VIRGINIA ARAGON. Born 1938. TRANSCRIPT of OH 1492V This interview was recorded on Wednesday, February 6, 2008, for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program and the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks Department. The interviewer is Linda Batlin. The interview also is available in video format filmed by Liz McCutcheon. The interview was transcribed by Linda Batlin. NOTE: The interviewer s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in brackets. ABSTRACT: Virginia Aragon describes growing up on ranches owned by her parents, Kingdon Karlisle Parsons and Marion Parsons, on South Boulder Road and later on Lee Hill Road (the Wineglass Ranch). Topics include family history, the history of the Lee Hill Road Ranch, raising horses, ranch chores, area wildlife, and changes in Boulder. [A]. 00:00 (This is Wednesday, February 6, 2008. My name is Linda Batlin, and I am interviewing Virginia Aragon, who has a conservation easement with the City of Boulder. The property is part of the Parsons property. This interview is recorded for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program and the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks Department. Liz McCutcheon is doing the filming). (Virginia, let me start by asking where and when were you born?) I was born in Boulder. I m one of the rare Boulder natives. I was born in 1938. My folks had a ranch on South Boulder Road, and that s where I was born, at home. (Where on South Boulder Road?) It is where the Days Inn is currently located, sort of at the intersection of 36 and 28 th Street, I guess. (And of course your name is Aragon by marriage, but is Parsons your maiden name?) Yes, it is. (Looking at the files I see the names Kingdon Karlisle Parsons and Marion Parsons. Are they your parents?) Yes. Yes. (How many brothers and sisters do you have?)
There were seven of us. My youngest brother and one of my sisters are deceased, so there s five of us left. (Where do you fall in the pecking order?) Right in the middle. (Your family lived in South Boulder first. Where did they move from?) My mother and dad were both born in eastern Colorado. My dad was born in Burlington, my mother was born in Wray. They grew up there, they taught school there, they raised horses there that s where they started raising Appaloosa horses. They went through the Great Depression there and Dust Bowl years there. About 1936, they had had enough of eastern Colorado, and moved to Boulder. My grandfather, my dad s dad, had moved he and his wife had moved to Boulder earlier. I m not sure at this point if that s why Mom and Dad came, but I suspect it was, because they had family here, and so they moved. They lived various places until they bought the ranch on South Boulder Road, and they lived there I think about four years. Then they moved to a place on North 26 th Street, which is currently I think the subdivision is called Keller Farms. They had 10 acres there. At that time N. 26 th Street was very rural, as was Iris, which was not Iris then, it was 9 th Avenue. Those were all little 5- and 10- acre ranches and farms. (This was in the 40s?) Yes, in the early 40s, because although I was little, I remember the news of World War II ending. I remember that broadcast [laughing], which was a huge event. People listened to radio, there wasn t any television. This makes me sound REALLY old, [laughs] but Liz and I were just talking about the difference in technology and what changes have happened, and I guess that s just one of them. Then in 1946 the family who owned the Wineglass Ranch what I now call the Wineglass Ranch on Lee Hill Road was a family named the Euler s. It was spelled E-ul-e-r. Mrs. Euler was a widow, and I think she had four or five sons. But her health was failing, and she needed to move to Arizona for health reasons. They approached my parents about buying the ranch on Lee Hill Road. At that time this was a huge financial undertaking, because they were asking $25,000 for the ranch. After a lot of soul searching and thinking about it, they decided they would do that. They actually closed on the property, and we moved in on December 22, 1946. 04:46 (Is that the current property now, the Wineglass?) Yes. [pause] Although the City owns most of it now.
[chuckles] (Well, yeah. But I bet How many acres did you have?) It was about 300 acres at that time. (Okay. Going back, do you remember the name of the ranch on South Boulder?) We always referred to it as the old Hogan Ranch. And I think the Hogans still own a fair amount of property out in that area. But there were a lot of Hogans, and they own a lot of pieces of property around. (So your family bought the property from the Wineglass and so then ) No, no. The Wineglass is a brand. (Oh ) Besides being the name of the ranch, it is the name of the brand. (Okay). That was their brand you know what a brand is? (Yes). Some people do and some people don t. [chuckles] But that was their brand when they raised horses in eastern Colorado, and they brought that with them. Brands don t tend to be traded very much, they stay with families. My nephew still has the Wineglass brand. (So did you get the brand when you bought the land or did the Eulers take that with them?) The brand did not belong to the Eulers. The brand belonged to my parents. (Oh, okay. Sorry, I got a little confused on that. So your family has been on the land since then, so you were like nine years old when you moved?) I was 8, I had just turned 8 when we moved to the ranch on Lee Hill. (What did your family do on the what kinds of activities? Did you have cattle?) My parents raised Appaloosa horses. So while we did have cattle also, they were milk cows. The main activity was the horses. My dad and mom raised and bred Appaloosa horses, and they didn t raise them for performance horses, they were all breeding stock so what they sold were stallions and mares, and they sold them all over the United States. They sold to the government in old Mexico. My dad was instrumental in starting the Appaloosa horse registry called the Colorado Rangers. He did that for many years.
Our cows were milk cows. They provided us milk, cream not much beef but mostly milk and cream. (How many horses did you have at any time?) Probably the most we had was maybe 50. (That s a good number.) Yes it is. It was a lot to take care of. (Did you typically help feed the horses and things or were there other people to help?) When I was 8, when I first moved up there, I wasn t a lot of help, but I was always an outdoor kid, I guess you d say a tomboy, and my older brothers were the main outdoor people. But I also learned to do chores, and we had a number of stallions that required daily feed and water. Most of the horses were out on the range on the mountain but still in the wintertime they came in and had to be fed morning and night. They d come into the watering tanks and corrals, and we filled the feed bunks for them. At 8, I was milking cows and helped take care of the chickens and chopped firewood, whatever needed to be done. We all did, except the littlest kids. (What other kinds of animals did you have? What other kinds of livestock you said chickens and a few milk cows?) We had the horses, the milk cows, chickens always, dogs, cats, sometimes strange animals. My brother had a pet raccoon at one time. We had a sheep at one time, just a pet sheep, not anything we would butcher. We had some friends who raised sheep and they gave us an orphan lamb. That lamb was nothing but a pesky thing, and the dog just hated that sheep, because it paid no attention to him, did not respect our dog at all [laughs]. I could see the dog just wanted to really give the lamb a good gnawing, but he didn t [laughs]. So that was mainly it, just the typical ranch animals. (It didn t want to be herded around?) No, it did not want to be herded. It wanted to chew and suck and because it had never learned sheep behavior, it tended to just think it was a dog or whatever around the place. I think they finally gave it back to the people that they got it from [laughs] when it was big enough to butcher. 10:23 (So, what kinds of chores did you do?) Oh, I carried water. (For people who don t know what ranch chores are )
Well, we didn t have as many things and the conveniences as nowadays. We had one big watering tank in the corrals, so we had to carry buckets of water to the stallions in different pens. We had to carry feed to them from the barns. We had to haul bales of hay to the horses that came in from the range. We had to feed and clean up after the cows when we put them in the cow barn to milk. Then they would usually leave some deposits for us, which had to be cleaned out. One of the earliest things I helped my dad with was cleaning corrals, and we did that all by hand. Chopped firewood, helped in the garden, watched my little brothers [laughs]. (What kinds of things did you grow in the garden?) Everything. We had nine people in the family. My mom didn t have a freezer, so mostly what we lived on in the winter was what we grew and canned from the garden in the summer. So we had corn, beans, squash, carrots, tomatoes just the typical kinds of standard garden fare. We also had apple trees. At that time the ranch was irrigated. Since then, the springs that fed N. Fourmile Creek were tapped by Pine Brook Hills Water District so the water dried up. As Bow Mountain developed, people put down wells and dried up even more the water sources that used to feed Fourmile Creek. (Did your water come from Fourmile or was it a natural spring?) There was a spring up at the mouth of the canyon, but the water came from Fourmile Canyon. [pause] I ll say North Fourmile, which is different from the Fourmile over south of you know that comes down Sunshine. (Was there wildlife around? Ranch animals, of course, but was there other wildlife?) Oh, many, many deer, just like now. I m sure there were probably mountain lions and bears and the things there are nowadays, but because there was no development in the hills, those kinds of animals did not come down and weren t visible. I still to this day have never seen a mountain lion. It makes me very upset that people who move here [laughs] walk out in their yard and see a mountain lion, and I ve never gotten to see one. ( or come into their kitchen and see one.) Although we did have a bear here a couple of years ago, but at the ranch as a kid mostly what we saw were coyotes and deer. A few raccoons occasionally. (And of course you still see deer and coyotes now?) More than we d like to. (Really?)
Because on the City Open Space they are protected, so the deer are over populated. They come down and eat everything in sight. The coyotes like the prairie dogs out here behind the house, so we have a lot of coyotes. So we have to watch our dogs and cats all the time. I think the wildlife is much more visible now than it was when I was a kid growing up on the ranch. (Do you like that? Having more wildlife around?) Um I like seeing them, I don t like necessarily having to watch my little dog every time I let her out of the house for fear the coyotes will eat her. But I like the wildlife. I d be the first to say that if a mountain lion came strolling through the yard, I would never call the Division of Wildlife. (So when your family moved out here in the 40s, in 46, what was the local community like?) Local meaning what? (Well, was there any community actually?) There wasn t any in North Boulder. I mean Boulder was little then. Boulder probably wasn t more than 15,000 people. Maybe between 15- and 20,000. It didn t extend out of just that little pocket where downtown Boulder is now. And out here, there was really nobody. On Lee Hill Road my dad went to work every day there was one other person who lived up at the intersection of Left Hand Canyon and Lee Hill. He went to work everyday. That was the two cars on Lee Hill. We played on Lee Hill Road. We sledded in the wintertime. I pulled my brothers and sisters on a sled with my horse. My little brothers rode their tricycle to the neighbors right down the middle of Lee Hill without any worry on my parents part. There really wasn t any North Boulder community. (Was it a dirt road at that time?) Yes, I ll show you what it looked like. It wasn t quite this primitive, but it was primitive. This picture was taken in 1870. PHOTO #1: view of Wineglass Ranch in 1870 [Holding up photograph and focusing camera on it] (This stone building is?) That s the side of the present day house. (Okay.)
But this is Lee Hill, right here. (Looks like a driveway.) Yeah. That s Lee Hill Road. (That s amazing.) (This is the stone the present day house ) No it s the side; it s not the house. (The side of the house. Now this other building, is that a ) It s called a loafing shed. (A loafing shed okay. And what do you do in a loafing shed?) The livestock loaf. (pause, then laugh). It s a shelter and usually facing away from the wind. (Okay, when the wind, it is for protection.) And they lie in there and take it easy during storms. (Liz this is the one you say is still standing.) Yes. The bottom part of it is stone and then it has a metal roof. (Okay, that s great.) PHOTO #2: Family photo in front of ranch house I have this picture as well which is a picture of all of my family in front of the old stone ranch house. (When was this picture taken? How long ago?) Oh 19 I think about 1950. (1950? And this is all of your brothers and sisters?) And my mother and dad. (And your mother and dad. Which one was you? )
The one in the middle. Arguing with my older sister. (That s you. [pause] Okay. That s a nice family shot.) It s the only picture we ever had of all of us together. (That s interesting. [long pause]. So, obviously, the community of Lee Hill is no longer a dirt road and Boulder has come out here, so how do you feel about those changes? Well, what stands out mostly when you think of those changes?) [chuckles] Mostly I think how much nicer it was then than it is now. [laughs] I don t mind the fact that its built up, because people have to live somewhere. But I liked it better then. It was a nicer community to live in than it is now. People cared more about each other and took care of one another. Especially ranching families tended to look out for one another. We had a family who lived on up Lee Hill Road by the name of Catchpole [?]. It s where the Bow Mountain subdivision is now. They were our best friends. They took care of us, and we took care of their place when they were gone. It still goes on in ranching communities; I guess neighbors do in town too, but mostly it s very impersonal I find now. People that moved into Dakota Ridge, for example, I don t think they really know each other and look out for one another the way ranching families did. 20:15 (Did the changes happen gradually? I know the last few years there s been a lot of growth. As you were growing up, was the growth sudden or was it gradual?) There was not much change in North Boulder until the city annexed almost all of the property in North Boulder, I think about 1990. And then all the development around here took place. Prior to when or right after the annexation happened, we went up on the ridge here, and we took a picture all the way around, because we knew that s the last time we d see it look like that. And, I think, Northbriar, which is the subdivision east of us here that didn t really bother me. I think the north side of Lee Hill didn t really bother me. What really bothered me was when they started building on the other side of the ranch property. That bothered me. I still don t like to look out my kitchen window and look at those houses. (The big houses to the west here?) No. The ones to the north. (Do you have a favorite memory of when you were growing up? Or just general ) I think one of my favorite things growing up since my parents raised horses when I was ten, one of their mares gave birth to a pretty little Appaloosa filly, and my dad gave me that colt. So she and I grew up together. I broke her to ride. My dad took us to a national Appaloosa show when she was a three-year-old, and we won first place. Until I left home, that was just my life. I was on horseback all the time.
My younger sister also loved horses. She had her own horse. Some of my brothers and my other sister didn t really care for horses that much, but my younger sister and one of my younger brothers loved horses. (Did you go to competitions?) Just as breeding stock. We didn t really do that much in terms of riding in competitions. (Where did you go to school elementary school?) I went to Washington, Casey Junior High, and Boulder High. (Since Washington is several miles away from here, how did you get to school?) Well, there were no school buses, so until my youngest brother was a senior in high school, they finally started running a bus out Lee Hill Road. Up until that time, my mom and dad took us kids every single day to school. (And picked you up?) My dad would usually take us in the morning when he went to work. He generally went 6:30, 7:00 in the morning, so we would get to school an hour before school started. And it was great. We would go in where it was warm and study, or whatever, and then my mom would generally pick us up from school. (Where did your father work?) He was always self-employed. Besides raising horses, he also was a painter. For many, many years gosh for forty years or more, I guess he painted at Chautauqua. That was one of his main clients. He painted for the Chautauqua Association, but he also painted the private homes there. And then he had many private clients as well. (So how big was a classroom in Washington School? Were the grades all together? Or did you have separate classes?) It wasn t quite that primitive. No, Washington was not that much different than it is now. I think the classroom size was not that different either. I think what was different was the teachers taught. They weren t so concerned with in-service days and they taught us five days a week pretty much all the time, except for a short Christmas break and a spring break. 25:02 (There d be a week for Christmas and New Year s?) It was generally a day or so before Christmas to the day after New Year s.
(You mentioned another ranch nearby. Did they have children?) They did not have children. They had a much bigger ranch, and no children. They raised cows. We would lease land from them sometimes as additional pasture for all our horses. We d take the horses up there, and it would be my job and I did a lot of this when I was around ten or twelve years old my job would be to saddle up here at the home ranch and go up and check a couple of times a week on the status of the stock that was up there in pasture. (How far away was that?) Oh, less than a half a mile. I mean less than half a mile to their ranch house. Their ranch ran clear up to Sunshine, so I could do a lot of riding looking wherever the horses might be. (And did they wander much?) Well, sure. They looked for pasture. They go where they like. If it s hot, they go where it s cool, up on the top of a mountain. If they re hungry, they go wherever have a favorite patch of grass, or they ll go to water. (Are you aware of any legends or stories associated with the property? A lot of places have stories or some famous person came through here, or something with your ranch.) Not any legends like that. But one of the Euler sons, a man by the name of Bob Euler, used to bring wild horses down from Wyoming, and he would break them. There at the ranch they had a pen called a round pen, which is normal for breaking horses. You don t put a horse that you re trying to break in a square pen, because they just go in the corners and don t want to come out. Anyway, Bob would bring down wild horses, and there was even a story about that in the Denver Post, I think, or the Rocky Mountain News I m thinking early 40s. And I always thought that was pretty interesting, that somebody would actually truck wild horses that they d caught in Wyoming down here to break and then resell. (Was the article just about his coming down here?) The article was about the whole process of catching the wild horses, and then breaking them and reselling them. (How did he catch them?) Well, I don t know how he caught them. The usual process for catching wild horses is to run them down with another horse. Or get them in some place where they can be forced into a pen. But there weren t ATVs or whatever to run animals down in those days, so it
was done with a horse that was better fed grain fed versus a wild horse is just feeding on grass or sagebrush or whatever. (Did he transport them by trailer?) I m sure they probably had some kind of an old truck. Trailers weren t very common then. (He would sell the horses? Or what did he do with the horses after he broke them?) He sold them. Just another way of eking out a living, I think. There is one feature on the ranch that we were always curious about, and I ve never found anybody that ever knew anything about it. About halfway across the ranch, between here and the Beech property there s an old rock fence that runs from the top of the mountain clear down to what was the eastern boundary at the time. It clearly was manmade, but nobody knows anything about it. The Euler s didn t know who built it. These aren t little rocks. These are rocks that it would take a team of oxen to move. So, I always thought that was really curious. It was probably put up to keep livestock separated, but nobody knows who built it or if that was why. The Indians used to build game fences, but these rocks are too big for somebody to move or even several people to move. I m thinking they had to have been moved with some kind of livestock, like a team of oxen. 30:23 (So, you ve lived here most of your life on the ranch.) Well, I didn t actually live on the ranch that long. I was there ten years, and then I married and moved away. Then I moved back here in 1976. (How did you meet your husband? Did he live around here?) He s from Boulder also. We d known each other since we were twenty-five, twenty years old. We just got together. (Where do your other brothers and sisters the ones who are still living live locally?) I have a sister who lives in Durango. My oldest brother lives in Colorado Springs, another brother in Longmont, and a brother in Berthoud. We re pretty fortunate, I think, to all be within a day s drive of each other. Last spring, in May, we had a reunion up at the ranch, and tried to get as many of our family members together as we could. All my brothers and sister were there, their children, great grandchildren. We had a lot of people. It was a lot of fun. (There are still some buildings there s the homestead, because the city bought some acreage, and you kept some acreage that s allowed to be built on. But there s still a
homestead there. Is that for historical purposes, or is there anything that s still grown there?) When the city bought the bulk of the ranch in 1976 for open space, they wanted the entire ranch, but my dad and mom were not willing sellers. They drew the line at giving them the home place. They insisted on being able to keep the home place and a five-acre site for each of the remaining children. So that s how we ended up with 33 acres that has a conservation easement on it and only allows five additional building sites. That s how that agreement came about. Mom and Dad were sort of backed into a corner. The city of Boulder may not want to hear this, but they were not willing sellers, I ll just leave it at that. And although the ranch was not taken under condemnation, it was taken under threat of condemnation. In June of 2005, we went through the subdivision process and actually subdivided the ranch. We sold two lots we decided not to develop five additional sites. We only wanted a total of five. So there s the home place, which has been sold. And there s one other lot, which has been sold and is now being built on. We still have three lots for sale. So the city owns a conservation easement, but all they did really was restrict it to five building sites. (So this is the only property you don t own the South Boulder property anymore?) No. Each place was sold as they moved to a different ranch. (You have a lot of memories of growing up here, and it s really wonderful. Is there anyone else that you think we should talk to? Like your husband or?) I probably, or my younger sister, would be the ones that spent the most time (And your younger sister is?) Dixie Baker. But she lives in Durango. (Okay. Is there anything else that comes to mind? Anything about the land or your life on it that you d like to tell us about?) Oh, I think that it was a wonderful place to grow up. It s still a wonderful place. I have to say, every time I see people hiking on it I still feel some resentment, but for the most part I try to get past that and look at it from the standpoint that they are able to enjoy the same thing I was able to enjoy as a kid growing up. It s a great piece of property. (Yes, it is. Well, I don t have any other questions. I want to thank you.) Oh, you re quite welcome.
35:51 [End of interview]