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PAGOSA PAST: Pagosa Walk-About 1975, Part One |
Jerry Driesens | 3/26/08
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I hope this will give the newcomers and some not so new, a feel for the area in earlier times. Change is inevitable, but the idea of “Keeping Pagosa, Pagosa” is necessarily linked to a point in time. That point will be different for different people.
Obviously, mine relates to 1975, based on how I first immersed myself into this community. Perhaps this walk-about will help all of us to recognize what the older natives have experienced and endured already in the past 33 years. This will be more of a narrative rather than a story; more informative than entertaining or humorous.
As I mentioned in my first story, "Moving to Pagosa," the San Juan Lumber Mill on the corner of Highways 160 and 84, was the dominant force in the local economy. It employed 300 workers at the peak of each year. Log trucks lumbered through town at all hours. (Sorry!) Actually some of them sped through town and along many of the county roads and on a lot of national forest access roads. It could be intimidating. There was a teepee cone burner at the sawmill where they burned the slash until the EPA made them quit. An inversion layer of smoke would hang over the river valley and town especially on cold winter mornings. Ranching and hay production was a distant second.
 There were no traffic signals in the entire county. The first one was placed by Goodman’s Store. The only playing field for both the high school and middle school was across the highway from where those two schools were, across Hermosa Street from the town park. Football games were played there and physical education classes were held there when the weather was suitable. The teachers would march their classes to the corner and try to cross the highway. When we finally got the traffic signal at the corner of 4th St. and Highway 160, it was so the students could get across more safely. Some of the newcomers protested that they could no longer tell their urban friends and relatives that they lived in a place where there was not even one traffic signal in their entire county.
There were parking meters on the downtown block of the main street. The parking area overlooking the river and hot springs was not there. There were meters on that side of the street in that block also. It sloped right off to the river back then. Later, fill dirt was brought in and compacted and that parking area was added. When the downtown merchants found out that there was going to be a traffic signal and realized that it might stop some traffic and tourists could actually cross the street without getting run over by a log truck, they asked the town to remove the parking meters. They reasoned that the town would earn more in sales tax revenue that they would lose from coins in those meters.
Just for fun I liked to say that they didn’t want to over-urbanize all at once and it was a compromise to keep some of us from moving away, but the merchants figured people driving through might actually frequent their businesses and didn’t want any annoying meters and that was the real reason. They called in Cool Hand Luke and cut the heads off the meter poles the same week the traffic signal was installed. (It didn’t cost anyone over half a million dollars, nor take 3 months to put it up, either.)
Where could people shop then? Goodman’s Store is the longest continually operating business, by far. Bobby Goodman is a third generation owner/operator. There was also Montoya’s Store and the Elkhorn Café. Nanette was an 8th grade student of mine and worked after school and on weekends for her parents. There’s a reason that restaurant is still going strong. There are no other restaurants that are still going today, unless you want to count the restaurant at the Pagosa Lodge, which has changed ownership several times and not been open for several periods of time. My favorite place to go for breakfast is the Elkhorn and I’m stuck on the jack-cheese relleno omelet with green chile. I don’t know if anything could possibly taste better!
The rest of that block had Jackisch Drug and Pagosa Hardware next door. There was an auto parts store where one real estate office is now and the Pagosa Bar was where another real estate office is now, next to the La Cantina which was there then and behind them across the alley in the Adobe building where the Bear Creek Saloon is was the Los Banos Hotel, which in those days was pretty run down, kind of a flophouse with a bar that winos frequented. It was kind of a hideous lime green color, kind of like — no, I won’t say it! There were a couple of other places to eat in that block on the main street called the Hitchin’ Post and the Branding Iron — no connection whatsoever to the one now located on east 160 next to the Ole Miner's — but they were open very few hours each day, no dinners really.
The Liberty Theater was there but was pretty run-down — you had to be careful where you sat. There were no seats under some of the seat backs. Next door was the Pagosa Hotel, and the Continental Trailways Bus Stop. Emmett Martinez’ barber shop was there and has been operated by David Cordray for many years now. On nice days, outside in front, if you were lucky you would be serenaded by the beautiful guitar playing of Juan M. Aragon, the father of our mayor, accompanied on the fiddle by Felix Gallegos. They played and sang many beautiful Spanish songs.
There were a few restaurants in or near downtown. Yerton’s Dairy Creme was located where Tequilas is now; it later became The Hub Dairy Creme, then the Pagosa Riverside Restaurant. Tovrea Truck Stop was east of town on the highway where the log building by the fancy RV park is now. It was a Union 76 gas station and was open 24 hours, but the cigarette smoke was over-powering. There was a motel and with a restaurant across the highway and a little east where the Kraftin’ Post, Etc. and Smithco Contruction is now. It was all painted bright red. The restaurant was known as the Relay Station and the motel was known as the Cheeri Chateau, which later burned down — like a couple others which fittingly had names of The Smokehouse and the Emberglow. When we lived in Laverty’s cabin before we had kids, Joanie and I could actually just walk across the highway to eat there. It later became the Seafood Connection.
The Pagosa Lodge was the only place that you would want to go for a dress-up date. It came and went a few times but the food was great when Herman Riggs ran it. He was a prominent restauranteur in Louisville, Kentucky, before moving to Pagosa. There were no other restaurants west of town until Chimney Rock. The River Center was not built yet, but where Hunans is, was Jan’s Café. When Jim and Ann Herzog bought it, they painted in an apostrophe to make it J’an’s Café, but few noticed that. Most locals went there or to the Elkhorn for breakfast and lunch.
On Lightplant Road, now known as Hot Springs Boulevard, across the parking area from the Spring Inn (The Springs) Motel was a restaurant that was not open when we moved here but re-opened under the new name: The Townhouse Restaurant. It was a family restaurant run by the McMahons and they busted their tails for years to make a go of it. They should have charged more. They had an incredible buffet spread every Sunday noon with a salad and soup bar, roast beef, ham and chicken, mashed potatoes, a few vegetables and homemade rolls — for only $1.99 and half that for kids. That’s where we went after church, especially when we started having kids. I really think those were the only places to eat back then, unless you drove all the way up the Blanco Basin Road to the Thunderbird Lodge, which was a great steakhouse that a few couples tried to make a go of.
Many new restaurants came and went, a few burned down and some stayed. The Junction Restaurant and the The Rose, fka The Wild Rose and The Irish Rose are a couple of those. It was big deal when the Pizza Hut was built west of town. When Lee Riley first came here, he ran the food and beverage at the restaurant in the Oak Ridge Best Western, which was originally built as a bowling alley.
Part Two tomorrow... |
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