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Dear Nancy and Frank:

I thought I was going to have a few minutes three days ago to write a few lines in answer to your perfectly grand letter; as you see from the date, I have not progressed very much; in fact this is the first time that I have hade this much time, however since receiving your letter I have answered dozens of communications in reference to inquiries about property and records etc.

Frank had not gotten home from his hunting trip when you wrote, I hope he got a deer. I have not gone hunting for a number of years, in fact I am afraid to go during hunting season as so many persons shoot at the first thing they see moving and so many persons have been shot that I would rather not go, to tell the truth I have all the venison that we want as we have a lot of it given to us.

I was very sorry to learn that Susie had lost her daughter, there is nothing the grieves me so much as to see a young person go before they have even had a chance in this world, life is so short and holds so much for all of us if we will try to get it as we go along and make the most of what we have and can get.

To answer some of the questions in your letter, Mother [Almeda Peabody  also see some photos] is quite well for one of her age, you would be surprised to see her. She does not seem to have aged as much as some of the others who are younger, she gets around very well and she has a very alert mind, her grand children, especially Celia’s boys like to take her to Denver and on trips as she is such a good sport.

Celia [Celia Peabody Oakley - Cliff's sister]  is here and has been for a number of years, they, the Oakley family, bought some land in Utah about 1911, lived there for several years when the State bought the settlers out after the dam broke and spoiled the irrigation project as the state did not want to re-build the dam. They moved to Idaho, got another place and sunk several thousand there, and there is no place like home.

One of Celia’s boys [Melvin Oakley - he ran the compressor house at the London mine while Sydney Gateley was the superintendent there] is living at Alma, working at a mine, has a fairly good job, the other [Clyde Oakley] is at present at Gunnison in the Forest Service, he has a rather high rating, Forest Examiner. He travels around or rather is sent by the government to make examinations of the different forests. He spent one year or longer making examinations of the forests of Montana and taught one year (for the government) in the University of California at Berkeley, subject, Forestry; was then transferred to Colorado again where he spent last winter in Denver making maps from aerial surveys made during the summer.

Mrs. Chapman is still here, they lost both of their boys, heart trouble, I believe with both or maybe it was flue with one.

I am sending you two pictures, one of the Court House and one of the high school. We have two fine buildings in them; the school house has a large auditorium where all the big dances and festivities are held, a gymnasium and swimming pool in the basement.

The Court House stands on the tract of ground (Saturday, Nov. 18) across from the Bank where you used to live, that row of buildings were all torn out and the Court House built well back from the street and occupies all the space between the two streets, that is, the building and the grounds.

No, the town has not grown any to speak of since you were here, a few brick buildings, (Celia has one) are about all the changes, in truth the town is slowly burning down whenever there is a fire they never rebuild and at present the west portion of the town, all the part across the Blue between the railroad tracks and the river is to be dredged, the houses are all being torn down or moved away for the dredge to go through.

There is very little mining going on in the county at present and none for the immediate future. For a number of years the Wellington was the big mine employing some one hundred and fifty men, the placers have all shut down many years ago.

After you left there were three big dredges built, which have operated from time to time, two of which are working now, one in town, just back of our house, the other below the cemetery.

There was about an inch of snow last night, we had about an inch a month ago, that is all the snow there has been this fall, we have had the grandest weather here this year that I have ever seen, day after day of bright sunshine, and warm nights for this altitude.

I would say that you have a very pretty home, from the pictures, the kind we hope to have some day where we can have flowers and the like, as long as we are here we are not going to spend very much money on a house as things are so uncertain.

After all you have everything when you are able to get along and have the things you have on your place, sure it is hard work to care for cows and chix, etc., no one that better than we do, as we bought a small ranch on the Blue River and lived there for eight years. We went there without any experience about farming, the place was run down and did not produce anything and we bought several cows and horses then did not have feed enough to feed the winters through so had to buy feed, the neighbors all tried to jip us on everything we bought as they contended we would starve out, well we might have given it up as a bad job but we have never been run out of a place yet, so we staid.

What we did not know about ranching we learned fast and besides we knew things the others did not know, they began coming to us for help in many things, to survey their ranches and ditches, to dig their wells, to do blacksmith and all kinds of mechanical work, to Victoria to set up with their sick, to help with their funerals, their canning, their entertainments and almost everything you can mention.

When I ran for office they were staunch supporters regardless of their politics and the people of the Blue have ever since been read to come to our defense and have always felt that we belonged to them, but we had to prove ourselves one of them before we were taken in, so to speak.

No one ever had a better helpmate than I have as Victoria has always worked right with me in everything, the same as you and Frank have, it was not easy for her to go on the ranch as she was raised in the city and came from a lovely home, had taught in good schools and was not very husky in the way girls raised to do farm work are, but possessed with a keen determination to do whatever she set out to do. She staid on the ranch alone with Clifton when he was only six years old and milked six or eight cows and fed five horses, several calves, dry stock and all the attendant work that goes along with ranch and home work.

November 20, well here goes another try, back to the last paragraph, well I came to town to work at the Wellington in January, this was in 1919, that was one of the winters they had the flu so bad and a lot of people died, well I got the flu at the Wellington boarding house I got over it, I was not among those that did not make it. Needless to say I did not earn any money it took all I could earn to pay the Doctor and board bills before I had to go back to the ranch, you can imagine how Vic felt and what she had to go through with no one but she and Clifton.

In 1920 I came back to the Wellington again in the winter to help survey the entire mine, it took about six weeks but I got away with a few dollars that time.

Clifton walked a mile and a quarter to school, after the second year we sent him to town with Mother as she had returned from Idaho where she had been with Celia, he attended the Breckenridge school from that time till he graduated from High School, the year he entered High School we made arrangements to come to town and lease our ranch, in the mean time election came along. I ran against George Forman for this office. I have been here going on eight years and have only one opponent since the first year that I ran, and beat him four votes to his one. Vic has been in the office with me all of that time. In fact she has been here more than I have; I have been out of the office quite a bit.

Most every year I have looked after some mining development or wok for some company or another which has taken me out of the office for sometime for only a a day to several days if the occasion required me to go to Denver. I always made a little money on the side doing outside work. One time I made a trip through several of the western counties for a railroad company. I was gone several days they paid me a hundred dollars for that trip, and a few other little jobs that have helped out.

I am drawing this out pretty long and perhaps you say why don’t I finish, well now that I’ve started I may as well make this a letter and say all there is to say as this may be the last letter I will write you can never tell in these days of accidents and other calamities what the next day, week or month have in store for us.

You asked me to tell you about my self and family. I would rather talk about my family, wife and boy, as I will soon fade out of the picture while the boy has his future ahead of him.

After he graduated from this High School he went to the University of Colorado, taking up electrical engineering for the first year, at that time he was the youngest student on the campus. The second year he switched to mechanical engineering, which course he continued through his college career, when he graduated there he was still the youngest student in his class, he finished with honors, they also made the announcement that he was the youngest student in the fifty years of the university to ever receive the same degrees in the engineering department.

Strangers say that they think he is my brother and not my son as I still have quite black hair, he is about two inches taller than I am, has a good frame, but needs to put a little more weight on.

Before he was 20 he had entered the University of Chicago for a course in special lectures, last summer he went east on a trip in his car taking one of Vic’s sisters who is a doctor (M.D.) and director of health of the Laramie, Wyo. Schools, after attending school in Chicago they drove to Detroit, thence into Canada to Toronto, coming back to New York at Niagara Falls, then to Buffalo, Albany, and New York City, coming home by Philadelphia and Washington where they spent several days.

Also before he was 21 he had attended the University of California at Los Angeles as an associated student, he was three weeks late entering and it was hard to get in if it had not been for his record at University of Colorado he could not have gotten in, that made a lot of work to make up, he is only taking one subject a class of two hours twenty minutes, he said he is now among the top notchers of the class. He sure can learn. [Unreadable text about Clifton at school]

About my self that is almost too much to tell at this time however as I said before this may be the last, who knows. I will touch the high lights, going back to the time I took this office. We had been here three months to a day when I had an attack of appendicitis on a Thursday night. I should have been taken out [of] here the following afternoon, Charlie Condon was attending me; well he could not decide the case; finally Saturday afternoon he decided to take me to Leadville, all of my friends objected to Leadville, so it was decided to take me to Salida, this was all in March and the weather very bad, well the train [the Colorado and Southern from Como over Boreas Pass] was blocked out in the afternoon, at that time they were not running Sunday trains, however they did run a train the next day (Sunday) and after trying all day to break through they said they would make one last try and if they could not get through they would return to Como and wait for the rotary [snowplow]. They made it through and here about eight o’clock, that was the only time they ever ran a Sunday train, since they discontinued Sunday service.

We got into Leadville about ten thirty had to wait there ‘till about two, take bus to Malta for the train to Salida, all this time we expected to have to walk a half mile from the main road to the depot in Malta, but the bus got through, by the time we got to Salida I was nearly at my end. You can imagine the condition I was in by Monday morning. I should have died by all that was good and holy, they did not expect me to make it at all the first four days but here I am, Vic was there with me for thirteen days as both ways was blockaded, the office being closed during this time. I did not get out of the hospital for six weeks, had I been taken out as I should have been two weeks would have been about all I would have had to stay. I was a long time getting over that spell. It was terrible while in the hospital, naturally my chief worry was to have Vic get home to attend the office.

In the mean time we drifted along with a fair measure of success in most ways, having practically everything that a small community can give to anyone excepting making money which we have not done but aside from that, everything. We have attended conventions and meetings all over the state, taken part in some of the big political meetings and fights.

Several years ago there was a big fight in the state to take away the gas tax division from the smaller counties, as the present law now divides the money on a road mileage basis and not according to automobile registration as the eastern and more populous counties wanted. The Denver papers were full of assertions one way and another how the money was used for other purposes than to build roads with. Finally I wrote an article in defense of the small counties. It was published in the Rocky Mountain News, of course. I got a lot of favorable comment from the western and small counties, the eastern counties did not like it as it was contrary to their interests. We won the fight in the legislature and still have our gas money. Some day we will lose as they voted to change the Representative districts according to population at the last election which will give the preponderance of power in the Legislature to the east.

Last spring at the state conventions I won my point by argument against the church element as to what was to be incorporated in the resolution for the State Platform, this was at the Auditorium in Denver, (I a Republican and a wet). I also chose my man that I wanted for State Representative from this district and elected him in spite of a Democratic landside throughout the state and country. I choose a man from Breckenridge, our district has three counties in it in the Representative district.

Vic took part in many of the activities during the war and made several speeches in the Capitol Bldg in Denver at that time and many of the speeches that have been made in Denver at the State Association meetings have been written by her. We both have written many articles for the local paper until they expected something almost weekly then we quit.

I am not going to tell you all the things I have done in politics as it would be too long and not knowing the principals and conditions would not interest you. However let me say that they were all above board but I out generald some of them.

As County Chairman of the party I made a record not equaled in the state in the election of officers and giving district candidates a majority, there are some more offices that I want to clean up here and I am going to do it, partly at this coming election, also do not mis-understand me as thinking I am invulnerable and my position impregnable as I know that given time and I will be defeated the same as any other office holder if I stay with the game long enough as every time I help to defeat some one they will be the more eager to get me but there is a lot of fun as long as we can win.

I am also President of the Dillon Chamber of Commerce, Secy. of the Breckenridge Chamber of Commerce and the Summit County Metal Mines Association. While they do not carry any thing but work it gives me a lot of influence which I must have.

As Chairman of the party that gives me an influence throughout the state in political circles and also gave me an introduction to former President Hoover whom I was to meet on my trip to California but he was gone, at the time I passed through his home town he was enroute from the fair at Chicago and I did not have the time to return that way.

By virtue of my office I have continually enlarged my acquaintances at every opportunity, at the State House I go in all of the offices as freely as my own. Enough of the political side of my life.

I have had some very good jobs before we went on the ranch as jobs go, and have had the offer of some since coming here, dredge master here, two years ago I was offered the superintendency of the largest gold mine in Colorado if I would promise to accept and not to run for office after my term had ended, but as I wanted to elect some of my friends to office I could not do it unless I also ran, so I could not accept.

This summer the manager of the same company came to me and offered the position as his assistant at a salary and traveling expenses that I could not refuse. I made all my plans so that Vic could run the office and have one or two stenographers to help her, the day came for me to go to Colorado Springs with the manager to meet with the Board of Directors, the plan had been submitted to the President of the company who lives in Pasadena, Cal. he approved of an assistant but he wanted an old friend of his to be put in and letter had arrived from him a day or two before we went down and neither the Manager or I knew any thing about his desires until we got there, well that was off, the Board of Directors and Manager settled on me and to this day they have not put in an assistant as the Manager says he does not want the other fellow and the Board backs him up, to keep peace they have done without.

My last experience of consequence happened last April. Vic was having a few days vacation and I was alone, usually when I am left alone the neighbors know I will starve if left to my own devices and cooking, everything went fine until the day before she was to come home. I was to go our for dinner, left the office a few minutes early to go home, fix the fires and change for dinner. I got within about a half a block of home when I began to feel sick. However I got ready and went to the home where I was to have dinner getting sicker all the time, about time to be seated I begged to be excused and was taken home, called the doctor. (by the way Dr Smith is the only doctor we have now). I was awfully sick to my stomach and had terrible cramps after I had my former operation for appendicitis the inner lining ruptured and left quite a lump on my right side forming a pocket on the inside. Well one of the intestines got in this pocket and doubled back forming an obstruction, was I sick, well rather, I had a fairly good night until about eight in the morning and then I did get sick.

About ten they decided to take me to Denver and Vic was on the train coming home. They only run one train a day now, one way one day and back the next, they wired the conductor and they stopped the train at the first place she could telephone where they told her what were doing. She left the train at Como, took a truck to Fairplay, called some friends at Alma and they went to Fairplay for her, she waited at Alma until I got there.

Just at this time Colorado had one of the biggest snow storms for many years, the highways were blocked, we had three feet of new snow here and down Plat Canyon they had five feet and between Baileys and Conifer it was seven feet. This was the road we had to go over. Well it was a question of hours to get me to Denver, there was a Highway tractor and plow on top of Hoosier Pass, two fellows went up and got it, plowed the road down about two miles then started back to open it up more, about forty men in trucks and cars started ahead to shovel and otherwise help. I was in Carl Kaisers car with him and the doctor. We got along pretty well until we got within about a mile and a half from the top, from then on it was a case of almost pack the car at times to the top, in the meantime they had gotten word to another highway crew at Alma as they were passing through, they did not stop to plow the road, they just went over the top, through and almost under, they got to the top from the east side about the time we got there from this side as soon as we could pass the plow ahead of us the tractor hooked on the car and just drug it through, at times it was over the top of the radiator, as soon as we got to the foot of the pass we were able to go on our own power, fortunately they had just finished plowing the road down Platte Canon and into Denver with the rotary plow.

We picked Vic up at Alma, had no particular trouble on into Denver, got there about 8: PM. They said that if we were four hours longer that it would have been too late. They operated as soon as they could get me ready, they had to take out about seven inches of intestine as that much was completely dead, so in other words I haven't as much "guts" as I used to have. I get along fine a very remarkable recovery so they say.

Vic got the two prettiest nurses in Denver for me, a blond for night and a brunette for day time, young too, but not so young as to be foolish. They gave me very wonderful care which helped in my fast recovery, you see Vic believes in beauty and harmony she thought I would be happier in the midst of beauty instead of having some crabby nurse.

Hazel, the dark girl, brown eyes, brown hair and clear complexion, came up with Clifton and me one night when we were down and spent several days with us. Yes the girls still like me. (maybe this one likes my son) she may come up for Thanksgiving if she is not on a case or otherwise occupied.

There was quite an article in the Denver Post in regard to my being taken through the snow. I have only one copy, the local paper also published the story also.

One more time I should have died. I guess I have not finished my work whatever it may be. (Nov.22,) they say if there is going to be anything sensational I have to be in it. I suppose in order to run true to form I should have cracked up when I flew home from California.

Clifton & I had planned on taking about three months trip including hunting and prospecting up the Mackenzie River in Canada as soon as he finished school last spring but my vacation in the hospital put an end to anything like that. it took the thousand dollars we needed to make the trip on. You ask what would we do with Vic and the office she does not care for that kind of roughing it and besides she can do everything in the office with some help that we can do together and can get along better alone than I can as most of the typing and written work is done by her. I try to look after the road reports, abstracts and a few things outside.

Speaking of trips something comes up every time we plan a long trip, in 1912 we planned to go to Alaska at the time we were in California, we lived in Oroville the first year we were married. Instead we came home so the boy could be born a native of Colorado, in 1916 we were to go to China with the Gores to build a dredge for the New York Engineering Company. I was to get $300.00 a month, Vic was to be the private tutor for the children, after everything was about decided on, Gore got the idea that he had about solved perpetual motion, he didn't call it that, but that was what it amounted to. he decided not to take the job and consequently that left us out. the contract was for a year and all expenses paid, I.E. passage and living expenses, we would have had a little start when we got home from that job had it gone through.

It is too bad Nancy that your hearing has been affected; it makes it hard at times for you, at the same time how much better your folks are off with your place than lots of the rest of us that are living on dynamite from year, what a blessing it would be now and it is too bad that a handsome couple like you and Frank could not have a son like ours, grown up and possibly a daughter too, not having any one does not miss them.

I must bring this to a close and you will probably say that it should have been finished long ago, anyway as I said before this may be the last and I will know it will be the last you will want unless you write again. So come on and tell about yourselves and what you have been doing all these years.

With all the pleasures we have had we have had some very keen disappointments and some of the struggles have been extremely hard and what the future holds no one knows until it unfolds from day to day.

Give my best wishes to Susie, and Vic joins me in sending our very best wishes for you future happiness and success.

I am very sincerely,

P.S. I am sending you a picture of the Court House and the School House.

Your story was exceptionally good send another, at present I don't happen to have one so I can't reciprocate.

E.C.P.