Como
On July 17, 1879, the Fairplay Flume recounts how, in thirty days, Como went from a "bleak, brown" countryside to "the liveliest town of its size." The town was composed almost wholly of large tents, and the article predicts that the town would be fairly temporary, that the people would follow the railroad, and that few would stay.[1] Contrary to this, Como remained "the largest town in South Park from 1890 until 1910,"[2] with 6,000 people living in the city of tents during the first summer.[3]
The initiator of this sudden boom was the railroad, which reached Como in June of 1879.[4] Before the railroad, Como was the site of the Stubbs and McLaughlin ranches and the nearby town of King was called Como.[5] As the new town took root, however, the name "Como” was transferred over and the name of the original Como was changed to King, after the postmaster W. H. King.[6] Within a year of the railroad's arrival, Como had settled into a town of more permanence, with almost all of the tents replaced by buildings.[7]
The Como coal mines drew workers and opportunists to the area even before the railroad. The South Park Coal Company hired hundreds of miners to work the mines.[8] Chinese coal miners would have arrived with Thayer in 1878-1879, after the flood wiped out the Fairplay placer (some may have arrived before this from other places). Thayer ran a store and boardinghouse in Como, as well as contracting laborers.[9] He coordinated with Ah Moon to hire Chinese laborers around Como, King, and Hamilton.[10] The rest of the mining population was made up of European immigrants, particularly Italians. The Italian laborers were not just active in the coal mines; they built the stone roundhouse in 1881 and supposedly gave Como its name.[11]
There are reported to have been two laundries in Como belonging to Sang Lung and Wo Lee, which also doubled as gambling spaces.[12] Outside of these few exceptions, however, the majority of Chinese workers lived in the previously abandoned town of Hamilton and commuted to Como and King.[13] The original Como mines were called the "Upper Como Mines" and were worked almost exclusively by Italian miners during the summer of 1879.[14] Later that year, new mines were opened up south of Como consisting of seven levels; this area was called the "Lower Como Mines." The Lower Como Mines were also known as the "King Mines," being within closer proximity to that town.[15] The expansion prompted the South Park Coal Company to look for additional workers and, through Thayer, they began to slowly bring in Chinese miners.[16]
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[1] “A Tented Town,” Fairplay Flume (Fairplay, CO), Jul. 17, 1879, Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection, https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/.
[2] Virginia McConnell Simmons, Bayou Salado: the Story of South Park (Colorado Springs, CO: Century One Press, 1982), 166.
[3] Simmons, 164; Allison Chandler, “The Story of Como & King Park, Colorado,” Denver Westerners Roundup, February 1963, 4.
[4] Chandler, 4.
[5] Frank Hall, “Park County,” in History of the State of Colorado, vol. 4 (Chicago, IL: The Blakely Printing Company, 1895), 267; Mary Dyer, Echoes of Como, Colorado, 1879-1988, (George Meyer, 1988), 120.
[6] Chandler, 4-5.
[7] Chandler, 5; “Como,” Fairplay Flume (Fairplay, CO), Dec. 8, 1880, Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
[8] David A. Wolff, Industrializing the Rockies: Growth, Competition, and Turmoil in the Coalfields of Colorado and Wyoming, 1868-1914 (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2003), 2.
[9] Fairplay Flume (Fairplay, CO), Dec. 16, 1880, Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
[10] Gerald E. Rudolph, “The Chinese in Colorado, 1869-1911” (dissertation, 1964), 64-65; “Hamiltonville,” Fairplay Flume (Fairplay, CO), Nov. 27, 1880, Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
[11] Dyer, 120.
[12] George W. Champion, “Remembrances of South Park,” Colorado Magazine, January 1963, 30 https://5008.sydneyplus.com/HistoryColorado_ArgusNet_Final/Portal.aspx?lang=en-US; Chandler, 17.
[13] Rudolph, 64-65; “Como,” Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO), Nov. 16, 1880, Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
[14] Chandler, 4; “’Chinese Cheap Labor,’” Fairplay Flume, (Fairplay, CO), Dec. 3, 1879, Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
[15] Chandler, 5.
[16] “’Chinese Cheap Labor,’” Fairplay Flume.