences in the
way people were living?

Richards: Of course this was a city and many, of course not all, were
living very modern and very well in Monterrey. The two
smelters, a steel mill and many smaller factories gave work
to many. Villa had been in there before we came and now
they have been making a hero of him, and I could tell you
the stories and things I know about Villa. You know, Pancho
Villa, but these folks told us stories of when he came to
Monterrey. He came to Monterrey and robbed a bank twice.
The people that lived there then, including Mrs. Harbord, the
wife of the assistant manager — he later became manager of
Penoles Company for all Mexico—but they can never make a
hero of Villa to me. He killed his own people too, you know.
There was a Mexican In Monterrey who had a couple of mules,
and he made his living for his family with them, and they
looked pretty good, so Pancho decided to take them, and the
owner said, "Oh please leave them. That's how I make my

95

Richards: living for my family," and Pancho's men shot him. And
that's the way Pancho worked.

The company finally started a little school there in
Monterrey. The lack of one was becoming a real problem for

•

many of their employees. We had left some of our family
here — the two daughters were in college — about starting.
Their grandmother Richards stayed with them. Anyway the
company started a school and they rented one of the beauti
ful old homes — it had been — up in the nice part of town.
They hired two teachers. One had taught before she had
married one of the company employees. Then they imported
one teacher from Texas. They divided the children into two
groups — first four grades and second four grades. Our
children went to the one who had taught before she was
married.

There were a few times I just couldn't get out of
attending parties. I did all the times 1 could. We really
could not afford the social life there and keep our children
in school here. I never really played bridge and my husband
said I just wasn't interested. I didn't like it. And at
these parties they'd invite the guests ahead to be sure to
get — you know — all these tables filled. There seemed
to be a competition between hostesses. I never heard

96

Richards: a sound like all those women talking. They were the

American groups. They'd say to me, "You just sit in for
Anita until she gets through school." Anita would rush
over from school and I handed her some pretty bad scores
to start. [Laughter] The children loved the experience
of this school. It was really very pleasant.

We were living out — by that time there had been a
vacancy inside the smelter enclosure and Mr. Harbord said
we could move out there. My husband was not working at the
smelter but they had an experimental laboratory out there
and he would experiment with the different ores from their
properties and then work out a system of treatment, and then
design mills. He would leave a crew working there while he
made other trips. He designed a really big mill for a place
down at Achotla on the Balsas River in the state of Guerrero.
They called it Mount Olympus. It was up on a hill like that.
Mr. Richards wrote the story of this for the Engineering
and Mining Journal entitled "Salt Roasting and Cyaniding at
Achotla, Mexico." It was published in two parts—the first
dated September 1st and the second part September 8, 1928.
My husband had been made head of the milling department for
the Penoles Company.

Once a year the company had a big to-do and several

97

Richards: dances and parties and a big banquet. And that banquet was
really something. Anyway they'd bring as many as they could
spare from the different units and they would each prepare
some skit or entertainment. There was a free bar there;
everybody had anything they wanted to drink. The company
really made a big splurge of this yearly gathering.

The company headquarters were in Monterrey and we
stayed there and when they started that school we were
living out there at the smelter which was much pleasanter
because we had a big yard. The Harbords had two boys that
were going to school there so they had Jose drive them in to
school in the morning and they picked up our children too and
drove them in and then Jose would get them at noon and bring
them home for a hot lunch and take them back in and pick them
up after school. One of the little Harbord boys said to our
children, because we didn't have a car — we rode on the
little local streetcars — "oh you're lucky. You can ride on
the streetcar." The rich little boy envying the kids that
could ride on streetcars. . .But anyway that was very pleasant.
Our children enjoyed it.

They owned a little park — the company did. The company
people could have little parties out there. So on somebody's
birthday they had a party for some of the children and our

98

Richards: children were Included. They had a pinata. There was quite
a crowd of children there and each child got a chance, blind
folded, to hit at it with a stick. Well it had been hit so
many times that it was leaking some of the candy, nuts and
treats with which it was filled on the ground. So our little
boy — he wasn't very old — and some of the others tried to grab
them up, and somebody came along and hit it before they got
out of the way and it came down on Keith's head and cut it
open horribly. He bled all over everything, so the women were
frightened. They put him in a car and drove him downtown to
an American doctor there — he took care of all the company
people. He stitched up the head, and they washed out his
little white shirt, and tried to make it not any more scary
than they could. Then they brought him home. A delegation of
women came home with him. He never forgot that experience.
Pinata was always a memory to him. But they said he wasn't
frightened. He went on eating some of his goodies on the way
to the hospital .

Life In Monterrey had been a pleasant experience in many
ways and a highlight was when our two girls spent their summer
vacation with us, visiting the entire family.

99

Sombrerete, Zacatecas, 1929

Trip Down

Richards: While we were at Guanajuato—oh no—we went from Monterrey

to this place over in Zacatecas, and that's where there were
the bandits that I mentioned. There again we went back into
the primitive area you might say, in a way. There were so
many things that were interesting there.

We went down on the train. The proceedings were the
same. My husband had gone on ahead but these children were
a little older. They didn't have the hardships of that first
trip to Guanajuato. We went on the train again, because there
weren't airplanes. I still prefer trains. I've had one trip
on an airplane and I didn't like it.

Erskine: This is about 1925?

Richards: No> it must have been |ater than that. Must have been— this
was the last revolution Mexico had. We were up there during
the last revolution and they called a former president Calles
back to put down the revolution, the present president then
did. This would have been maybe in '27 or '28.

When we got off the main line train (we went down through
El Paso) we got off at a little bit of a place called "Empalme

100

Richards: Canitas." That meant where two train lines met.

Erskine: Junction.

Richards: Junction. We went to the only hotel in the town. It was
called Hotel Paris and it had dirt floors and old lumpy
cotton mattresses on metal beds and a little wash bowl In
the corner — tin washbowl or enamel maybe, and a pitcher of
cold water for your washing up. As we went over there it
was at night, and a drunken man followed us and frightened
the little daughter almost to death. I think he was probably
trying to get some money, but she never has forgotten that
Hotel Paris.

Then we went out by car — we had a company car for our
use — oh no, we took the little train to Sombrerete. It went
close to Sombrerete anyway. Then the car met us there 1 guess
and we went on out to our new home. Sombrerete was a pretty
little town. I believe Sombrerete is on some of the routes
the tourists take — not the main route which most of them
drive. This train that we came down on however was only
allowed at that time to go just a few miles below where we
got off of it at Empalme Canitas, and then they stopped it
at night because the trains were being shot at at night,
and then they took It on to Mexico City the next day. A
woman on there had put her suitcase up against the window,

10!

Richards: and the instructions were, if any shooting started, to throw
yourself down in the aisle to get 'out of the line of the
bul lets.

Home and Social Life

Richards: This new home beyond Sombrerete at La Noria (which means

the well) was an adobe house but some American or Englishman
had supervised its building and they hadn't let the Mexicans
build the walls as thick as they should be. Anyway it was
very charming, with a big living room, commodious, with lots
of furniture and a large fireplace. We spent one year there
I think only, and we came out in 1929, so that should set the
dates pretty well, but what a year it was! It was then oper
ating under a guard because the bandits had been bad around
that area for some time. We had two little forts up on the
hills which soldiers stayed in, and they were supposed to
guard the property because the company had said they wouldn't
work anymore if they didn't have protection, as a former
manager had been taken by bandits. It was a large producer.
I think I told you that my husband had several hundred

102

Richards: employees there. It meant a lot to that little town of

Sombrerete. In the little camp out there called La Noria
practically everybody there except a few of the merchants
or somebody like that worked at this mine and mill.

That's where we were living when the — oh yes, and
the house was staffed when we arrived there, there were two
blond Hungarian girls. Their part of Hungary, when it was
cut up in the war, had been given to Rumania. They were then
forced to learn Rumanian in the schools. It was very bitter
to them of course. The younger girl was very bright and had
won honors at school in Hungary. They had been working for
some of the company people in Mexico City, I think a bachelor
group, but then they broke up — some got married or something,
so the company wanted to send them out there to this place.
The girls took it because they had a brother in the United
States. He had become a citizen and he could bring his
mother over from Hungary and they thought this younger girl,
who wasn't very old — the father had died, but when they got
down to the ship — they didn't let this girl come. I think she
was only about thirteen. They let the mother come. The older
sister sai.d, "Well I'll take care of her — you go on." They
hoped the brother could work something out later. They had
one brother then who had gotten to Mexico, and through that
brother they got to Mexico, and they were hoping eventually to

103

Richards: get to this country. They were so happy when we came in
with children because the people there before us had been
just a couple. This was an English company that had this
place. These girls were very lonely. We had to speak in
Spanish, their language being German and ours being English
of course.

Erskine: I imagine by then you spoke very good Spanish.

Richards: I never spoke good Spanish. I spoke Mexican without verbs,
as I say. Anyway we could converse. The children did much
better. Keith was still very blond, and he reminded them of
the little boys in Hungary. The children spent a good deal
of the time in the kitchen talking to Suzy and Eva. Suzy was
the younger one. She took care of the house. Eva was the
cook. We really ate well. My husband said I was afraid of
her. I just had good sense; I never went into the kitchen.
I felt it was her business and it was so wonderful just to
go out and sit down and not know what you were going to have
to eat. It was really a luxury. We treated them as though
they were nice American girls. We didn't treat them like this
other woman had. This made a difference I think. We were
all very happy there together.

Everything went along very nicely. Every weekend — oh no,
that was up in La Luz — see, I got them mixed up... There was a

104

Richards: tennis court adjoining our garden in La Luz where we lived
and there was a group of Americans who played tennis there,
especially on the weekends. We often had weekend guests up
from Guanajuato staying at our house. We used to all get
together and I'd make some little refreshments, but I'm
back at La Luz now. But we did have guests qujte often at
La Noria. In fact there was a little suite of rooms that
had been built for when the executives came up from Mexico
City so they could stay there. The telephone happened to be
in that section of the building and there was. a shower in
there and a separate bathroom and things for them. They ate
with us, since we had a house staff and all, and we enjoyed
thei r company.

When we began to have these alarms about bandits coming
I remember the teniente (lieutenant) of this little group of
soldiers up there coming to our house and he said, "Of course,
Senor, we'll stand until the last man" goes down but we'll be
outnumbered." I could understand Spanish now quite well but
somehow I didn't have much confidence in what he said.

Life In La Noria During the Revolution

Richards: As the revolution continued life became more difficult for

105

Richards: our small group in La Noria. The revolutionists had

destroyed much of the railroad line from El Paso on the
south and the government had taken over any railroad
lines left for moving their troops. This included the
narrow gauge line from Empalme Canitas on the main line to
Durango, in the state of the same name, by which our mail
and supplies reached us. This meant we didn't have any mail
for many weeks nor could we send any. The government also
controlled the entire telegraph system. We were completely
cut off from our daughters in Berkeley.

We had a Zenith table radio which seemed to get distance
earlier in the day than the others, so usually the ladies
joined me at our house and we would try to get some news. Our
nearest stations were in Texas and if we did succeed in get
ting a news report it was disappointing to find what a small
part of the news was given to our situation in Mexico. In
Berkeley our daughters had finally become so anxious they had
appealed to authorities there who contacted the American
Embassy in Mexico City, who sent them back word that La Noria
was cut off and no news had come from there for several weeks.

The power plant for the La Noria property was located
a few miles away on this narrow gauge line since the fuel
they used was oil and came shipped in huge tanks. The

106

Richards: supply was growing small and it would mean closing down and
then all these pepple would be out of work. Learning that
Calles was moving h,is troops over this railroad my husband
decided to try to see him. Mr. Richards took one of his
men who spoke both Spanish and English perfectly with him
just in case it would help. The guard took the message to
Calles who received them at once on his private car and was
most pleasant. He assured my husband that if it became
necessary he would clear the line to allow a car of fuel to
pass. Then Mr. Richards asked another favor: to send one
message through to El Paso to the forwarding company there
who took care of our company business at the border, to say
their folks in La Noria were safe, giving a list of the people
In the States who were to receive this notice. The former
president called In an aide and told him to clear all telegraph
lines and send this immediately. We were all most grateful
to Genera I Cal les.

We had so many alarms during this period. Once there
were supposed to be eight hundred bandits coming. About
twenty-five of us — mostly Americans and English, though anyone
was welcome — would gather at the boarding house down in the
village where the single men stayed. There was an entrance
to a tunnel not far away and a guard was placed there. If

107

Richards: the word came, we were to rush for the mine where supplies
were kept and supposedly our men could shoot anyone coming
in. I kept wondering what would happen if the bandits held
an innocent person in front of them. Sometimes we took
mattresses and bedding from home and stayed all night at the
boarding house; our children slept on the billiard table.
Once orders came from Mexico City from our company officials,
ordering all employees to go to Sombrerete or the company
would not be responsible for us.

There wasn't any school for our two children so I had
to do the best I could with a home system which other iso
lated Americans used and I believe is still in business. It
was called the Calvert System. I'm afraid I wasn't a good
teacher. Our children had many handicaps in their schooling
through the years, especially by present day standards. I
think I have a right to be proud of them since in spite of
everything all five graduated from the University of California

Our water supply at La Noria came from the mine and had
to be boiled, then cooled through a large porous rock. Our
ice came by train from Durango to Sombrerete, then by truck
to us. We had an old-fashioned ice box on the back porch.

One night I investigated a noise and was just in time to see
a coyote who had gotten the ice box door open, leaving with

108

Richards: what was to have been our fillet of beef roast for the
next day.

Our daughter Ruth came to spend her vacation with us
in La Mori a and so shared some of our troubled times. She
knew of some ruins of a former culture not too far from La
Noria that she wished very much to visit. We had to get
permission from soldiers in the town near the ruins in order
to go out to see them, because of the danger. The soldiers
said that if we were not back by a certain time they would
come and look for us.

One of the more unusual and pleasant experiences during
our stay in La Noria was when the circus came to town. This
was a small circus and had to reach La Noria by coming up
over the dirt roads. The only level area in the town where
they could pitch their tent was the tailing dump from the
mill. Many of the people and certainly some of the children
had never seen a circus before.

Bandits

/

Richards: One day my husband was home for lunch and the telephone rang
and this lieutenant In charge of the soldiers said they'd
had orders to change the guard. The army was sending a fresh

109

Richards: group in and he wanted to get the company cars to take them
down to this little place and the cars would bring the other
soldiers back. What they did was go down and join the revo
lution, and we were left without any protection. But they
kept their word about sending the company cars back.

The news that they had gone no doubt reached the bandit
group that came in. So apparently the soldiers had been a
real protection.

The revolutionists and bandits were not in any way
connected. The bandits who raided La Mori a lived in the hills
near a small town named Chalchiuites. They sometimes raided
into the state of Jalisco, also into Durango and Zacatecas,
the state we were in. The leader's name was Francisco Serrano.

So when the bandits heard that there weren't any soldiers
in La Mori a they came up in the night; there were forty-seven
of them on horseback. They had these things around their
shoulders — bandoliers, I think they are called, full of cart
ridges, and slings alongside their saddles for their rifles;
guns all over them. After daylight, when we could see them,
they looked to me — if somebody had told me there were thousands
I would have believed it.

Our 6Ider son Edwin Jr. was staying with us. He was
between high school and college and his father didn't want

10

Richards: him to start college in the mid-year. That night he was

on shift in the mill and the conveyor belt broke and he took
a couple of Mexican boys with him up into the top of the mill
to see if they could fix it. One of them looked out the window
and saw the bandits: they had the watchman down there sur
rounded with their guns pointing at him.

Our son's first thought was to warn us, though the
telephone was in an office outside the mill so he would be
seen. He started to run out and the boys said, "Oh they'll
kill you!" because he had blond hair and blue eyes and looked
very gringo, so they tried to keep him from going, but he
ran out anyway. They followed him and one of them put his
cap over the son's blond hair and used his soiled gloves
and smeared over his face to make him look darker. Our son
called our house and the telephone was in a different part
of the house. Usually the two watchmen out in the garden
would build a little fire and go to sleep, but Aniceto was
awake and he came over and knocked on our bedroom door and
said the telephone was ringing. So my husband got up and
answered the phone and it was the son calling from the mill
and he said, "The bandits are leaving here to come over for
you." Of course as my husband was the manager they'd take him
for ransom. If you don't get the money to them by a certain

HI

Richards: time you're in trouble, when dealing with these bandits.
We didn't have much time. My husband came back and
told me that the bandits were coming over here. So I had
to think of these two little children, three o'clock in the
morning and we were at about nine thousand feet elevation
there and it was bitterly cold. I roused them up and got
some warm clothes out and tried to get them to start dress
ing. All that time my husband was dressing for the cold
hard horseback ride he expected to make with the bandits;
and his knee-high engineers's boots took a long time to
lace. He had left a coat in the living room. He wanted
that warm coat but didn't dare risk going in for it. We had
a gun in our bedroom on the closet shelf and our mozo later
tried to find that because he had decided to join the bandits
and if you could bring your own gun it helped. He tried to
find my husband's gun and never did find it. 1 said to
Aniceto, "Go and call Eva and Suzy and tell them to get out
right now." (They had a little house back of the big house.)
"Si, Senora." We couldn't leave those girls there, they were
like part of the family and we felt responsible for their
safety, nor the watchmen, because the bandits might kill them
if they wouldn't tell them where we were hiding. So the girls
got ready fast. As we left by a back door we could hear the

112

Richards: bandits talking as they climbed the hill to our house.

We hid for several hours behind some little bushes
just up back of our house on a hill. After it got daylight
they came back again. They were leading a riderless horse
and I said to my husband, "There's your horse!" meaning, they
brought it for him to ride on. Then I looked down and there
were Suzy and Eva — they had gone back to the house! So I
started to go down but my husband wouldn't let me. It seems
Aniceto had tried to find us (the bushes were too small for
all of us to be together) to get permission for the girls
to go back, they said they were so cold they couldn't stand
it, after they knew the baodits had been there once and left.
(We had remembered to pick up some serapes to wrap the I ittle
children in.) Suzy and Eva thought we had left our first
hiding place, and told the bandits we had, fortunately for us.
They even told them where we had been.

After warning us, our son called the other folks over
on the opposite hill. There were two couples without children,
one man was Mr. Carnahan, assistant to my husband. They
escaped but were so cold they decided to return to their homes
for blankets, and the bandits caught them. The bandits were
carrying things they had taken from our house, having gone
there first. They took the two men down to the village and

113

Richards: eventually took Mr. Carnahan to hold for ransom when they
were unable to find my husband on their second visit to
our house. The bandits also took Dr. Olvera, who was the
company doctor, a very fine and brave young Mexican.

The bandits took the maji who represented local au
thority — the Alcalde I think he was called — out on a hill
and said they planned to kill him. We could hear his
little girl crying and pleading for his life. We heard
later that they didn't kill him. An Arab merchant and
one or two others completed the group they felt would
bring them money if held for ransom. Of course the two
company men were their biggest prize. By daylight we saw
them carrying some of our possessions from our house on
their second trip there. On the porch there was a hand
made saddle we had had made for our daughter Carol. It
was hard to watch that being stolen.

After Suzie and Eva convinced the bandits that they
were not part of the family but only worked there, they did
not bother them, and Suzie even scolded one of the bandits
because his spurs were scratching the floor as he walked
around looking for things to steal. Eva saved some of my
husband's clothes by getting the bandits to take some from
the guest suite where the officials alw'ays left some of
theirs instead.

14

Richards: When we saw the group riding up the road they left by
we tried to see if they had taken anyone and if so who, but
were unable to Identify them. They made several false starts
to leave but when they finally seemed to be gone and did not
intend to return my husband went to the office to find out
who might have been taken by the bandits and other details.
First he had to have the telephone repaired as the bandits
had cut some of the line between La Nor I a and Sombrerete.

The bandits sent Dr. Olvera back with a letter demanding
the ransom of $30,000 pesos — half in gold— for the release of
him and Mr. Carnahan and threatened to kill Mr. Carnahan if
the doctor did not return by a certai'n time.

My husband went to Sombrerete and raised all the cash he
could as he had authority to sign for the company and the
merchants were most wi 1 1 ing to he I p. This the doctor took back
to Serrano who signed a receipt for the amount and stated how
much was still due. The road Dr. Olvera traveled was long and
dangerous for him. This was a very trying period for everyone.
Mr. Carnahan 's brother in New York put pressure on to have the
Mexican army rescue his brother which caused Mrs. Carnahan to
plead with my husband to try and beg them not to do it, fearing
the bandits would be sure to kill Mr. Carnahan.

Mr. Carnahan wrote my husband a number of letters durino

I 15

Richards: the time he was being held prisoner, several of which I

still have. He told of his efforts to get Serrano to settle
for less money, but without any success. Once Serrano told
Mr. Carnahan that he was taking twenty of his men and would
be gone for four or five days. It was easy to guess what
their mission was to be.

Eventually the remainder of the ransom was brought by
company officials from Mexico City, turned over to Serrano,
and the doctor and Mr. Carnahan were safe back home at last.

Shortly after this some army officers visited La Noria
and one sent our daughter Carol a pony for the loss of her
sadd le.

Like people of any country, including our own, there
are good and bad ones and we found both kinds during our
years in Mexico, but the good ones far outnumbered the bad
ones. I think we understand them better for having shared
these years, and we feel a true affection for them and their
country.

PARTIAL INDEX

Alpine Tunnel

Buena Vista, Colorado

Calles, General

Continental Divide

Diaz, Porfirio

Gunnison Tunnel

Hidalgo

La Luz, Mexico

La Mori a, Mexico

Mary Murphy Mine

Mexican Revolution (1910)

Monterrey, Mexico

Morley, Ben

Pinguico Mine

Rose, Hugh

St. Elmo, Colorado

Tin Cup, Colorado

II, 14, 15, 16, 18

2, 3, 5, 9, 13

99, 106

3, 13, 16, 17, 18, 34, 43

78, 87, 89

20

78

82

101, 104
12, 35
88, 89, 104
91
23
79

60, 67
2, 5-44
16, 17, 26

Resume

Melville C. Erskine, Jr. January 1, 1968

2315 Jefferson Street
Berkeley, California

Experience

Mineral exploration experience covers ten field seasons.
This includes uranium exploration on the Colorado Plateau for
Union Carbide Nuclear, limestone exploration in Southeastern Alaska
for Ideal Cement Company, gold exploration in Northwest Territories,
Canada, for Selco Exploration Co. Ltd., and porphyry copper exploration
from Arizona through British Columbia for Tech Corporation, and for
Chapman, Wood and Griswold Ltd.

Numerous consulting projects have been undertaken. The following
are representative:

Antimony evaluation in Nevada

Directed a major geochemical exploration program for Tech Corporation

in western U. S.

Evaluated geothermal steam and brine possibilities in California
Iron ore exploration and evaluation for sale to the Japanese
Porphyry copper prospect evaluation in Nevada and Arizona
Surface and underground geologic mapping of mercury, chromite,

Cu-Pb-Zn, and pegmatite deposits for economic evaluation
Conducted and/or interpreted induced polarization surveys and

other geophysical surveys under many different circumstances

One year was spent teaching modern exploration techniques (geological,
geochemical, and geophysical) to geologists from underdeveloped countries
for A.I.D. and the University of California Extension at Berkeley.

Education

Geol. Engr. in Mining Geology, Colorado School of Mines (1960)

M. S. in Mineral Exploration, University of California, Berkeley (1964)

Ph. D. in Mineral Exploration, University of California, Berkeley
(1968 projected)