The Porch desk. Written from the record; the editor's conversations with his family and friends are coming. When a neighbor takes this desk, their name goes here.
If you ever wondered whether there really were tunnels under Colorado Avenue, Mel McFarland is a big part of why you wondered. I'll tell you what I know. He died September 21, at 81. From 2004 to 2019 he wrote 604 "Cobweb Corners" columns about this neighborhood for the Westside Pioneer.
Born here in 1944, a fourth-generation native, taught art and drafting, and wrote books on the Colorado Midland Railway. In 1983 he bought a retired working caboose for his Rockrimmon backyard, and became "the Caboose Guy." Dave Martinek, who started Midland Days at Divide with him in 2009, told the Gazette: "He was the go-to person for anyone who wanted to know about railroad history in the state." His nephew Luc MacArthur called him "kind of a Renaissance man." His sister, Elaine Radney, said: "He had a lot of people who loved him."
He wrote it down. Here is some of it.
On February 3, 2005, he wrote down the story of John O'Byrne, who in 1888 got two tame elk, Thunder and Buttons, and trained them to pull a tourist carriage. Here is the column.
On April 7, 2005, he wrote down the tunnels, the ones that let Colorado Avenue customers reach the Cucharras Street brothels unseen. He had "seen the remains of bits of both" sets of tunnels himself.
On November 17, 2011, he wrote down the Glass Works disaster. Just after midnight on September 9, 1892, the furnace top collapsed and fiery glass poured out. Chunks of raw glass still show up now and then in neighborhood yards and rock walls, he wrote.
On November 14, 2013, he wrote down the day a Teller County sheriff chained a Pullman sleeper car to the rails over $663.21 in unpaid taxes, and a U.S. marshal freed it two days later. Read it.
Here's the thing. The Gazette says he left "file cabinets" of research and writing, and that his family hopes to sift through them, with no concrete plans yet. The next person who asks "was there really a glass plant over here?" gets a shrug.
We can't fix that. What we have is an index of all 604 columns, by what each one reports, at westsidewherewithal.com/cobweb. The editor plans to call his sister, Dave Martinek, the Pioneer's editor Kenyon Jordan, and the History Center, and we'll tell you what they say. The question we're taking to them is who keeps the record now. We'd like to be part of the answer, and we'd like yours.
Did a column of his stick with you? Tell us which one.