The only thing in this World that hasn’t changed, is change itself.

When I talk to my family about “God s Country”, they know I am referring to Saguache Park. I had the pleasure of living in Saguache Park for 7 summers, doing the maintenance work for the grazing association.

This year is the first’ time in about 138 years that a permittee with the Curtis name is not running cattle in Saguache Park.

L. D. Curtis was the first member of the Curtis family to run livestock on this allotment. His son, George was the second generation; followed by his sons, James, Ralph and Fred. Permittees of the following generation were Ralph Curtis, Jr. and James Curtis, Jr., James Curtis III (Jay) and his sister Anne Curtis Nielsen also have been permittees of this allotment. As of this Spring Anne Neilsen is the only remaining descendent of L. D. Curtis to run livestock on what is still shown on Forest Service records as Saguache Park C. and H. (cattle and horse) allotment.

The following paragraph is taken from Peggy Curtis’ 1976 History of Saguache Park: 

“From about 1860 to 1880 the Saguache Land and Cattle Co. (Isaac Gotthelf, L. D. Curtis and Meyer) ran upwards of 3000 head on the present Saguache Park allotment. When this company discontinued their use of the area, large numbers of smaller cowmen ran as high as 5000 head in the Park until about 1890 at which time the area was so badly depleted that burning the timber lands was resorted to, in order to increase forage as well as range acreage. Stocking was reduced to about 3500 to 4000 head and this number continued to graze the area until after the creation of the Forest Service in 1906. At this time the first attempt was made to regulate the numbers grazed and the season use. William Shellabarger of Moffat tells me that his father, R. W. Shellabarger was the first Forest Supervisor in 1904.

P.S. How many of you readers picked up on my boo-boo in last week’s story? The date of Fremont’s catastrophe was 1849 — not 1854. Just wanted to see if you were awake!