Town’s Origins Date Back 150 Years to Formation of Lake City Town Company

Town of Lake City’s Mayor Dave Roberts, along with Town Manager Lex Mulhall, Town staff and Town Board of Trustees have been hard at work planning the sesquicentennial anniversary of the founding of the Town of Lake City in 1875.
To commemorate the occasion, there will be a celebration in Town Park on August 16 beginning at 10 a.m.
The party kicks off with the always highly anticipated and appreciated Ute Mountain Ute Dancers, who have visited and performed in Lake City on several occasions over the years. The performance will begin at 10 a.m. in Town Park, and is classified, according to Town Trustee Henry Woods, as a “land acknowledgment and culturally artistic performance.”
At noon, three speakers will be giving lectures about Lake City’s history, present and future. Mayor Roberts will begin with a welcome speech, followed by former Town Manager Michelle Pierce, speaking about the beginnings of Lake City and the origins of the “Lake City Town Company.”
Next, historian and owner of the Slumgullion Gift Gallery in the historic Green Garage will be Joe Fox, speaking on the role and importance of the historic district in Lake City. Following him will be Trustee Woods to discuss the future of Lake City.
The lectures are slated to take 45 minutes in total, followed by cupcakes from the Lake City Bakery and ice cream. Live music by Evelyn Roper and Opal Moon begins at 12:30 until 5 p.m. Beginning at 1 p.m., beer and margaritas will be served by Downtown Improvement and Renovation Team (DIRT) at the moderate hundred and fifty anniversary cost of just $1.50, along with food from local food trucks – Summit Wing House and Wagon Wheel. There will also be a cornhole tournament overseen by Town Trustee Nathan Wuest and a water slide courtesy of Town of Lake City’s Recreation Department.

Next Saturday’s town park gala celebrates 150 years since formation of Town of Lake City as a municipal governmental organization starting with the quasi-public Lake City Town Company which was formally incorporated and recognized by Hinsdale County Commissioners on August 16, 1875.

Although the town company was a privately-owned company with 220 $50 shares of stock owned by 22 leading light incorporators, Territorial Law also required a democratic component in which seven of the incorporators — a president, secretary, treasurer, and four trustees — were elected by the town’s registered male voters on an annual basis.
Lake City Town Company incorporation documents were signed and filed in successive months July, August, and September, first with the county clerk in Saguache County in July, 1875, followed by incorporation filings with county clerks in Rio Grande and Hinsdale Counties and, finally Territorial Secretary of State in Denver on September 28, 1875. Focus of the town company as specifically cited in the incorporation documents was to take, enter, and hold tracts of land for the purpose of “establishing and erecting a town thereon and to lay off the said tract of land in Blocks, Lots, Streets, and Alleys… the said tract so laid off to be known as Lake City.”
Further intent in the incorporation filing was to “improve, sell, or otherwise dispose of said Lots or Blocks and to do and perform all other business pertaining to the said Corporation.”
Incorporators of the Lake City Town Company were, nearly without exception, well-connected businessmen, a majority of whom — including well- known toll road financier Otto Mears — were associated with the two principal toll roads servicing Lake City from Saguache and Del Norte in 1875 and 1876, the Saguache & San Juan Wagon Toll Road, and the Del Norte & Antelope Park Toll Road and its extension, the Antelope Park & Lake City Toll Road.
Henry Finley and his father-in-law, John Bartholf, were among the Saguache & San Juan toll road building party which in August, 1874, found and interred the bodies of the five men murdered and partially cannibalized by Alferd Packer.
The intrepid Finley successfully parlayed a herd of beef cattle brought from Saguache to Lake City which he traded for a stake in the Hotchkiss Lode, and in 1877 built the stone Finley Block, today’s home of Hinsdale County Museum.
Also taking part in the grave digging for the Packer victims was another original member of the Lake City Town Company, toll road construction supervisor Enos T. Hotchkiss who, with Finley and others, took time to prospect and lay claim to a fabulously promising tellurium gold and silver claim overlooking the outlet of Lake San Cristobal. The claim was initially known as the Hotchkiss Lode before years later being rechristened by its better known title, the Golden Fleece Mine.
Hotchkiss and Finley, with D.P. Church patented the Granite Falls mill site above Lake City, water power from which powered Lake City’s first saw mill.
Finley served as President of the Lake City Town Company and, with fellow officers F. Newton Bogue, town company secretary, and Warren T. Ring, treasurer. Finley, Bogue, and Ring, together with trustees Otto Mears, Isaac Gotthelf, H.M. Woods, and Enos Hotchkiss immediately set to work identifying the future townsite on a 260-acre mosquito-infested tract of beaver dams and willows extending north from the juncture of Henson Creek with the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River.
Town company officers reported expending $3,548.50 in October, 1875, perfecting title and securing patent to the 260-acre townsite, requisite details including a rudimentary survey by U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyor W.C. Lewman.
Starting at the extreme northeast corner of the 260 townsite plat and working its way southward to the mouth of Henson Creek, Lake City Town Company’s plat consisted of a total of 72 blocks, the majority with 32 25’ x 125’ lots each, divided by alleys, major envisioned thoroughfares — optimistically looking beyond the prevalent mosquitos, beaver ponds, and proliferation of willows — being north-south running Lake Street, Henson Street, Gunnison Avenue, Silver Street, and Bluff Street, with corresponding east-west running cross streets First through Ninth Streets to the west of the Lake Fork River, and Water Hotchkiss and Pine Streets, with cross streets on what was initially known as Riverside Park, now known as the Ball Flats.
A subsequent town survey completed by Abbott Bros. engineering firm in 1883 clarified both Silver Street and Gunnison Avenue as major town thoroughfares with 90’ width each, and less traveled Henson Street and Bluff Street, both slightly more diminutive at 60’ width.
Lots marketed by the town company and subsequently clear titled to new owners commencing in October, 1875, were sold at values ranging from $5 to $10 per lot, the most costly real estate being corner lots in the business district — corners of Gunnison Avenue and Silver Street at 2nd and 3rd Streets — which were sold at upwards of $25 per lot and subsequently resold by the original owners for quadruple the original cost.
Even prior to Lewman’s formal survey in 1875, higher ground and less marshy portions of the townsite had already begun to be developed. In history annals, both Henry Finley and Enos Hotchkiss are alternately referred to as the “Father of Lake City,” Hotchkiss’ claim to the title owing to his construction of the town’s first cabin in 1874, a windowless single-room log cabin with dirt floor and roof which was located at what later developed as the northwest corner of Gunnison Avenue and 2nd Street at the location of what was later the Team Murphy real estate office, recently purchased by Josh and Amber Votruba for staff housing.
Other early 1874 cabins at less swampy locations on the soon-to-be townsite were built by Nels Lee near the site of this summer’s Old West Cowboys productions; town company incorporator John Bartholf also built a cabin early in 1874 which was later incorporated into Bartholf’s well-known livery stable, the “Elephant Corral,” corner of Bluff and 2nd Streets. According to his son, Eugene Bartholf, his father passed through the valley in 1874 with the toll road building party and claimed a quarter section of land near the mouth of Henson Creek which he later relinquished to the town company.
With annual elections for president and trustees, Lake City Town Company, headed by Henry Finley, set an ambitious schedule, enacting ordinances and setting aside vacant lots within the townsite for envisioned Masonic Lodge, schools, town and county buildings, and public library.
Early ordinances which were enacted included hiring police and constable at $60 per month; establishing a dog pound and levying a dog tax for pet owners ($5 male dogs and $10 unneutered females); and requiring hotel owners to confine garbage and remove it on a regular basis beyond the city limits.
An 1876 town edict prohibited the discharge of firearms within the town limits.
An 1877 town ordinance required owners of commercial property on Third Street and from 2nd to 4th Streets on both Silver Street and Gunnison Avenue to construct 12’ width boardwalks.
Per the town survey, owners of houses obstructing streets and public walkways were ordered to relocate the structures or face mandatory removal fees charged by the street supervisor.
Lake City Town Company continued operations until December, 1880 when an election was held switching to a municipal form of government with voters electing a mayor, town recorder, and four trustees. In the first election, a SILVER WORLD Associate Editor, the memorably named William Penn Harbottle, out-polled challenger George J. Richards 115 to 105 votes as Lake City’s first elected mayor; also in the December, 1880, election, Mayer Kayser was elected Town Recorder and George Wilson, Elias Slough, Frank Melvine, and H.P. Lyon were elected Trustees.
Especially notable events in the town’s history came in 1909 when 26-year-old Lake City native John F. Mayor was the youngest mayor ever elected in the state and 1919 when expiring terms of incumbent trustees were necessarily extended when not a single vote was cast in the town’s election.
Also making history in 1909 was Mrs. E.W. Soderhorn who was reportedly the first woman alderman in the United States to be elected to serve as town trustee, and Addie William Watson who had the distinction of being the first lady mayor to be elected by a municipality in 1921.
Commenting on Mrs. Solderholm’s election, Lake City TIMES wrote, “The people of Lake City, who have known her all these years, do not consider the election of a woman of Mrs. Soderholm’s well- known ability and independence of thought and action an experiment in any sense of the word.”
In March, 1875, Colorado Springs GAZETTE chronicled an estimated population 40 hardy miners in Lake Mining District, noting “Lake City is the name of the new town which, according to latest accounts, is the Metropolis of the San Juan Country.”
The Colorado Springs newspaper added that among the great influx into Lake City were a butcher and baker, together with plans for a weekly newspaper using repurposed printing equipment from the Saguache CHRONICLE.
July, 1875, as enumerated by San Juan PROSPECTOR in Del Norte, “The natural situation of Lake City, being in one of the best mining districts of Colorado, accessible in all seasons, and in a rich agricultural valley with ranchmen at work on every available inch of ground will in a few years make it one of the great mining and smelting camps in this country…we are informed that not over 10 inches of snow fell last winter, remaining only about three weeks.”
“The town now consists of 35 buildings, three supply stores, one barber shop, two meat markets, one blacksmith shop, a shoe shop, saloon, assay office, a newspaper, post office and county building.”
July, 1876 described it as “Georgetown of southwestern Colorado, 40 carpenters “hammering away daily and, sad to say, not always Sundays excepted.” A doubling of the town’s 700 population anticipated, bridges were built over both Henson Creek and the Lake Fork “substantial and city like,” and proliferation of “inevitable saloons and dance house to make pockets empty and bodies diseased.”
First church organization on Pacific Slope of southwest Colorado June 18, 1876, with 18 members served once per month by Rev. Alex M. Darley from Del Norte and 24×40 church edifice to be dedicated.
Preliminary inventory of Lake City businesses in 1876 included 14 stores dealing in general merchandise, clothing, grocery; hotels, 3; restaurants, 3; bakeries, 4; banks, 2; drug stores, 2; markets, 2; millinery and dress-making establishments; boot and shoe stores, 3; jewelry stores, 1; assay offices, 4; barber shops, 4; tobacco shops, 1; saloons, 9; breweries, 1; 10 lawyers and 5 physicians… town now 300 houses.”
“Not bad for a town not yet 18 months old,” the newspaper concluded.