About Us

My location was rather isolated, being on the east side of the river, midway between the DoubleHorn and Hickory creek settlements. DoubleHorn, the name of a little creek which emptied into the Colorado from the west, was derived from the interlocked antlers of two bucks found near the source of the stream by early settlers. The bucks, presumably having met at the spring to drink, became engaged in a dispute, and in attempting to fight it out got their horns interlaced, and, being unable to extricate themselves, starved to death. At the bold spring which is at the head of the creek, in a beautiful grove of Spanish oak, was the home of Captain Jesse Burnham, his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren living around in the vicinity. The other inhabitants were mostly Fowlers, one family of which, Levi Fowler's, were my nearest neighbors, the head of the family becoming my chosen companion in hunting bear.

The DoubleHorn people were all in comfortable circumstances and had an excellent school, presided over by Professor W. H. Holland, a Yale graduate. The holdings of the different families were large; their houses thus being widely separated, the children had to go from two to three miles to school. The schoolhouse was four miles from my house, and across the river, but in order to give my children the benefit of Professor Holland's superior instruction, I mounted them on ponies and sent them on. The river in its normal stage was fordable, and when it wasn't they had to lose their time. Sometimes a sudden rise cut them off from home, when they had to be ferried over in a canoe, the horses swimming. Such were the difficulties we encountered in trying to educate our children in the sparsely settled frontier districts. The thirty-five pupils under Professor Holland's care ranged from four years up to twenty, their studies ranging over a correspondingly wide territory. I often think of that school when viewing the array of appliances deemed indispensable to the modern school. Among other things there was a large class instructed in the mysteries of astronomy, the only artificial agents to assist in which were maps, and loops made of willow branches. Nature, however, came to the professor's aid, generously contributing an eclipse of the sun, I think, in '1859, in which that luminary was fully two-thirds hidden, and a magnificent comet, the finest I ever saw.