Taken from SUN files of
February 13, 1925
The I.O.O.F. will give a dance at their hall Saturday evening, Feb. 21st, commencing at 9 o’clock. The usual price of one dollar will be charged. The proceeds of said dance will go to the endowment fund of the Odd Fellow’s home. Rock’s orchestra will furnish the music. Everyone is invited to come out and assist in this worthy cause.
The house has adopted the resolution to submit to the voters in 1926 a constitutional amendment permitting counties to pay sheriffs a regular wage.
The senate on Tuesday passed two drastic state prohibition laws, on making the possession of a still punishable by a term of two to five years in the penitentiary, and the other making the purchaser of illicit whiskey equally guilty of law violation with the man who sells it to him, punishable by a fine of from $10 to $100 and a jail sentence from 5 to 60 days.
Taken from SUN files of
February 11, 1950
The County Court House is receiving some badly needed work this week with carpenters busy installing new shelves in the vaults. The records that have accumulated since the county was organized have piled up so in past years that there was not adequate storage space available for all of the records and they had been kept piled up in the basement vault which created a fire hazard and was not conducive to the preservation of the papers and books. The new shelves are being installed in the vaults in the Clerk’s office, the Treasurer’s office and in the storage vault in the basement.
The San Juan Basin Health Unit has placed an incubator for premature babies in Pagosa Springs, according to an announcement this week by Ben Lynch, President of the Unit. The incubator is the property of the Unit but has been left at the ambulance station and is available to any resident of the area.
The incubator is a small portable affair heated by hot water bottles and is complete with oxygen tank and all the necessary attachments.
Taken from SUN files of
February 13, 1975
“It just keeps snowing, and snowing, and snowing,” was the comment this week of Ed Team, weather observer on Wolf Creek Pass.
With 62 inches of new snow in two days, and 87 inches for the week, the observation bears merit. Snowplow crews on Wolf Creek Pass were kept busy this past week with heavy snows, two slides and regular duties.
The 87 inches of new snow contained 1.73 inches of moisture content. Heaviest snowfall was between 8 a.m. the 9th and 8 a.m. the 10th when 33 inches fell. The following day was almost as heavy with 29 inches of snow. That is 62 inches in 48 hours, enough to keep the crews busy around the clock.
Snow depth is not available because the marker is buried. It was, though, over five feet the last time the marker could be seen. Last week 25 inches of snow fell on the 4th and 5th, for a week’s total of 87 inches. That brings the total snowfall for February to 92 inches to date. Last year 17 inches fell during the entire month.
Taken from SUN files of
February 10, 2000
A property rights question festering in western Colorado and across the West is focusing on an issue that sprouted in Archuleta County.
The question at issue is, can the U.S. Forest Service abrogate private property rights that existed prior to the existence of the Forest Service?
A group of citizens who believe that the Forest Service cannot violate those old private property rights has visited with the Archuleta County commissioners twice during the past two weeks. They want the commissioners to take a stand backing the older rights and opposing the Forest Service position. That stand could include county assertion that the roads are county roads, thereby removing them from Forest Service jurisdiction.
A focal point of the issue is the criminal conviction of Dianna R. Luppi, an Archuleta County resident who owns property on Turkey Springs Road patented by the U.S. Government under the 1882 Homestead act.
Luppi and her supporters argue that tenets of the Homestead Act, plus other legislation connected with creation of the Forest Service in the early 1900s and other laws, guarantee her access to her property. The homestead patent on her property was granted before the Forest Service was created.
