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In 1843 Otto Mears was
a 3 year old orphan living in Russia. In 1849 (age 9)
he was put on a sailing vessel to join an uncle in California.
Arriving in San Francisco speaking only Russian, he learned his uncle
had left for Australia. Otto Mears sold newspapers for a time,
learned the tinsmith trade, milked cows and worked for a local store
merchant. Though he had saved every penny he had earned, he
was robbed while sleeping one night in a San Francisco boarding room
which he shared with 12 other men.
In 1859, he left to work the gold fields of California and Nevada
until he joined the Civil War's First Regiment of California Volunteers
in the Spring of 1861. He served 3 years in the army
- he fought the Navajos under Kit Carson until he was discharged.
While in the army he assumed the extra duty of making bread and was
paid a pound of flour for every pound of bread he made. He sold
the extra flour to the Indians and by the time he was discharged,
he'd pocketed $1,500. Together with his discharge money of $400,
he opened a store in Saguache (pronounced sahWatch) in the San Luis
Valley. In order to enlarge the store, he constructed the first
lumber mill in SW Colorado. To satisfy the demand for flour, he planted
200 acres of wheat. Not satisfied with harvesting by hand and
threshing with sheep, he brought in the first mower, reaper and threshing
machine and built the first grist mill as well. By harvest,
the Government's purchase price had dropped from $20 per hundred pounds
to $5. He decided to freight his crop to the gold camp of California
Gulch (Leadville, Colorado) 100 miles north. There were no roads over
Poncha Pass and his wagons floundered in the mud and rough terrain,
spilling the wheat. A lone rider came by on horseback and suggested
that Mears build a toll road across the pass. Taking the suggestion
to heart, and after he sold the wheat for $12 a hundred, he continued
onto Denver and obtained the right to build a toll road. One had only
to specify the terminal points of the road, pay $5 for the charter
and a franchise was received for twenty years. Mears' first
road consisted of 50 miles over his "wheat wagon route"
from Saguache to Nathrop where it connected with the road that ran
from California Gulch to Denver. From collecting tolls and freighting
cargo for others, he recouped his road construction expense in a few
months. He then built a second road from Saguache to Lake City,
the site of the Meeker Massacre, Northeast of Silverton. The silver
boom of Soutwest Colorado commenced in Lake City. He soon extended
this road into Silverton. In 1875, Mears was granted the contract
to deliver mail to Ouray. In the winter the mail was transported
by dogs pulling toboggans and the mailman on skiis. "Mail"
consisted of anything and everything: tobacco, coffee, sugar, dry
goods and ladies' hats and the mailman was under strict orders not
to ride atop the toboggans.
To facilitate transportation from Silverton to Ouray, Mears worked
eight years to complete what is now the Million Dollar Highway.
The first eight and a half miles from Ouray cost $40,000 a mile to
build. The roadbed on this section was blasted out of solid
rock on a thousand foot-high shelf. The name came about when
the state took over the road in the 1920's and spent over a million
dollars rebuilding 6 miles of the road.
The 450 miles of toll roads constructed by Otto Mears cost $325,000.
His freighting business (which operated much like UPS today) earned
this sum many times over. When the deep snow in the winter
made supplies scarce, a ton of hay or a sack of flour could easily
cost $100 each.
Otto Mears was active in the packing and freighting business from
1875 until 1890 when the railroads began to monopolize with their
cheaper freight charges. By pack trains, transportation from
Silverton to Del Norte and onto to Pueblo by wagon cost $80 a ton.
By train, it cost $8 a ton. The reduced cost created a bonanza for
the miners and the entire region. With the inception of
rail, the quantity of ore hauled increased from a few tons to hundreds
of tons and traffic in the form of livestock, farm produce, coal and
lumber grew accordingly. Many of the railroad tracks were laid
over the toll roads of Otto Mears. The Denver and Rio Grande paid
Mears $40,000 for his right of way over Marshall Pass.
From 1887 through 1891 Otto Mears himself built three railroads: The
Silverton Railroad, the Silverton Northern Railroad, and the Rio Grande
Southern, the latter of which was a spellbinding accomplishment
running 172 miles from Durango to Ridgway.
The entire mining industry and the simultaneous development of Southwest
Colorado owes a great debt to this one man. There is now a plaque
placed in his honor just north of Ouray along side the Million Dollar
Highway very near to where his toll bridge was originally located.
Otto Mears died at the age of 91 in Pasadena, California.
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