New Mexico Mineral Symposium — Abstracts

Obtaining postcards can make a collector wonder about the stories behind the images. The Orogrande Commercial Club published a set of postcards to promote their mines and community. Postcards featured the mines, the smelter, the growing community, groups of investors and miners, and a scene of a parlor in one of the nicely furnished homes. In the early 1900s it was quite common for merchants in many towns to publish postcards to promote their towns and industries, but this organized set of postcards from Orogrande is unusual. The Orogrande Commercial Club first met in 1906, and they were full of enthusiasm for their new town, hoping that it would one-day rival El Paso. Postcards played a role in the boosterism seen in Orogrande.

Captain Ellen Jack proclaimed herself the “mining queen of the Rockies” in her set of postcards that she sold to tourists at her business on the High Drive outside of Colorado Springs. Her autobiography Fate of a Fairy contains many wild tales of her exploits. She owned a mine near Gunnison, Colorado, and then moved to Colorado Springs. Postcards were part of her efforts at self-promotion. She is one of the women immortalized as a Colorado Pioneer on the Women’s Gold Tapestry that hangs in the Colorado State Capitol.

References:

1. Colorado Springs Gazette, 1904–1921, Foote, A., 1950, The Fabulous Valley: A & T Company, Inc., New York
2. Hunt, I., & Draper, W. W., 1960, To Colorado's restless ghosts: Sage Books, Denver
3. Jack, E. E., 1910, The fate of a fairy: M. A. Donohue & Co., Chicago
4. North, R. M., 1982, Geology and Ore Deposits of the Orogrande Mining District, Otero County, New Mexico, from http://geoinfo.nmt.edu/publications/openfile/downloads/OFR300-399/351-375/370/ofr_370.pdf
5. Not Just a Housewife: The Changing Roles of Women in the West, 2013, September 7, from National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum: http://www.nationalcowboymuseum.org/research/exhibits/housewife/bios.aspx#jack
6. Schmidt, P. G., 1964, The Geology of the Jarilla Mountains, Otero County, New Mexico: New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro
7. The Mining Fraud Question, 1907: Engineering and Mining Journal , p. 341
8. The Orogrande Times, 1906–1907
9. Vandenbusche, D., 1980, The Gunnison Country: B & B Printers, Gunnison, Colorado
10. Vanderwilt, J. W., 1937, Geology and mineral deposits of the Snowmass Mountain area, Gunnison County, Colorado: U. S. Geological Survey, Bulletin #884
11. Wolle, M. S., 1974, Stampede to Timberline: The Swallow Press: Chicago
12. Women's Gold Tapestry, accessed July 2013, from Colorado State Capitol Virtual Tour (online) http://www.colorado.gov/dpa/doit/archives/cap/tapest.htm