JIM WALKER. Born 1918. Transcript of OH 1147V A-C, Recorded at Walker
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JIM WALKER. Born 1918. Transcript of OH 1147V A-C, recorded at Walker Ranch on June 26, 2003, for Boulder County Parks and Open Space and the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. The interviewer is Dock Teegarden. Also present were Rich Koopmann, Tom McMichen, Don Burd, and Carol Beam. This interview also is available on video, filmed by Liz McCutcheon. The transcript was prepared by Anne Dyni. [A]. 000 DOCK: You want me to ask Jim questions? TOM: That’s what we want to do. We want you fellas to talk. You can ask him questions. During your conversation, if we’ve got a specific question, we’ll raise our hands and sort of throw it in there. Otherwise, we want to let you fellas visit and talk about some of the stuff you’ve already been talking about. The wagon road up here, and the Loomis Road and whatever else. DOCK: I’ve got a list of 33 questions. You gonna need some tonsil lubricant before we get started? (laughter) TOM: I’m gonna get you fellas a cup of water real quick. I’ll be right back. DOCK: I didn’t mean old Tanglefoot. (laughter) Well, we may as well get started. I have a feeling that Open Space is considerably interested in that sawmill, and that’s what we’re talking about right here, only they didn’t hear it. But, would you go over that again and locate….that’s a big steam sawmill …and about when was that? JIM: Oh, probably along in 1925, along in there. I was born in 19… and I was probably 7 or 8 years old. DOCK: You certainly remember it. The family bought it and operated the sawmill themselves? JIM: Well, Frank Woods was a partner on it. DOCK: Frank Woods? OK, for whom Woods Gulch is named. That steam engine is in storage right here in the barn, and you’re surprised if it’s the same engine. JIM: Right. DOCK: We’ll get a chance to show him that engine and maybe he’ll know if that was the same old engine. TOM: When we get out of here, we’ll walk in and look wherever you fellas want to look. DOCK: And after that period, how long did that sawmill run? JIM: Oh I would say probably up until ‘28, ‘30. DOCK: So something over ten years? JIM: Oh yeah, yeah. DOCK: And the market was Boulder? JIM: Yeah. DOCK: What trees were you cutting? JIM: Anything that was of any size. We cut spruce and pine. DOCK: And the firs on the back hillside here? JIM: Well, what I call spruce is what you call firs. DOCK: I suspected that. (laughter) Some of them up there now are 12” to 14” in diameter. So they must have grown in 100 years or you’d have cut them too. JIM: Probably. We wouldn‘t cut anything under 18 to 24 inches. DOCK: That’s something to make a note of. 18 to 24 inches. JIM: I think you were telling’ me about all these small stumps around? Well., that was when the beetles went through here and killed all the trees. And then they let the public come in and cut the dead trees and get them out for firewood. And that’s where your small stumps come from. DOCK: Then any of the 10 and 12-inch stumps that we’re stumbling around up here, even though they seem to be quite old, those were not saw logs. JIM: Probably not. Probably some beetle kill that they took down. RICH: Did you move the lumber mill around or did it stay in one place? JIM: No, it was stationary. RICH: It was stationary. DOCK: How about some of the portable mills that operated up here into the ‘50s. Were they taking some of those smaller stumps? JIM: Not very many. You take a log that’s any smaller than 12 to 14 inches, you couldn’t get anything out of it. It didn’t pay. By the time you slabbed it, why you got a 2” x 4” . (laughter) DOCK: Well, that’s been a puzzle to me. I keep stumbling over those stumps and I remember when the portables were operating up here. And a lot of that didn’t make sense. Now I guess it does. What size saw was on that? It was a circle saw, of course. JIM: Yeah, I can’t remember, but I think it was about a 42 inch. DOCK: Forty-two inch? That would take a big log. Hmm. You don’t know any of them that might be around on the ranch here? JIM: No. DOCK: And you retired the sawmill and from then on it was all contract with these portable jobs. JIM: Yeah DOCK: What’s the name of that draw that goes down to Boulder Crick that we‘re looking across right here? JIM: Right here? That’s Martin Gulch. DOCK: Martin Gulch. And the far side over there, some of those portable sawmills even went along that hillside up there, didn’t they. JIM: Yeah DOCK: It’s surprising where they took some of those darn things. They were run with truck engines and put on skids and they just moved them around. JIM: Yeah. DOCK: OK. Open Space calls this draw right down below here Columbine Gulch. It runs down off the top of the hill here and down in to.. JIM: The Columbine Gulch that we used to run is one that comes down that side over there. It went into the Loomis Gulch. Then Loomis Gulch went down to the Woods Gulch where the mill was. DOCK: OK, and then Martin Gulch continues on down to the crick. JIM: Yeah. It goes clear into the South Boulder. DOCK: Now, from that ruin down here on the flat and Woods Gulch, there are the remains of probably two buildings down there? One of which is very old and it’s been patched up several times and they’ve all fallen in now. What’s the history of those? JIM: I think they were built by the people that was loggin’. DOCK: I see. JIM: While they were loggin’. DOCK: There‘s two stages there. One of them’s old enough to have square nails and it was log and has notched corners. And then there was another one later that has wire nails, round ones, and … JIM: Aren’t you thinking’ of the Martin house? DOCK: Uh, I always thought so. JIM: That Martin house is the one with the square nails in it. DOCK: OK. JIM: And the deal on the other side that had the round nails? We built that for …..see we tore the Martin house inside out and used it for a hay barn. DOCK: That makes sense. JIM: And then this one we built for a shed for the cabin. DOCK: And just above it up the draw is one of your typical barns. JIM: Yeah. DOCK: OK, we’ll get to those in a few minutes after we get the sawmills out of the way here. Up that draw that they call Columbine, and I don’t know what you call it…probably Martin? Where it comes down just over the ridge here, down to the old Martin house? JIM: I guess we never even had a name on that one. DOCK: All right. It isn’t very big but there‘s a good stream comes down it. And there was a road that went up on the west or right-hand side of it goin‘ up. And that must have been a timber hauling road, too. JIM: I would imagine yeah. I can’t place that. RICH: Dock, is the boiler down in that draw? That boiler that’s bricked in? DOCK: I don’t know of it. There’s a wagon rack in there that I was comin’ to. RICH: There was an old boiler sitting down in one of those gulches that had brick around it. Is that one of yours, Jim? JIM: No. I’m thinking the one you’re talkin’ about is down below the Martin house isn’t it? RICH: Yeah, I think it could be. JIM: Yeah, the mill that was down in there. The one we had, we just gathered up rock and got clay from where that road goes around out of Woods Gulch. That clay was sticky as the dickens. We’d dig clay out of there and then the fire just baked it and worked just like brick. DOCK: Anyway, up that draw there’s the remains of what was a mighty stout corral . It isn’t very big and it extends from the crick up toward the road probably about 75 feet. It’s almost down now. There‘s a gate there and it has hand-forged ring hinges. JIM: Oh yeah. (chuckle) That would be my dad’s work. DOCK: And there’s the same kind of hinges on the gate up at the top of Meyers Gulch, over that old wagon road that goes down to the flume. Identical. Made by the same man. JIM: Yeah, right. He made all the hinges for all these gates. In the wintertime, we’d make up all the hinges for the gates and all the double-tree assemblies. Everything we needed for next year. We worked in the blacksmith shop over there. DOCK: He was an artist. JIM: Yep. DOCK: The interesting thing about it is I’ve never seen any of those hinges before that were made with a sharp spike on the end so you just plain drove ‘em into the gate post.