Far away, in another state, is Wellington connection

More or Les by Les Avery At least 1,400 miles separate Wellington, Ohio, and Webster Pass, one of the most beautiful mountain passes in the United States. Yet for all that, the connection between Wellington and Webster Pass in the high mountains of Colorado is fascinating.

In the 1880s, two brothers by the name of Webster, pushing handcarts over a steep mountain, arrived in the Snake River Valley of Colorado. They were the first to carve out a crude road over that mountain which divides the Snake River Valley on the west from Hull Valley on the east.

Understandably the pass became known as Webster Pass. In the early days it was sometimes referred to as Handcart Pass but that name did not stick. Today it is still known as Webster Pass. In the early years of its existence, it was a toll road generating some revenue for the two brothers.

The Wellington connection is that one of the brothers, Edward, was the grandfather of Everett Webster, who lived on Prospect Street when I was a child and was cared for by Icy Wiles until his death. We kids called him "Old Man Webster." Little did I realize at that time the historic connections Mr. Webster held to Colorado, and the role Webster Pass was to play in my life.

At the foot of the pass to the west lies the old mining town of Montezuma, which once was home to more than a thousand miners. Today a handful of small mountain homes keeps the once famous town from extinction. Back in the late fortes and fifties every summer, the Wellington Wiles occupied an old rickety house in Montezuma as Carl worked the Hunkydory lead mine, which I wrote about in my last column.

I have not forgotten my first trip with Carl Wiles to the top of Webster Pass. The road was steep and at places barely passable. The old truck Carl was driving rocked as we bounced over boulders, climbing ever higher and higher. At places a miscue would have sent us hurtling several thousand feet to the valley floor below. I loved every minute of that evening. The view from the top of Webster Pass was breathtaking.

That trip became the first of countless trips I made to Montezuma and Webster Pass. A few years later I bought a jeep with the intention of exploring Webster Pass and the Snake River Valley. I loved nothing more then to take family members to the top of the pass named after a man whose grandson lived in Wellington.

In the early 1900s, there was a debate in the legislature of Colorado concerning whether Webster Pass or Loveland Pass should be developed in building U.S. Highway 6. The less spectacular of the two mountain passes, Loveland Pass, named after William Loveland of Golden, Colo., was chosen, and Webster Pass sank into oblivion, its beauty never to be seen except by those hearty souls who wanted to hike it, or possessed four-wheel drive vehicles.

Once when my father visited I asked him if he would like to see the Hunkydory and so we took a day and jeeped to Montezuma, forged the river and made our way to the old heartbreaker, the place where dreams were born and where they died. Then we left and instead of going directly back to Montezuma, when we forged the river we turned west.

Making our way on a rugged Jeep road through the ghost town of St. John, where once several thousand had lived as they too had dreamed of striking it rich, now heading east, up past the abandoned Wild Irishmen Mine, we climbed to the top of the world. There at the summit of Webster Pass, 12,096 feet above sea level, we stood in one of the most gorgeous spots in the world and looked up at Red Cone Mountain, also known as Radical Hill, hovering another 700 feet above us.

A Jeep slowly made its way down an incredibly treacherous trail over Red Cone Mountain, so steep that it was impossible for any vehicle to drive up the rugged road, only the hardy and some would say the foolish, approaching Red Cone Mountain from the back side ever risked driving down it.

Now my jeeping days are but a memory. Still memories are beautiful and the memory of cresting Webster Pass with my Dad and the Wellington connections to that pass are deeply treasured.