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Otto Mears: Pathfinder of the San Juan Mountains
Posted By The Denver Post On June 7, 2012 @ 4:26 pm In Bio,History,Mountains,Railroads,Trains,Transportation | 2 Comments
Pioneer Otto Mears built the toll roads and railroads  that opened southwestern Colorado for settlement and mining, earning him the name “Pathfinder of the San Juan.”
Born in Russia and orphaned at an early age, relatives sent Mears to England at age 9, and then to New York. From New York he sailed to an uncle in California, but when Mears arrived the uncle was gone. So in 1851, at age 11, Mears was alone. He made his way by hawking newspapers on the Barbery Coast, tinsmithing, and working in the California and Nevada goldfields.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted. As a volunteer in the First California Regiment, he served under Colonel Kit Carson during the Navajo campaign .
When discharged in 1864, Mears went to Santa Fe. He worked as a shopkeeper for the Staab Brothers. The brothers offered to help Mears open a store in Conejos, Colorado, so the next year he moved north. In Conejos he opened a general store, farmed wheat, and built a flour and sawmill.
He later moved to Saguache and began business there. He found a market for his flour in Leadville because of the mining camps, and built a good wagon road from Saguache to the Arkansas River near present day Salida. This was a toll road and the first of many he constructed.
Mears eventually turned his interest to building narrow gauge railroads. The trains  were mostly used to carry supplies and transport ore from the mines. The first was a line from Silverton to Red Mountain. Following that he built the Rio Grande Southern from Ridgway to Durango.
In 1893, Mears lost control of the Rio Grande Southern railroad. The repeal of the Sherman Act caused a silver crash that closed the mines. People left, there was no ore to haul, and the Rio Grande Southern went into receivership. Mears lost much of his wealth, but wasn’t discouraged. He went on to build a railroad from Washington, D.C. to Chesapeake Beach, MD.
There were other accomplishments. He brought the first telegraph to Fort Garland, spoke Ute, befriended Chief Ouray, negotiated the Brunot Treaty of 1873 , was chairman of the Board of Capitol Managers overseeing the construction of the state Capitol, was a state representative and newspaper publisher.
Former Colorado governor and Sen. Charles S. Thomas said this in Mears’ 1931 obituary.
“I first met Mears in the San Juan country in the early ’70s, not so many years after he came to the state. He was a small man, exceedingly nervous and always active. He was forever scheming and planning some new development. He was then engaged in his many toll road enterprises. He impressed me as a very brilliant, tho rather eccentric figure…Altogether, he was a very picturesque figure, a typical western frontiersman, full of fire and vitality.”
Article printed from The Archive: http://blogs.denverpost.com/library
URL to article: http://blogs.denverpost.com/library/2012/06/07/otto-mears-pathfinder-san-juan-mountains/1745/
URLs in this post:
 Image: http://blogs.denverpost.com/library/files/2012/06/Otto-Mears.jpg
 railroads: http://blogs.denverpost.com/library/tag/railroads-2/
 Navajo campaign: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Kit_Carson
 trains: http://blogs.denverpost.com/library/tag/trains-2/
 Brunot Treaty of 1873: http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/blm/co/10/chap5.htm
 Image: http://blogs.denverpost.com/library/files/2012/06/Rio-Grand-Southern-Railroad.jpg