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Photo of Mary Agnes and Con Meenan with three miners at mine entrance on Matterhorn Mining Company property, near Ophir, CO, ca. 1910.

The San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado contain much of what is known as the “Colorado Mineral Belt,” which extends from the Durango area and runs northeast clear to Boulder.   Aptly named, this belt has given up much in the way of gold, silver and other ores, accessed over the years through as many as 8,000 mines.   It was the discovery of gold in 1875 that led to the settlement of the town of Ophir.  Named for a Biblical place rich in gold, silver and precious stones visited by King Solomon, Ophir began as a winter camp for a group of prospectors from Silverton.  They had followed a creek (now known as the Howard Fork of the San Miguel River) up to a high valley where they espied orange sediment in the creek that  signaled the presence of gold.  

The town of Ophir sits about 6 miles south and a little west of Telluride.  One can travel ten miles from Ophir east to Silverton on the Ophir Pass road, believed to have been a part of the route used by Navajos between the San Miguel Valley, in what is now Colorado, and the Animas Valley, in what is now New Mexico.  Also referred to as Forest Road #630, Ophir Pass has an elevation of 11,789 feet.   

In late 1906 or early 1907,  husband and wife Con and Mary Agnes Meenan and other investors organized the Matterhorn Mining Company.   Its headquarters was in Chicago.   The company took over what was known as the “Orion” group of claims adjoining the Butterfly-Terrible mines outside of Ophir.  Con would serve as the Manhattan’s vice president and manager, and Mary Agnes, said to be one of the biggest stockholders in the company, would wear a number of hats, including managing the on-site boarding house for the miners,  serving as the company’s secretary and representing the operation to company officials in Chicago.     She may have also served as a director on the company’s board. 

Around Telluride, Mary Agnes had been known by the name Mahoney, being the wife of John Mahoney, and they had a daughter, Irene.    Mary Agnes worked in Telluride as a nurse at the Miners hospital.  She divorced John in 1903 on the grounds of non-support, and at some point she met Con, a wealthy rancher out of Norwood, Colorado.   Con was born in Ireland and Mary Agnes hailed from Pennsylvania. 

Mary Agnes was a maverick.  Though she would become a heavy investor in the mining industry, she was also strongly pro-union.   Con’s interest in Mary Agnes was aroused when he learned of her highly publicized deportation from Telluride by the state militia.  This probably occurred in 1903 when the violent Colorado Labor Wars  of 1903 and 1904 played out in Telluride and several other Colorado locales.   The wars pitted mine owners and businessmen, supported by the Colorado state government, against the Western Federation of Miners.

Following her deportation, Mary Agnes lived in Montrose, and it was there that she and Con  met (the name Con may have been an abbreviation of Conrad).  They fell in love and were married in Delta, CO, on June 13, 1904.   They would make their home on Con’s ranch at Norwood.   (Norwood sits northwest of Ophir atop Wright’s Mesa.  Known at the time for its verdant grasslands, it was an ideal location for ranching.)

Throwing down the gauntlet, Con announced that he and his bride would ride into Telluriude as often as they liked and challenged the mine owners and militia to deport her.   His challenge was never answered. 

According to an article in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, in 1906 Mary Agnes closed a deal with Chicago investors, selling to them, for $65,000, a half interest in her holdings in the Valiant Host of Labor mines, comprising ten claims outside of Ophir.   (In today’s dollars, her selling price would be worth almost $2 million.)    As part of the deal, she would manage the development of the property.  Possible evidence of her pro-union stance in the deal is the fact that the miners of the Valiant would be union only and would earn 50 cents a day more than the prevailing union pay rate.     In reporting this story, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel newspaper alleged that Mary had offered the position of mine manager to Vincent St. John.  

Vincent St. John was president of  Telluride’s Local 63 of the World Federation of Miners in 1901.  When the Telluride district’s Smuggler-Union Mining Company cut the wages of most of its miners that year, St. John led his local to a strike, voted for unanimously by the miners.  St. John believed in political action through non-violent means, and when a riot broke out following the shooting of an unarmed striker by a hired gun, St. John was credited with quelling it.  He subsequently worked to bring the strike to a successful conclusion, with management signing an agreement restoring living wages and acceding to other demands.  St. John was well-liked in Telluride by miners and non-miners alike.   In the fall of 1901 he was nominated to run for sheriff and lost by just 36 votes.    

Vincent St. John’s good qualities notwithstanding, mine owners vilified him.  As a group, they could not afford the presence of someone who could influence miners as effectively as he could.   Mary Agnes, who had her own money and those of others at stake in the Valiant mines, would  have been foolish to appoint a manager whose presence would prove a distraction to the smooth operation of the mines.  I believe the Daily Sentinel’s allegation that she was appointing St. John as mine manager was meant to taunt her, reminding readers of her pro-union background.  I came across no other news stories reporting this alleged appointment.  

The year 1916 found Con and Mary Agnes continuing to work together for the Matterhorn company; by then, a gentleman by the name of Beselack had taken over the manager spot.  Con and Mary Agnes’s ore assessment work through the years had resulted in the company’s acquisition of more mines, and, as a result, by 1916 the Matterhorn owned twelve adjoining claims. 

The first newspaper article I came across which talked about the Matterhorn company and Mary Agnes but made no mention of Con was dated April 1919.  This lack of mention of Con most likely resulted from a significant rupture in  Con and Mary Agnes’ relationship.  For it was in November of that same year that the San Miguel Examiner ran a story describing the trial of Con in district court for assaulting Mary Agnes with a gun.  Though the jury found Con not guilty, such a story is not a harbinger of good marital relations.

Here the trail of Con and Mary Agnes begins to grow cold.  I did discover that, by 1926, Mary Agnes was living in Dolores, Colorado.  It is there that she died in February 1935 at age 70.  Her remains are interred at the Summit Ridge Cemetery in Dolores.  Given the arc of Mary Agnes’ life from nurse to mining investor, manager and developer, I regret that I could not find out more about her.

Con preceded Mary Agnes in death in September 1922, while residing at the home of his nephew, Pat Meenan, in Montrose.  Depending on which obituary you read, he made it to the age of 82 or 86. 

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