Durango on Glass
Early Communities
John Taylor and Kitty Cloud
John Taylor claimed to be the "first white settler" in the Los Pinos River Valley. Born a slave in Kentucky in 1841, he served in the Union Army during the Civil War and rejoined the army as one of the famous "Buffalo Soldiers" in 1867 to fight the Indians. After leaving the army, he came to the Los Pinos Valley as a trapper in 1871. He was said to have had as many as two dozen Navajo, Apache, Hopi, Ute and Mexican wives during his lifetime. In 1902 he married
Car-ni-ta (kitty)Cloud and they had three sons and a daughter. John tried unsuccessfully to enlist in the Spanish-American War and in World War I. He died in the Cheyenne Veteran's Hospital in Wyoming in 1935 and is buried at Ouray memorial Cemetery in Ignacio.
Durango in the 1880's
Durango in the 1890's
William Henry Jackson was the first photographer in Southwest Colorado. Hired by the 1874 Hayden Survey expedition that explored and mapped the San Juan Mountains, Jackson made an extremely valuable photographic record of the area ceded by the Utes in April 1874 for mining and settlement. This view is Southwest from Reservoir Hill.
Durango at the turn of the Century
Durango as Seen by a Master
This classic view of Durango at the intersection of 9th Street and Main Avenue shows a community that had matured a great deal in twenty years. Brick and stone buildings, an electric streetcar and arc lights belie the town's rough frontier beginnings in the 1880s.