2004: Volume 17, Issue 25
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Volume 17, Issue 25, 2004 HHII SS TTOORRIICCAA LL LLYY JJEE FF FF CCOO CONTENTS The Kidnap-Murder of Adolph Coors III 2 HHIISSTT First Place Winner Writer’s Award Contest The White Ash Mine Disaster 9 Second Place Winner Writer’s Award Contest HIstory of Coal Creek Canyon 14 Volunteer Fire Department Honorable Mention Writer’s Award Contest Mountain View – 19 One Hundred Years and Counting Jefferson County 24 Historic Hall of Fame Barbara & Eugene Sternberg Robert Boyles Bradford Steamboats on Clear Creek 26 Jesuits in Jefferson County: 30 A Story of Regis College Historic Arvada 1850-2004 35 Historic Site Designations 40 in Jefferson County JCHC News & Members 44 JCHC Publications Committee Erlene Hulsey-Lutz, Chair Mark McGoff, Vice Chair Milly Roeder, Editor, Historically Jeffco Published by Jefferson County Historical Commission (JCHC) Volume 17, Issue 25, 2004 ISSN 1532-6047 Cover Photo Two well-dressed women and a man look at a hydraulic placer gold mining dredge (see story page 26). Photo courtesy of Denver Public Library Western History Collection, Call # X-60126 Design & Layout FinePrint, Golden, CO SSTTOORRIICCAA LL LLYY JJEE FF FF CCOO Miners of the White Ash Mine (See story page 9) Photo courtesy of Golden DAR Pioneer Museum, (negative #554) -1- Newspaper photos and articles courtesy of the Denver Public Library Western History Collection. -2- The Kidnap-Murder of Adolph Coors III First Place the next plane for home, dragging 10:30 Tuesday meeting with his Writer’s Award Contest By Jerry Grunska Mary back in dismay. brothers, Ad’s friend Bill Moomey, On that overcast morning in Coors’ advertising director, anky, laid back, 44-year-old 1960, wearing his customary base- volunteered to fetch him. Adolph Coors III had some ball cap, Ad left his ranch home, Moomey drove to Turkey Creek L handicaps to contend with a T-shaped structure perched on Road (what is now West Belleview at the start of 1960, several of the west shoulder of the Dakota Avenue) off Highway 285 through which he was aware a cut in the hog- but one that he was back, where he not. He was not saw a milk truck aware that moving parked at the to a ranch south of edge of the Morrison left him bridge, the driver vulnerable to a blowing his stalker. Those of horn. Moomey which he was aware got out of his included a pro- car and spoke to nounced stutter, a Dan Crocker, a ferocious temper, local milkman, and an allergic reac- who said, “That tion to beer. The car’s blocking beer allergy, though the bridge and quaint, was not real- the driver’s ly a problem, nowhere around. although it relegat- The radio’s ed him to a nomi- still on.” nal role in running Moomey saw the family brewery. that the car on Younger brothers the bridge was Bill and Joe actually Ad’s green-and- ran the firm. white Interna- The usually affa- tional Travelall ble Adolph, called station wagon, “Ad” by family and puffing exhaust. co-workers, should- After he and n’t really have been Dan Crocker in Colorado at all arrived at the on February 9th. vehicle, Moomey Late in January, he and his wife Hogback overlooking picturesque shut off the engine and went to Mary had flown to the Bahamas Turkey Creek valley around the railing. He called out Coors’s for a vacation; but when the resort 8:00 a.m., for the ten-mile drive name. Only silence. fumbled their reservation, Ad flew to the brewery in Golden. Recently, Dan Crocker’s brother into a rage and climbed aboard When he didn’t show up for a Jim (Dan died about 20 years ago) -3- said that the nation, tension was creating a eerie. Dan major felt a cold sensation. shudder. All the Moomey public jerked his knew was hands from that no the bridge rail- contact ing. There from the was blood on kidnappers it, and he was had also standing occurred in a smear of and that blood. Down- officials stream on the were com- bank was a pletely tan baseball befuddled. cap, and But alongside that that wasn’t lay a brown true. The fedora that following Moomey didn’t recognize. In the was kept from the public, first in day the mail brought a ransom shallow stream was Ad’s pair of hopes of rescuing Coors alive and note to the ranch: glasses with flesh-colored rims. then in an effort to trace his Mrs. Coors: You [sic] husband Moomey told Crocker to head for abductor – without the perpetrator has been kidnaped [sic]. His a phone and call the police. “Tell knowing how the law was closing car is by Turkey Creek. Call them there’s been an accident.” in on him. the police or the F.B.I.: he Crocker did as he was told, but Art Wermuth, Jefferson County dies. Cooperate: he lives. he had doubts about it being an sheriff brought deputies to the Ransom: $200,000 in tens and accident. “He knew whose station scene, some on horseback, some $300,000 in twenties. There wagon that was,” Crocker’s brother with bloodhounds. When will be no negotiating. said. “He suspected foul play Wermuth’s bloodhounds couldn’t Bills: used/non-consecutive/ almost at once.” pick up a trail, both Bill Moomey unrecorded/unmarked. Moomey figured that two cars and Wermuth concluded that Ad Warning: we will know if you call had come together at the Turkey Coors had never left the bridge on police or record serial numbers. Creek one-lane bridge, neither man his own. The elder Coors, Adolph Directions: Place money & this willing to pull back. They leapt II, 76, was vacationing in Hawaii. letter & envelope in one suit- out of the car, began swinging, When he flew back, reporters met case or bag. Have two men and one guy smacked his head him at Stapleton Airport. “I am with a car ready to make the against the railing. The other dealing with crooks who have delivery. When all set, advertise fellow must have stuck Ad in his something I want to buy: my son,” a tractor for sale in Denver Post car and hustled him off to a he said. “The price is secondary.” Section 69. Sign ad King hospital, leaving the other car run- The FBI waited 24 hours – the Ranch, Fort Lupton. Wait at ning. But calls around quickly law forbade their entry sooner – NA 9 4455 for instructions determined that Adolph wasn’t before coming in on the case. The after ad appears. Deliver imme- in any hospital. He was gone. law presumed that an abductor diately after receiving call. Any Thus began a mystery within a could cross state lines within that delay will be regarded as a stall dilemma, because much of the period. News of the assumed to set up a stake out. Under- drama that eventually unfolded kidnapping rocketed around the stand this: Adolph’s life is in -4- your hands. We have no desire to commit murder. All we want is that money. If you follow instructions, he will be released unharmed within 48 hours after the money is received. The envelope was postmarked Denver on the same date as Ad’s disappearance. Distraught, Mary ran the ad in The Denver Post for two weeks, beginning February 11: “JOHN DEERE. 1957 model 820, 69 h.p. tractor for sale. King Ranch. Fort Lupton, Colo.” No call ever came. But the FBI had a suspect within eight days. The Coors’s 16-year-old daughter Cecily recently had seen a man waiting by the bridge several times. Later, in 1996, then Mrs. Anson Garnsey, Cecily said she had seen the same man in Denver, near their former home on South Steele Street. He wore glasses, a brown fedora, and he was in an old yellow car. Other people living near the ranch had seen the car too; a yellow four-door early 1950s Mercury, one of them said. Several other people along Turkey The following week a burned-out Seattle and had attended the Creek said they heard shots 1951 yellow Mercury – without University of California at (“like lightning hitting a tree”) plates - was discovered in Atlantic Berkeley. that morning, and some even City, New Jersey, but the VIN The manslaughter conviction came up with a partial license number showed it registered to in California came about because number: AT-62… Osborne in Colorado. Plus, finger he had picked up an Air Force By the next Saturday, February prints in the car matched those sergeant and shot him. Corbett 13th, the FBI learned that only found in his apartment. These claimed the hitchhiker had pulled four Mercurys in the whole state fingerprints revealed something a gun and Corbett wrested the bore plates beginning with AT-62. else. Osborne wasn’t Osborne at gun away. However, the dead Three people were quickly cleared, all. He was Joseph Corbett Jr., an man had bullet wounds in the but a fourth individual, one Walter escaped convict from California, back of his head. Without Osborne of 1435 Pearl Street in where he had been serving time witnesses, the prosecutor pushed Denver, had moved out of his for manslaughter. for manslaughter. apartment – leaving no forwarding Before long, this much was Under the name of William information – the day after Coors known about “Osborne:” Chiffins, Corbett had purchased disappeared. Corbett was originally from a Royalite portable typewriter, the -5- kind used to produce the ransom FBI waited till August 1960 to put marked AC III.