Family Roots and Architecture

I guess I can partly blame my DNA for my passion for historical buildings. My grandfather and my brother are both architects, and my dad might also have practiced that profession if he had not grown up during the Great Depression. My grandfather, Robert E. Seyfarth, worked mostly in the Chicago area for more than 50 years between 1898 and 1950. The photo of the red door at one of his houses is from a website where you can see his designs at http://www.Robertseyfartharchitect.com. Of course I have a bias, but I think his home designs are very graceful. My grandfather got his start working for the architect, George Maher, and you can clearly see Maher's influence in grand dad's earliest designs. Maher was on the cutting edge of Prairie Style architecture. There is a new Maher website at http://www.georgemaher.com. My brother tells me that some of Maher's furniture and interior finishes are very "hot" on the collectible market right now. I wish I had received some of my family's artistic genes; but since I did not, I spend a lot of time and energy studying interesting architecture and analyzing how the designs and materials reflect the values and technologies of their times. I never knew my grandfather--he died before I was born, but I "know" him through his buildings, a lovely legacy he left for me and everyone else.

Wooden Skis and Deep Canyons

If you are a fan of canyon country or old time skiing in Utah, check out these two new books.  I have an inside scoop on both books because the authors are good friends with great stories to tell. In "Wooden Skis",  you can read all about the founding and development of the unparalleled ski area of Alta, Utah. Kim Morton tells the tales of her father, the legendary Chic Morton, and his lasting impact on Alta. Kim has mastered the burden (and honor) of being the child of a famous figure in ski area history, by carving out her own place in the world of skiing. She is a ski professional who was nationally honored as "Ski Instructor of the Year", complete with a rather strangely out-of-place recognition ceremony in New York City.  Do they ski there??  Her book is available on Amazon.  Also at Amazon (thanks to their self-publishing program) is a wry book about the history of Trail Canyon, a beautiful place located southwest of Cortez near the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. This is no nature book.  While it introduces you to the beauty of the country near McElmo Canyon, this volume is full of wonderful anecdotes about the people who have attempted to live in this very demanding place.  The book is called "Trail Canyon: 6 Miles Long, 10,000 Years Deep." The major four instigators of the book, nicknamed the odd quad, share their stories with the help of a local Durango writer. Look for it on Amazon under the title or via the lead writers, Howard "Bud" Poe and Ann Butler.

History makes a little money...

A historic square grain silo near Mancos, Colorado tells of the state's agricultural roots.

Heritage Tourism seems to making inroads in Colorado these days. The State Tourism Office has paired up with the state's Department of Agriculture to sponsor nine workshops to learn about opportunities to develop Colorado history and agriculture. I created a heritage tourism resource book for the Southwest Colorado Travel Region and the State Tourism Office.  You can see it and learn about heritage tourism in that corner of the state at http://www.swcoloradoheritage.com/about-our-heritage/downloads/heritage-preservation-toolkit/Preserving%20History%20WorkbookFinal.pdf/view

At the local level, check out my article "Exploring Telluride's Mining Past" in Headwaters Magazine, http://www.cfwe.org/flip/catalog.php?catalog=hw28 and Lake City's "Guide to Buying History" at http://issuu.com/lc_dirt/docs/buyinghistoryguide?mode=embed&layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml&showFlipBtn=true   Happy reading.

 

 



Updated Website

I've updated my website to streamline it a bit and to showcase some of the projects I have been working on.  Check it out at www.thehistoricalconsultant.com

Water Makes History in Cortez, Colorado

I'm working on a historic building survey in the town of Cortez.  Located in the arid southwestern corner of Colorado, Cortez relied on water piped into the Montezuma Valley from the nearby Dolores River drainage.  The town has a wonderful collection of bungalows reflecting prosperity in the late teens and the twenties. Many of these snug homes have been remodelled over time, requiring  a little imagination and help from the historical photographs in the Montezuma County Assessor's Office files.  A little research reveals some important unknown surprises---such as this house, which was constructed of ornamental concrete block but is now covered with wood siding. The Assessor's card in the photo above is a glimpse into the home's past.

Off the Beaten Track at Mesa Verde National Park

A tour of Mug House

First of all, the wildfires in Southwestern Colorado have not travelled to Mesa Verde, thank goodness. The Weber Fire is located more than 15 miles away, just south and mostly east of Mancos, and south of Highway 160.  It is dry and hot here.  It seems the archaeological sites are very vulnerable. Yesterday a fire exploded near the Chimney Rock Archaeological Area but was contained within 24 hours.   Before the fires started, we had a fantastic opportunity to veer from the main track at Mesa Verde on a guided tour of Mug House. Limited to 10 people and led by a National Park Service intepreter, the Mug House tour was the best Mesa Verde experience I've had in over 40 years of visiting the Park. The tours are offered three times a week at the cost of $25 a person--well worth it if you ask me. You meet on Wetherill Mesa, take a quick twenty minute walk along the Park road, and scramble down a trail to this lovely place.  Mug House was named for the ancient ceramic mugs that modern explorers found hanging on a cord when they "re-discovered" the site.

Modern Ancestral Puebloans

I've had some great working opportunities lately, which keeps me too busy to post on the blog.  The City of Cortez, Colorado, wants to know more about their history so they have hired me to conduct a survey of the historic houses located on Montezuma Avenue. Cortez is in the heartland of the Ancestral Puebloans who lived in the area up into the 1300's.  Mesa Verde National Park is just down the road, and that may be why the town has some really cool houses built in what is called the "Pueblo Revival" style, a design that sort of mimics the flat roofed homes of pueblo people.  Another absolutely stunning and humongous version of the Pueblo Revival was built in Santa Fe in 1939 by the National Park Service.  It was painstakingly constructed of hand made adobe bricks  I was lucky and got the job of documenting the history of this amazing building which is still a Park Service administrative building.