Tom Sharp's Post
19 Tom Sharp's Post Tom Sharp's Post, a log and adobe Indian trading station, built in 1870, is a familiar sight to those traveling Highway 305, in Huerfano County, between the remnants of Malachite and the top of Pass Creek Pass. The post, flbout a mile from the site of the once-thriving town called Malachite, stands near the Huerfano River crossing of the Gardner-Red Wing. road. Sharp's place was known as Buzzard Roost Ranch be cause hundreds of buzzards roosted in the cottonwood trees along the stream there. A well-traveled Ute Indian trail over the Sangre de Cristo range ran through the ranch, thence to Badito, and on to the Greenhorn Mountains. Ute Chief Ouray and his wife, Chipeta, often visited Sharp while their tribes men camped nearby. W. T. (Tom) Sharp, a native of Missouri, served with the Confederate forces at the beginning of the Civil War. His general was Sterling Price. In 1861, Sharp was paroled from the service because of wounds, and was placed in a wagon bound for the Far West. Surviving the trip across country, he joined a half-breed Indian hunter named "Old Tex,'' and for a time the two sup plied meat to mining camps in California and Oregon . Later Sharp headed eastward. With a partner, John Miller, he contracted to supply telegraph poles for the Union Pacific Railroad, then building into Wyoming. In 1867, he was a de puty sheriff in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In the autumn of 1868, Tom Sharp, John White, and John Williams, with an old prairie wagon, came into the Huerfano Valley looking for a location.
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