Taken from SUN files of
January 9, 1925
Mrs. O.F. Boyle of Durango this week “announced” the sale of the Pagosa Springs property, consisting of about 80 acres to Mr. John P. Lynn, real estate and oil man of Pawhuska, Okla. The deal was completed here Tuesday, Mr. Lynn and Atty. Reese McCloskey of Durango being present, and the consideration is said to be a substantial sum.
The property includes the hot spring itself and surrounding ground, including the Springs hotel building and plunges, all of which are located on the east side of the San Juan River. In addition are several lots on the west side of the river which face San Juan Street.
The new owner has been negotiating for the property for some time. While here last summer he realized the possibilities and obtained an option from Mrs. Boyle. The above sale is the culmination of the preliminary transaction.
Mr. Lynn has not as yet completed his plans for the future improvement of the property, but is understood to be working on a building program that will mean much to the proper development of Pagosa Springs.
Taken from SUN files of
January 6, 1950
Up again — a full 22 percent over last year’s record-breaking total — went the 1949 tally of visitors seeking some form of recreation on the national forests of the Rocky Mountain region!
The figures — 3,295,000 as compared with 2,699,000, as shown by reports received in the office of the regional forest forester, Denver, from 16 forest supervisors in Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska.
Most marked, according to Clare W. Handee, regional head of the Service’s division of recreation and lands, is the continuing climb in the number of campers using the forests.
“For every two who pitched a camp somewhere on our forests last year,” said Handee, “three more did in 1949: 368,220 people spent an average of 2-1/4 days each for their visits. And plain picnicking soared from about 724,000 to over 851,000.”
Showing an increase, also, were the current figures for use of wilderness areas — accessible only by horse or on foot. In 1949, 19,000 visited them; in 1948, 13,400.
Taken from SUN files of
January 9, 1975
Taxpayers this past week received tax statements for the year, as well as an abstract of assessed valuation for the county, town, school districts and various other districts.
The abstract shows that the total assessed valuation of the county is $15,888,200 and that all agencies and levels of government combined will collect $898,823 in local taxes. Of that amount $617,269 is for the various school districts.
On the valuation side residential property within the county had an assessed valuation of $9,518,580: commercial property is valued at $2,101,690; industrial property at $317,480; agricultural property, which includes livestock, machinery, and land is assessed at $2,619,900; natural resources assessed valuation is $227,480 and this is mostly in oil and gas property and equipment for wells; state assessed property, which is utilities, was listed at $1,103,090. Telephone companies had the largest part of this with a $514,990 valuation.
Taken from SUN files of
January 6, 2000
With the first significant snow of the winter season falling on Jan. 1 and Jan. 2, crews from the Pagosa Springs street department had an opportunity to fine-tune their snow removal system.
According to Town Administrator Jay Harrington, the crews performed admirably and, once traffic into the downtown area increased on Jan. 3, streets were cleared and passable.
The performance of the crews gave Harrington an indication that, with a change in policy by the Colorado Department of Transportation nearly two years ago, town employees can handle snow removal tasks within town boundaries. Mid-winter in 1998, CDOT instigated a new program in which the state crews would no longer remove berms of snow left by CDOT plows in the middle of U.S. 160 in the downtown area.
“Our crews started work on Saturday (Jan. 1) during the day,” said Harrington, “then started work early on Sunday. We ran two shifts, and this is one of the few times we’ve had to transport snow from the entire downtown area since CDOT changed its policy. The snowfall was not enough to force us to hire private dump trucks to haul snow, but we can do that if it is necessary.”
