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Photo postcard of the Stark family's Home Comfort Hotel in St. Elmo, Colorado, ca. 1914.

Clara Hinton, the sender of this postcard postmarked in 1914, writes to her husband, Clarence, in Denver:  “Had dinner here.  The rig in the picture is the stage we come up on.  Are waiting for the train to take us to Romley.  Kiss the kids for me.  Good-by.  Yours, Clara”   (Romley, now a ghost town, sits about 3 miles above St. Elmo.)  

St. Elmo, in Chaffee County, sits at an elevation of 9,961 feet in the heart of the Saguache mountain range, about 20 miles southwest of Buena Vista.  It was named by Griffith Evans, one of the town’s founders, who was reading a novel with that title. The seeds for the town, originally called Forest City, were planted when two prospectors, Albert Wright and John Royal, discovered a silver deposit in Chalk Creek Canyon in 1875.   Their strike would become the Mary Murphy mine, the largest and longest lasting producer in the area.  The St. Elmo post office opened in June of 1880 (and closed in October of 1952).    

The initial fortunes of the town gave cause for high hopes. As of 1880, the South Park and Pacific Railroad had completed a line to the town. With the discovery of one ore deposit after another, by 1883 there were fifty mines operating in the area.  At one point, St. Elmo’s population reached 2,000, and in 1881 it was home to two sawmills, an ore smelter, an ore concentrator, three hotels, five restaurants, a newspaper, and other businesses.  A sustained run of success, however, was not in the cards, for the simple reason that much of the ore in the area was of low grade, which translated to low revenue and discouraged exploration.  That’s not to say there were no subsequent upturns.  For example, there was another mining boom in the 1910’s, and the federal Silver Purchase Act of 1934 made mining and milling profitable during the Depression years (under the Act, the federal government was authorized to buy silver and silver certificates, which added to the country’s monetary base).   As a capper to the overall decline of the town, the railroad stopped service to St. Elmo in 1922.   

The Home Comfort Hotel pictured here would be operated for years by the Anton and Anna Stark family, whose members would prove to be among the most devoted citizens of St. Elmo. 

Anton, born in Illinois in the mid-1850’s  to Bavarian immigrants Elizabeth and Frans Stark, had married Russian-born Anna A Hanck in about 1880.    They may have met in the area of Hays City (now Hays), Kansas, which is where Anna and her family had come following their immigration from Russia.  Anton and Anna married in about 1880, and probably did so in Kansas, for it was in Kansas in 1881 that their first child, Anthony, known as Tony, was born. 

I encountered differing accounts of the Starks’ travels before their arrival in St. Elmo in the early 1890’s.  It’s possible that, following Tony’s birth, the Starks moved to Hancock, Colorado, now a ghost town, about five miles south of St. Elmo.   They may have been involved in ranching there, for by one account it was when Anton drove some cattle to St. Elmo for shipment by rail that he was quite taken with the place and it was pursuant to that visit that the Starks would settle in St. Elmo. 

The Starks would flourish in St. Elmo, both at home and in business.  Anna would give birth to Annabelle, also called Annie, in 1882 and their second son, Roy, in 1888.  They would either establish or acquire the Home Comfort Hotel seen in the photo, as well as operate a general store, which was joined later by the St. Elmo post office and a telegraph office (note the Western Union Telegraph sign above the gentleman leaning against the building in the white shirt.)  It’s interesting to note the house-like structure to the left of the hotel.  The sign above the door appears to read “Stark’s Place,”  and there’s a sign below the window in the door, but I can’t make out what it says.  For additional exterior and interior photos of the Stark family’s buildings, which sat on Main Street, see the Library of Congress website at https://www.loc.gov/resource/hhh.co0321.photos/?sp=1m .      

Anna had the lead in managing the hotel, and Anton worked as a foreman at the Mary Murphy mine.   At one time or another, all three children would work for one or more of the Stark enterprises.    Annie was a telegraph operator at the hotel and Roy would clerk for the hotel, becoming postmaster in 1914.  After Roy died of pneumonia in 1943, Tony would serve as postmaster until the post office’s closure in 1952. 

[It appears that Tony would assist Roy in postmaster duties, for there was a 1919 article in the Salida Mail newspaper reporting that a miner, Alfred Thorndale, would be appearing in court to answer charges levied by Tony that Thorndale had pulled a gun on him while he was carrying out his postal duties.  Tony had apparently witnessed a railroad employee hand Mrs. Thorndale a letter addressed to her, whereupon Tony interceded to point out that the letter should go through the post office.  He then took the letter so as to cancel the stamp.  Apparently witnessing this, Alfred Thorndale accused Tony of lacking courtesy and compelled him, at gunpoint, to apologize to his wife and also struck Tony with his fist.   Tony alleged that, following this incident, he lived under constant threat from Thorndale.  I saw no follow-up to this story, so perhaps things were resolved without further conflict.] 

Anthony and Roy would operate the general store under the name Stark Brothers Mercantile Company, and the above Library of Congress link shows what appears to be the interior of their store.  In photo #5, note the two large “TANLAC” signs touting sales of seven million bottles in two years.   If one could believe the Tanlac newspaper ads, and I saw many Colorado newspaper ads for Tanlac in the years 1918-1920, this over-the-counter remedy was the cure for virtually any ailment.  A short list would include the flu, rheumatism, dizziness, “nerves,” insomnia, visual night flashes, shortness of breath, nausea, weight loss, listlessness, and heart trouble.   I would not be surprised to learn that most folks felt better after taking Tanlac, at least for a while, for it contained 36-proof alcohol along with glycerin and bitter herbs.  The American Medical Association described Tanlac as a “sky-rocket in the pyrotechnics of fakery.”     A sobering exposure of the deceptive advertising behind the product can be found in two articles appearing in the May 11, 1917, issue of the Holyoke (Massachusetts) Daily Transcript.  One of the articles reported that a Mr. Fred Wick of South Hadley Falls, Massachusetts, “has been relieved of stomach trouble and has gained ten pounds in weight since taking Tanlac.”  The other article reported Mr. Wick’s funeral, for he had died two days earlier of stomach cancer.   

Around 1905, Annie moved to Walsenburg to work as a railroad telegraph operator.  There she met Frank Ward, a railroad brakeman, whom she married in 1922.  It appears they separated in 1924.  Annie resided in Trinidad until 1930, when she moved to Denver, where she sold insurance and real estate. 

An ambitious worker, over the years Tony held positions as an agent of the Colorado and Southern Railroad, an agent for Wells Fargo Express, a manager for the Western Union Telegraph Company, and town clerk and recorder.  He, Roy and their mother acquired a number of properties around town and established a cabin rental business for tourists. 

Anton Stark died in April of 1920 at the Red Cross Hospital in Salida.  He had entered the hospital in a seriously ill state in January, reportedly suffering from rheumatism.  (This may have been a reference to rheumatoid arthritis.)   Prior to his death, he had both legs amputated.  Testament to the state of medicine one hundred years ago is the report by the Chaffee County Democrat newspaper that Stark’s “disease-weakened system was unable to withstand the gangrene which eventually made its appearance.”    The article pointed out that, at the time of his death, Anton had been living in Denver for some period of time.  His remains were interred at Denver’s Mount Olivet Cemetery.

In July of 1943, just two months following Roy’s death, Anna passed away.   Thus, when Annie moved back to St. Elmo around this time, she would face quite a different life, in which she and Tony were the only two remaining members of the core family.   In a 2013 interview, Melanie Roth, Annie’s goddaughter, said that Annie and Tony, two of the last original residents of St. Elmo, lived there in isolation from the mid-1940’s through 1957. 

Together again, but in a shrunken family, living in a town stripped of its former vitality and populace, Tony and Annie tried to remain optimistic.  Knowing the boom-and-bust rhythms of a mining economy, they fought the idea of St. Elmo being a ghost town.  But the isolation, which increased with the closing of the post office in 1957, may have had its way with them.   There are on-line accounts that Tony and Annie began hoarding, allowing refuse to accumulate in the hotel and leaving stale food and tobacco items on the shelves of the store.  

Tony passed away in St. Elmo in June of 1958, and Annie passed away in April of 1960 in a Salida nursing home.   Their remains, as well as those of their mother, Anna, and brother, Roy, are interred at the Fairview Cemetery in Salida. 

Today, St. Elmo is one of the best preserved ghost towns in Colorado.  This is largely due to the efforts of the Stark family back then to promote a tourist economy through the acquisition and improvement of  properties to rent.   It also reflects the work of Stark family descendants, as well as preservation and restoration organizations such as the Historic St. Elmo & Chalk Creek Canyon, Inc.  The latter was co-founded in 2010 by the aforementioned goddaughter of Annabelle, Melanie Roth.   Their website, https://www.historicstelmo.org/ , contains a stunning photo of the Stark establishment.   By Googling St. Elmo, one can access many images of the town. 

Speaking of ghost towns, Annie has entered the realm of ghost-lore.  It is said that her ghost inhabits the old hotel and the environs of St. Elmo. 

REFERENCES:

  • “Colorado Post Offices – 1859 to 1989,” by Bauer, Ozment and Willard, published by the Colorado Railroad Museum in 1990.
  • “From Hays, Kansas to St Elmo, Colorado (Frying Pan or Fire?), posted September 17, 2018, by ddunlap475 (www.ancestry.com)
  • “Top 6 Ghost Towns in the West:  St. Elmo, Colorado,”



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