As we reported last week, Pagosa Springs incorporated as a town in 1891. Archuleta County had legally organized in 1885.

The first buildings in the town area had been built ca. 1877-1878 about one mile south of town where a bridge crossed the San Juan River, facilitating traffic between New Mexico and the Animas River mining districts.

When Fort Lewis construction began on the main block of what later became Pagosa Springs in 1878, Pagosa’s primary business district sprouted along what we now know as San Juan Street, on the east side of the river.

Following closure of the fort in 1881, incorporation of the county in 1885, and the sale of town lots in 1885, the business district began to move across the river to the former fort site. Some of the abandoned fort buildings remained standing into the 1890s.

From the beginning, the economy of the local area had depended on cattle raising, businesses related to supporting the fort, and a modicum of activity connected with the Great Pagosa Hot Spring.

Further south in Northern New Mexico’s Chama River Valley, the roots of a new industry were sprouting. The northern part of that valley and the southwestern part of Colorado including Archuleta County were covered with stands of huge Ponderosa pine trees.

At the same time, Gen. Palmer’s narrow gauge railroad was spreading tentacles from Pueblo on the east side of the Rocky Mountains across La Veta Pass, the San Luis Valley, the San Juan Mountains via Cumbres Pass, and finally westward to Durango and the rich mines of the upper Animas River Valley.

Along the front range of the Rocky Mountains, large cities were growing. And so, the demand for lumber, the shipping convenience of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, and the seemingly endless stands of pine trees in the Four Corners area joined hands to bring about change in Pagosa Country.

Logging entrepreneurs began falling the trees, cutting them into lumber, and shipping the lumber for use in building Front Range cities such as Denver, Pueblo and Colorado Springs.

The lumber cutters started generally in the Tierra Amarilla area, but by the 1890s were approaching the New Mexico/ Colorado border just south of Pagosa Springs. By the mid-1890s, one branch of the railroad snaked its way north from Lumberton to Edith on the Navajo River, where the most modern lumber mill in Colorado was erected by the Biggs brothers. In fact, the name “Edith” is taken from a Biggs daughter.

The Biggs railroad eventually almost reached Pagosa Springs before stopping near Mill Creek. Along the way lumber was harvested up and down every river valley.

Not much later, a second railroad tentacle began to reach from Pagosa Junction to Pagosa Springs by way of Cat Creek. The driving force of this logging endeavor was Robert Sullenburger. Sullenburger’s first mill was at Pagosa Junction, a settlement called Cat Creek before big logging moved in. Sullenburger eventually logged about every thing between Pagosa Junctions and Pagosa Springs, a destination reached by the Pagosa and Northern Railroad in 1900.

The logging industry, of course, brought major change and an impressive population growth to Pagosa Country.