Alfred Packer's world: risk, responsibility, and the place of experience in mountain culture, 1873-1907.

On the morning of April 16, 1874, the bedraggled figure of a lone prospector appeared at the Los Pinos Indian Agency near Gunnison, Colorado. Asking for a drink of whiskey, the man said that he and five others had left a larger party of miners at Chief Ouray's winter camp on the other side of the mountains in January. He claimed that his companions left him behind when due to exhaustion, frozen feet, and a bad case of snow-blindness, he could not keep up with them. He told his audience that he had spent months trapped in the snowy mountains existing off of the land.

But over the next few weeks the prospector's tale unraveled. When members of the original Utah party arrived at the Agency they pressured the man to explain what exactly had happened to his companions. He seemed too well fed for a man who had spent the winter in the mountains and he had more money than any of them had seen him with during the trip. He eventually broke down and revealed a horrible series of events that started ten days after their journey began. The prospector confessed "one after another" the men "had been killed by the remainder to be used as food by the rest." (1) He admitted that he had killed the last man in self-defense not twenty miles from the Agency.

Later that summer a search party led by the prospector failed to find the grisly trail of bodies. Despite the lack of evidence the Sheriff of Saguache decided to arrest the man under suspicion of murder anyway, an inclination strengthened after the discovery of the mutilated corpses in the mountains. The prisoner's claims of innocence weakened after an inquest decided that it looked as if someone had brutally killed the men in their sleep. A new warrant formally charged the prospector with the murder of the five men, but he escaped from jail before he went to trial.

Alfred Packer, sometimes known as Alferd, prospector, cannibal, and possible murderer followed others driven to extreme actions in the Mountain West. (2) The famous cannibalistic Donner Party preceded him by twenty-seven years, and perhaps he knew of the troubles of this group of overlanders caught in early winter snows in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. By the end of the winter of 1846-47, the original eighty-seven members of the Donner Party had dwindled to forty-seven, the few staying alive on the flesh of the dead. (3) Hints of foul play also followed the Donner Party incident. No charges were filed, but similar to the Packer case, while the idea of cannibalism revolted readers, the possibility of murder stirred public outrage more than the disgusting act. In fact, no laws forbade anthropophagism.

Even so, posterity remembers both the Donner Party incident and the Packer case for what they ate, the events attributed to a time when the elements held power over the ill prepared. As such, Packer's misdeeds have sat comfortably within the boundaries of Western legend. His guilt or innocence, as well as dining preferences, have found expression in countless biographies and his court cases have also received scholarly attention. (4) Others have remembered Packer creatively in the form of a song by Phil Ochs ("The Ballad of Alfred Packer", 1964), and three feature length films "The Legend of Alfred Packer," directed by Jim Roberson (1980), "Cannibal! The Musical," directed by Trey Parker (1996), and "Devoured: The Legend of Alfred Packer," directed by Kevin Rapp (2005). The University of Colorado, Boulder, honored Packer, where diners can eat at the Alferd Packer Grill, as well as frolic at the on-again, off-again celebration, Alferd Packer Days. Finally, if none of these options whets appetites, one can always run the Alferd Packer Trail Challenge near Denver and then whip up a meal based on a recipe from Alferd Packer's High Protein Cookbook. (5)

But behind the matter of his guilt or innocence, his place among notorious Westerners, and light-hearted tributes to his history, Packer's story offers an opportunity to complicate tendencies to define pioneers', settlers', miners', and others' relationship with their environment in simple "man versus nature" terms. Even more importantly, looking closely at Packer's social milieu moves historical analysis beyond economic connections of consumption and exploitation to explain mountain people's interactions with nature. Certainly the works of William Cronon and others prove that the development of an integrated economy produced long-lasting ecological changes, but not sufficiently explored are the enduring impacts that the environment had on those who first arrived, traveled through, and settled in new places. (6) While frontier histories often describe the challenges first faced by the newcomers, natural hazards tend to fallout of the story once industrial capitalism becomes a presence in one place after another. But for the individuals and communities that confronted environmental risks such problems remained a critical component of the on-going human-nature relationship.

For those who came early to the gold and silver deposits of Colorado and other parts of the Mountain West, whether sojourners or permanent residents, they had to make certain adjustments to traveling and living year-round in the mountains in order to survive. This phase, often overlooked by historians as an insignificant period of carefree independence, when men worked autonomously and took time away from their claims to fish or go "berrypicking," requires more attention because these adaptations remained a constant and unifying part of what it took to live in the mountains both before and after industrial mining took hold. (7) As new territories opened to prospecting and settlement, newcomers brought along but also constructed notions of acceptable behavior that sought to govern residents' relationships with one another. These codes of behavior included adjustments and adaptations made to cope with the dangers of their natural world.

This meant that Packer's alleged behavior threatened an emerging cultural code among Western prospectors that relied on trust and reciprocity to lessen the risks of mountain living. (8) Anger towards Packer stemmed not from what he ate, but from the miners' perceptions that Packer broke the codes that governed behavior in the mountains. Thus Packer, whom the miners suspected of luring his companions into the mountains, exploiting their ignorance of survival until they suffered from the cold, and striking them as they lay vulnerable by the campfire, threatened the tentative sense of control newcomers had over their natural and social world.

This examination of the cultural codes that ordered the social world of mountain miners and how they understood responsibility unfolds in three parts. First, mountain miners had to confront the demands of their environment. Newcomers had to acquire particular types of knowledge to make living in the mountains possible. More experienced men who had worked and traveled in other parts of Colorado and the Mountain West passed their skills on to new arrivals. Mountain miners depended on one another when difficulties arose. Importantly, when disaster struck, community members worked together to rescue those in peril. The risks that typified life in the High Country not only drove individuals to become skilled in mountain crafts; they also affected the networks that miners built with each other, and their sense of responsibility towards one another. Understanding the culture that mountain miners operated within provides the context for the second part that analyzes Packer's alleged crimes, arrest, escape, recapture, trials and sentencing. Attitudes towards Packer, rather than softening in the ten years between his escape and recapture, had gained an even harder edge. Packer's reappearance produced comments and actions that revealed the commitment mountain miners had to the codes that lessened the risks of mountain living. Finally, Packer's appeals for pardon at the end of the century and the outrage his requests elicited from mountain communities demonstrated the endurance of these cultural bonds. Mountain culture, rather than an ephemeral part of early settlement, stayed relevant into the twentieth century.

Mountain Miners' Natural and Social World

Gold seekers came to stake claims in Colorado after the 1859 discovery of the valuable mineral in Cherry Creek, near present-day Denver. Prospectors looking for gold and silver quickly dispersed throughout the mountains seeking to strike it rich. Early expeditions into the San Juans, especially two led by Charles Baker in 1860 and 1861, indicated rich gold and silver deposits lay buried there. Violent clashes between the whites and Ute Indians, however, discouraged prospectors from going to this area until the government yielded to pressure from the mining community and ceded all the mineral rights to prospectors under the 1873 Brunot Agreement. (9) Other parts of the West such as Virginia City, Nevada and central Colorado had well-developed industrial mining, but it took several years before transportation routes became reliable enough to entice investors interested in large-scale hard-rock mining to southwestern Colorado. In the ten years before the towns of Silverton, Ouray, Lake City, and Rico developed and became connected by roads, trails, and rails, men relied on their own skills and those of their companions for survival.

Prospectors "disassembled" their environment as they dug up streambeds and cut down trees, but the severe environment in the San Juan region had an effect on the miners as well. (10) The rugged terrain and harsh weather caught even seasoned mountain travelers by surprise. (11) Hundreds of precipitous mountains that towered over 13,000 feet had led the explorer John C. Fremont to declare the San Juans "the highest, most rugged, most impracticable and inaccessible of the Rocky Mountains." (12) Father Gibbons, the only Catholic priest in southwestern Colorado in the late 1800s recalled "the scenery baffles description--sublime and awful alone can describe it." (13)

The winter season could last up to nine months. (14) Deep snowfall could make traveling practically impossible and so dangerous that even years later the local newspaper stated it "should be avoided by those who place any value upon their lives." (15) Blizzards loaded the peaks with snow, and steep mountainsides and deep gullies meant that in winter and spring "miners and others working on the slopes of the mountains are obliged to be continually on the lookout, for frequently without warning an avalanche will descend with such force as to carry with it large forest trees and bowlders[sic], attaining such velocity that it destroys everything in its path." (16) Even practicing the utmost care did not prevent deaths. Avalanches occurred most often after a huge storm, but could happen at any time on the steep slopes. Slides took place when variable snow layers built up on one another. Poor coherence between the layers caused the snow to fracture and slip. Both slab avalanches that came down hillsides and gulch avalanches that followed streambeds could contain enormous amounts of snow and debris. (17) During the winter months freezing temperatures, sudden storms, and violent avalanches made traveling, living, and working in the mountains extremely dangerous.

But learning how to travel as safely as possible under these conditions became essential to prospectors. Survival rather than profit often became the goal as they physically contended with the terrain where treasure hid. (18) No matter whether they came from the gold fields of California, silver mines of Nevada, from the East Coast, or from Europe, they soon found that their new home posed many obstacles; yet the chance to strike it rich propelled people into the mountains even under the worst conditions. That first winter found nearly two thousand prospectors in the San Juans, with thousands more expected by summer. (19)

Many prospectors relied on horses, mules, and burros (donkeys) to carry their supplies to their claims, some situated as high as 11,500 feet in altitude along the Continental Divide. These beasts were "not only the pets and companions of their owners, but were a paying investment, and as such were carefully guarded and treated." (20) In spite of the care travelers took with their animals many unfortunate burros, mules, and horses lost their lives on the treacherous trails. (21) Problems began when a pack animal fell through the snow. According to an account in Harper's Weekly burros balked when caught in the snow, and prospectors spent a fair amount of time shoveling out their animals and cajoling them along the trail. Sudden storms could blow up furthering difficulties. Even following the blaze marks cut on trees above the snow line did not rescue miners from perilous situations. After man and animal topped a ridge they began the even more perilous descent. Ice underneath the snow might cause a man to slip and fall to his death over the edge of a cliff. A technique called "tailing" put the burden of safety on the donkey. The miner "takes his burro by the tail ... and hangs on like grim death, carefully feeling his way along to the bottom or over the worst part." (22) One prospector, caught in a snowstorm, claimed three burros dug him out of the snow and led him to safety. He declared, "Yes, I have a warm place in my heart for these little animals--yes, I may call it reverence." (23) Men worked closely with their sure-footed companions, and trusted their burros to get them through tricky situations.

Learning to work with pack animals represented only one of the many skills prospectors learned to ease their travel in winter conditions. Skis became the most common aid to winter travel in the San Juans. (24) Norwegian immigrants first brought skiing to America, and those who used the seven to twelve foot wooden skis called them Norwegian Snow-shoes. Trappers most likely used skis to travel in the Rocky Mountains first, but for the miners who rushed to the San Juans in the 1870s, skis became indispensable for survival. Learning to make and use skis and knowing when to travel proved critical skills to mountain miners. One resident remembered that everyone used "the Norwegian ski. I never saw a man on a French Canadian snowshoe or racket." (25) First in the Sierra Mountains after the California Gold Rush, and then in the Rocky Mountains, skiing became essential to working and traveling in the mountains in winter. Father Gibbons stressed that for many parts of the state "where the snow is four feet and upward in depth, all winter long ... snowshoes are one of the necessaries of life." (26) Prospectors could fashion skis with materials at hand and when "held up by a heavy snowfall, lacking time and material to improvise snowshoes of Indian pattern, [a man] can always split out and hew a serviceable pair of skees," should a snowstorm blow up suddenly. (27) They relied on their skis to get into town and bring supplies to their camps, and without these pieces of equipment they could not leave their cabins.

In one case of three unlucky miners who lived in southwestern Colorado, skis allowed them to escape certain starvation. One day, while working in their tunnel, the men heard the unmistakable roaring sound that meant only one thing: avalanche! They ran to the mouth of the mineshaft to find that their cabin had been swept away, along with all their wood and food stores. The snow slide left the miners facing serious privation if they did not make the trek from their claim located above tree line to the small town of Needleton a few miles away. (28) Deep snow made travel difficult, but these miners had stashed their skis at the opening of their mine, affording them a precarious yet possible way to get down the mountain.

Steep slopes and deep canyons proved a challenge to the miners who "were not experts with the skees ... They could manage them fairly well and had used them often 'in the day's work' as men must who go about in the Rocky Mountain country in winter, but in a coast like this they were only amateurs." (29) When forced to jump off a fifty-foot cliff, the first miner landed headfirst into thirty feet of soft snow. Uninjured, he watched the second miner take the plunge successfully. The third man lost his skis in mid flight, and completed two somersaults in the air before landing so deep in the drifts that his friends had to dig him out. They found only one of his skis, and the threesome barely made it into Needleton by nightfall. (30) While portrayed as a light-hearted adventure, the risk of accidents defined prospectors' interactions with their environment. Failure to learn how to manage pack animals or to ski could leave miners stranded without provisions. Self-reliance counted, but as the skiing miners demonstrated, the ability to work together counted more. These early cases of cooperation contributed to growing notions of group responsibility that later characterized community actions after disasters occurred in the mountains.

Forming close bonds with their animals and acquiring ski skills in order to lessen the risks of their mountain home were only two of the adaptations forced on people by winter conditions. The long season also demanded that travelers and residents make other adjustments not necessary in most places. They discovered that the winter sun could soften the snow so much that it could not "bear a man in the daytime, even with snow-shoes. From about two o'clock until nine or ten in the morning was the only time a man could go; and a horse could not go at all." (31) Another hazard of the mountains came on clear, sunny days. As the sun reflected off the snow, it burned the unwary traveler's eyeballs. This could leave a person floundering sightless for hours in the wilderness. (32) Greenhorns, who failed to protect their eyes, "were often attacked. Showing first by a redness of the lids and a profuse flow of tears." The symptoms then "rapidly developed into a fearful, stabbing pain of the eyeballs, loss of sight; and in severe cases the patient became crazy for a time, running about and dashing into everything in his way." (33) As a precaution people who had to travel during the daytime would blacken their faces "taking some burnt wood from a stump" or wear dark clothes to reduce the risk. (34) Others wore veils to shield their eyes. (35)

One of the reciprocal actions taken by mountain miners came about due to the high probablility of travelers getting caught out in snowstorms. As prospectors set up more permanent camps a "gentlemen's agreement" emerged that held miners should keep their cabins stocked with wood and food so that if a blizzard blew up any passer-by could take shelter. (36) More than simple generosity, this agreement worked mutually, assuring that all travelers could count on lodging and sustenance. While these skills and precautions did not always protect men from the elements, at least knowledge about working with animals, nose blackening, and access to caches gave them tools to draw from when situations became precarious. Men could not command the weather, but they could arm themselves with a set of skills that lessened the risks in their lives and gave them a sense of greater control over nature. Their individual skills in combination with their reliance on one another reinforced the codes that governed social interactions. These codes of behavior developed in the early years also served as precursors to the committed rescue efforts employed by mountain residents to save victims of avalanches.

Of all the hazards found in the mountains in winter, avalanches, or as mountain miners called them, snow slides or simply slides, caused the most death and destruction in the San Juans. (37) Between 1875 and 1882, fifteen men died in avalanches in the San Juans. (38) Heavy snows and steep terrain made this area one of the most avalanche-prone in North America. (39) Avalanches presented a constant threat to life and property "and [were] so destructive in the spring for a few weeks that no one traveled over these trails." (40) Watching the weather and becoming an avalanche forecaster proved a necessary part of life. Due to their unpredictability and violent impact, avalanches remained the least controllable of threats in the mountains.

J. M. Goodwin, a writer for Overland Monthly observed that a "real live snow-slide is not a pleasant thing to encounter, and the spectator, after a close view, prefers much to be at a respectful distance when one is in action." He found that certain conditions seemed to affect the probability of a slide and that "they usually occur in anything but comfortable weather,--at the time when snow is falling the fastest, or else just after it has packed, and the atmosphere is in a melting mood, causing saturation and consequent increase of weight." Experienced mountain travelers such as "Mountaineers learn to keep on the safe side [of cornices] whenever they think the danger is imminent, and yet it is nearly always a risk to pass over snow lying on slopes above thirty degrees in inclination." He concluded, "in fact, there appears to be no positive rule which enables a person to tell beforehand when and where slides will occur." (41) Such unpredictability left mountain miners vulnerable to the elements and propelled forward social pressure to help others in need.

Mountain miners essayed to build their homes in safe places, but the erratic nature of avalanches made this difficult. (42) Sometimes memories of special friendships remained the only thing left after friends died in slides. For instance, after a wall of snow swept over a cabin smothering the two men inside, their neighbor tenderly recalled the tragic pair's life together in a poem:

  Will Clark was but a lad, not yet eighteen;
  We knew some household darling he had been;
  For he had gentle speech and dainty ways,
  Appeared to yearn for our good will and praise,
  The other, Jack Monroe, was the reverse;
  He sandwiched every sentence with a curse,
  Defiant seemed, alike of God and man,
  To such extremes his daily actions ran;
  Yet strange to say, his friendship for the youth
  Was strong as death, and beautiful as truth.

  We found his giant body wedged between
  The splintered rafters; an effectual screen
  From their sharp spears, shielding the tender frame
  As oft his tongue had sheltered him from blame;
  One great hand held the slender fingers close,
  One crouched the head in its last long repose,
  And thus they sleep, our pitying hands provided,
  Who living, loved, in death were not divided. (43)

The exact nature of the friendship between Will Clark and Jack Monroe will remain lost to us, but their neighbors experienced great grief at their passing and buried them together after the avalanche crushed them to death. Just as the homosocial world of miners sent them into special friendships with one another, the environment also influenced cultural development. (44) Avalanches served to highlight the precarious nature of life and the importance of friendships in this world and the next.

Death due to avalanches sometimes drew the criticism of residents. Three young miners, from the East quickly "learned to appreciate the perils of the snowslide" when an avalanche overwhelmed them. (45) In this case local priest Father Gibbons found little sympathy for the foolish men. They had crossed a gulch so heavy with snow that even as newcomers they should have known better. Gibbons wrote especially harsh words for the member of the party who supposedly started the avalanche. Known for his profuse swearing, "it is said that a rock struck the unhallowed blasphemer, and ground into mince meat that tongue of his which had so often defied the God who made him." (46) Unlike the couple that died blamelessly in their cabins, traveling in winter without proper skills drew scorn. People crossing the peaks and canyons depended on their companions to avoid foolish mistakes that could start a slide that would kill everyone in the party. Re-telling of this and similar stories also reinforced the miners' codes that emphasized the importance of knowledge, experience, and reciprocity.

Fear of avalanches seemed not to deter those who sought gold and silver, even though constant reminders of destructive slides littered the landscape. By the 1880s, abandoned camps destroyed by avalanches served as alarming reminders of winter's power. Travelers could see debris from cabins wrecked by slides scattered across the valley floors. (47) Looking into a gulch and seeing the remains of a wagon, burro, or miner's tools became commonplace to all that traveled in the area. As long as the desire to seek riches or steady employment kept men in the mountains, the behaviors developed to offset risk continued to gain strength.

Towns grew as prospectors came from all over to mine the mountain's riches, and railroads soon followed the toll roads that crisscrossed the mountains. The arrival of the Denver and Rio Grande line from Durango to Silverton in 1882 brought large-scale development to the San Juans. The arrival of hard-rock mining altered work relationships for the many who became wage earners in the new corporate run mines. Instead of an abrupt end to independent mining, however, corporate mines employing dozens of workers and small claims run by two or three men often existed side by side. (48) Furthermore, no stark line divided the interests of those who worked for companies and those who worked for themselves. Many of the behaviors adopted in the early years carried over into the industrial era and influenced the ways mountain miners understood their surroundings and interacted with each other. As environmental hazards did not disappear with the arrival of industrial mining, miners and other residents incorporated and adjusted mountain culture to the transitioning economic order.

The arrival of corporate run mines in the San Juans reinforced the need for community members to take care of each other. The many who moved into wage-work saw their dreams of independence and wealth slipping away, along with their control over keeping themselves safe. Similar to their new work relations that drove miners to unionize, working for a company heightened miners' need to ameliorate the environmental risks they faced on the job. (49) The arrival of the railroad increased the numbers of people in harm's way by encouraging year-round mine production as trains made supplies available throughout the winter. This meant more people stayed in the San Juans during the most dangerous months. In addition, the railroads could not always determine the safest routes. For instance, when the Denver and Rio Grande Railway planned its route to Telluride the engineers avoided a known slide path. But much to their surprise the first spring, a slide came down a new route and swept twenty-five loaded freight cars into a canyon. (50) Railroad engineers knew that slides often traveled the same paths winter after winter, but could not prepare for rogue slides.

Working in winter also put miners directly in the path of avalanches. Mining operations tried to stay open year-round in spite of the difficulties with snow. Some operations built avalanche defense structures, which consisted of log, rock, or earthen wedge-shaped barriers that would supposedly deflect snow around a mineshaft, tram tower, or other structure. The efficacy of these defenses proves difficult to determine, but the damage caused by avalanches suggests they provided little protection. Between 1882 and 1893, snow slides in San Juan County killed twenty-one, injured four, buried thirty-five who survived, and damaged at least forty different buildings--including seven bunkhouses. (51) Mines sometimes closed when conditions became too dangerous, but usually waited until after a slide or slides occurred. (52)

Accidents with dynamite that caused avalanches to sweep down on the mines led to ideas about how to control avalanches with explosives. This method of control, however, never became anything more than experimental and sporadic. (53) Mine operators tried to locate their structures at "safe" sites--places where avalanches seemed less likely. But the erratic nature of avalanches meant that even "safe" places suffered. An avalanche at the Highland Mary Mine, a location not hit by a slide in its thirteen years of existence, led one local journalist to despair "this goes to show that nowhere in the deep gulches of the San Juan can safety be relied upon. The fact that a snowslide has never been known to occur at a particular locality is no guarantee of safety whatever." (54) At other places such as the Humbolt mine, perched precariously at 13,000 feet, "no trees or sheltering gulches break the force of the awful blizzards which sweep along those naked heights. To witness a snowslide within a short distance of the miner's bunkhouse is no rare occurrence." (55) These sights reinforced the sense of duty and responsibility to help each other that characterized life in the southern Rocky Mountains.

When risks endangered a community on a daily basis, members developed a range of responses to cope with both the threat of danger and what to do after a disaster occurred. (56) Mountain residents acquired an awareness of the environmental hazards of their home. They also took measures such as knowing when to travel and where to construct buildings to reduce the chances of death in a slide. These preventative maneuvers reflected individual and community attempts to offset risk. Furthermore, the actions they took in a crisis, after a slide happened, exposed how integral the earlier codes of prospectors had become to mountain residents. The complex networks of aid that launched into action after a slide happened showed how the economic transformations occurring in the San Juans had strengthened ideas of group responsibility among miners.

By 1890, independent miners and those who worked for companies exhibited "pragmatic altruism" that compelled people to undertake dangerous search and rescue operations. (57) One example occurred in the winter of 1890-91, a winter when The Silverton Standard declared "the snow slides have been simply fearful, nothing of the kind has been seen for the last 12 years. The oldest timer in this district never saw anything of the kind." (58) The temperatures got so low, some miners found their great powder, also known as dynamite, too cold to ignite. (59) Billy Maher, an old timer who practiced tricks such as sleeping with his breakfast potatoes to keep them from freezing, also had a habit of thawing out his great powder by the cabin's fire on frigid mornings. On February 25, he let the powder get too hot and the explosives blew up in his face. His partner, a recent Italian immigrant, went for help. New to skiing, he fell down every time he tried to use his skis. He finally stuck his hands in the toe straps, knelt on the boards, and crawled towards the Terrible Mine for help. It took him seven and half-hours to reach his destination--only a mile away.

Four men, more experienced on their skis, went to the cabin and retrieved Billy. On their way back to the Terrible a huge storm blew up and the men heard the horrible roar of a snowslide to their right. Scared and exhausted they finally made it back to the Terrible. They expected to find four men from the Virginius waiting there to carry out the second leg of the rescue mission to the hospital in Ouray. But the relief party never came. The four tired men from the Terrible carried their burden all the way to town.

The next day the rescue party returned up the mountain and chastised the men from the Virginius for not sending help. The accused protested, arguing that they had sent several men. It was at that point that "they all instinctively turned and looked down the mountain side. There they beheld the track of an awful snowslide and they knew the fate of the miners." (60) Billy died a few days later in the hospital. Practically the whole town turned out to show their respects. The funeral offered another avenue for individuals to support each other and praise the rescuers, whose actions helped the community cope with winter disasters.

Significantly, this story demonstrated that miners risked their lives for each other. Group responsibility outweighed personal culpability. Even though the "Italian" could see that his partner would likely die, he made every effort to go for help. Rather than blaming Billy for his carelessness, the other miners--men who did not even work with him--came to his aid. Next, the miners at both the Terrible and Virginius agreed to help knowing full well the risks that winter travel entailed. While Billy obviously put himself in danger with his activities his neighbors went unhesitatingly to his assistance. The men's critical attitude towards the miners from the Virginius, before understanding what had happened to the rescue party, spoke to the participation expected of all when others needed help. They assigned blame to the men they believed acted inappropriately, not to the imprudent Billy. Thus between 1872 and 1890, mountain miners had developed a complex set of skills, actions, and sense of responsibility toward one another that offset the risks of their natural world. Evident in the rescue efforts of community members, mountain people operated within a culture adapted to cope with environmental risks. Into this world stepped Alfred Packer.

The Case of Alfred Packer

Among the prospectors who arrived in the San Juans in the winter of 1873, came Alfred Packer and his group of twenty-one miners from Bingham Canyon, Utah. Packer, who did not have enough money to pay for his provisions, had offered $25.00, his knowledge of Colorado's High Country, and his ability to guide in order to join the party. Robert McGrew, who had a four-horse team and needed help, accepted his offer. (61) These types of expeditions that put men of varying degrees of experience together demanded a certain amount of trust among the members of a party. Those who knew little about the mountains relied on the skills of those who had traveled there before for a safe journey.

Packer's relationship with the other miners soon soured. Rumors circulated that Packer had spent time in jail in Salt Lake City under suspicion for murdering his trapping partner. He also had an unpleasant attitude and a nosy habit of asking the other men how much money they had brought on the journey. Worst of all, his claims that he could guide the group proved false. (62) The group, ill provisioned for winter travel, grew even hungrier when they got lost several times and failed to find much game along their route. Animosity towards Packer grew.

They arrived in a starving condition at Chief Ouray's winter camp along the Uncompahgre River in the middle of December. Chief Ouray urged the prospectors to avoid traveling in the San Juans until spring. (63) But eager to get started, a few men split off from the main group and headed towards the Los Pinos Indian Agency. Packer attempted to join this group led by Oliver D. Loutzenhizer, but Loutzenizer distrusted Packer and threatened to shoot him if he tried to follow. A second party of six men, including Packer, departed soon thereafter. Without roads or railways, and trails covered with snow, this group of relative strangers became dependent on their shared experience for safe travel. Packer, who supposedly knew the most, confidently led the men as they started across the mountains. (64)

Packer's small group had no pack animals with them, and they carried their scant provisions on their backs. They at first followed the trail broken by Loutzenhizer's groups' hastily fashioned cottonwood skis, which led them higher into the mountains. (65) But deep snow led Packer to suggest that they leave the route outlined by Chief Ouray and followed by Loutzenhizer, and head for the high ridges where the snow blew off, making for easier walking. In his first telling of his misadventure, Packer had asserted that after struggling for many days his companions had left him behind because his snow blindness slowed their progress too much. But such a condition did not mesh with his early assertions of experience, as any man who had trapped and traveled in the mountain knew to take precautions against the sun's reflective power. Comments such as these probably contributed to later suspicions against him.

Furthermore, when Packer told his story the second time several weeks later, and admitted to killing Bell in self-defense, he played on the known perils of mountain travel to justify his actions. He asserted that extreme conditions drove him to kill in order to save his own life and cannibalize his companions for survival. But as Packer sat in jail, observers speculated that rather than a victim of circumstance, he had used his experience in the mountains to entice the men into the hills in order to murder them and steal their money. Packer's attempts to stress the difficulties they encountered persuaded few. Instead, members of the original party recalled Packer's claims that he knew the mountains of Colorado. (66) But before he readjusting his story again, Packer escaped from the Saguache jail in the early fall of 1874.

The next decade brought rapid change to the San Juans. In the ten years after Packer stumbled out of the wilderness, towns dotted the landscape and railroads connected southwestern Colorado to the outside world. The arrival of the rail lines, the shift in work relations, and the influx of newcomers kept social relations unstable. Yet the constant threat presented by avalanches and other natural hazards quickly pulled newcomers into participating in the customs that lessened daily risks. Quick assimilation into mountain culture meant that even recent arrivals understood the importance of adjusting to the climate. Thus when Packer resurfaced in Wyoming in 1883, his actions remained relevant and his behavior appeared even more threatening than it had ten years earlier. His unruly conduct represented the antithesis of what communities fought for by developing codes that protected them from the environment.

Packer made another confession, en route to his overdue trial, on March 16, 1883. His grim account this time around fit the evidence of the case more accurately. He described that a terrible storm and insufficient provisions left the men "living on rosebuds and pine gum and some men ... crying and praying." (67) One day Packer left camp to climb a ridge to try and get his bearings. He returned to find Bell "roasting a piece of meat which he had cut out of the leg of the german butcher ... the other three men were lying near the fire, they were cut in the forehead with the hatchet." (68) According to Packer, Bell came at him and he killed the man in self-defense. He admitted that he took the dead men's cash and out of necessity ate pieces of the deceased. Packer's story had many versions, but each one tried to justify violence with need. He had killed in self-defense. He had eaten the men to survive in the winter wilderness. But instead of finding sympathy from the residents of Lake City and the region, Packer met hostility. In his time away, experience and reciprocity had not lost cultural relevance; instead they had become even more important.

The prosecution focused on Packer's violent behavior, mendacity, and greed. The papers portrayed Packer as a "fiend" and "ghoul," and his atrocious acts "A Tale of Terror." (69) And on April 13, 1883, a jury in Lake City found Packer guilty of premeditated murder. Judge Melville B. Gerry, pronounced the first death sentence in the history of Hinsdale County, and declared Packer to "be hung by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead, and may God have mercy upon you soul." (70) Packer's death warrant came on the heels of a local lynching incident that saw two murderers hanged off a bridge. And for many in Lake City, the desire to punish Packer transcended legal avenues. Justice demanded action, and some locals worried that the legal system worked slowly and unreliably. But the Sheriff and other county officials pressured these men to leave Packer alone by convincing them that the system could handle such a villain. (71) The fevered anger toward Packer, however, showed that the ten years since the alleged murders had only strengthened mountain residents' convictions that his actions represented the most terrible of crimes.

As Packer awaited death, his lawyers appealed his case. They asserted that because lawmakers had repealed the Territorial murder laws in 1881 in favor of new state laws, he could not be charged with murders that had taken place in 1874. (72) This was not an unprecedented reason for appeal. Al Garvey, whom a jury had found guilty of murder, had his case overturned on this technicality in October 1884, when the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that prosecutions of murders before May 28,1881, were invalid. The Court decided, however, that a person could be retried for manslaughter, should this issue arise again. (73)

Accordingly, in 1885, the Court ordered a retrial in the case of The People of the State of Colorado v. Alfred Packer. This time his trial took place in Gunnison, after Packer's lawyers requested a change of venue. Undoubtedly they hoped that emotions in Gunnison would not run so high. Packer pled not guilty to all five charges of manslaughter. But Packer's lawyers misunderstood sentiment in mountain communities towards the accused. Again, the jury found Packer guilty. The judge sentenced him to forty years in prison, the longest sentence ever handed down by an American judge, and for the forty-three year-old Packer most likely a life sentence. (74)

Packer's Appeals

Over the next fifteen years, Packer, his lawyers, and a few who took up his cause, worked to obtain his release. The Colorado Supreme Court reviewed his case five times, but never overturned it. (75) Former Los Pinos Indian Agent Charles Adams took the time to write to the Board of Pardons in support of their decisions. He opposed Packer's release as he still felt that "Packer should have been hung in the first place." (76) Adams reiterated earlier arguments that Packer appeared suspicious, as for everyone in the Utah group has claimed, Packer boasted of his familiarity with the territory. If events had really happened as Packer now told them, and he had related that story originally, Adams concluded that Packer could have "escaped a free man with the pity rather than the blame of all who should have heard his story." (77) Because Packer had told so many variations of events, however, Adams could only conclude that Packer committed the crimes. As men who knew the mountains, Packer's plight might have earned sympathy if need compelled him to kill Bell and eat pieces of the others. But mountain miners, who meted out blame based on what they saw as willful violations of their code, heaped censure on Packer's head.

In the summer of 1897, Packer continued his efforts to obtain a pardon. He wrote a lengthy letter to the Pardons Board explaining, yet again, the events of the winter of 1873-74. Packer set the stage for his own group's troubles by discussing the difficulties that the Loutzenhizer party had encountered. He wrote that they grew so desperate they considered casting lots to determine who should give up his life and furnish food for the others. Surely Packer well knew the accepted practice, a practice rarely questioned in wider society, of drawing straws to see who should sacrifice his life on the high seas when disaster befell a ship. (78) Perhaps he hoped this would help others to understand the extreme nature of the prospectors' situation. He continued that his own group had boiled their moccasins for food, ate rosebuds, and suffered to an extent that "the inexperienced cannot imagine." (79) Packer then described his horror on the day he returned to camp and discovered the men dead. He asked "Can you imagine my situation--my comrades dead and I left alone surrounded by the midnight horrors of starvation as well as those of utter isolation." (80) Only with the utmost revulsion did Packer eat a piece of Miller's leg. The rest, he explained, was a blur of insane torment. He concluded that he bore malice towards none, but felt the time had come for his release.

Pardons Board Secretary C. L. Stonaker sought comment from those in Packer's original Utah party as he considered Packer's appeal. He wrote to Preston Nutter, one of the original Utah Party and a key witness against Packer in both his trials, "You have doubtless heard and noticed the persistent efforts being made to secure pardon for this man." Stonaker thought these requests suspicious as most "come from the new residents of the state" and "none of the old timers have changed their opinion." (81) Nutter railed against the disruptive influence of men like Packer when he wrote back to Stonaker "If any sane man could have seen the mutilated bodies of those men knowing the existing conditions as I know them and heard the different stories Packer told about the affair and then want to turn that kind of man loose on a community I would say open all doors and turn all criminals out." Nutter continued, "I am not writing this for the record But[sic] giving my opinion and how the people felt at the time." (82) More than only how they felt at the time, Nutter stressed that even newcomers and the healing effects of time had not changed mountain communities' sentiments towards Packer. Packer's long sentence proved that the ten years in between his escape and recapture had only accentuated mountain miners' reliance on the codes that ameliorated risk through dependence on one another, and their desire to punish those who defiled it. The distinction that Stonaker and Nutter made between old-timers and Packer's advocates in Denver also highlighted the growing divide between the culture of mountain communities and that of the state's urban center. Where as those who lived in the booming metropolis, which numbered close to 150,000 by 1900, faced such urban problems as crowding and waste management, environmental problems remained an extremely real difficulty for those in the mountains. (83)

Interest in Packer's pleas for release also captured the attention of John Lawrence, a Saguache resident who had moved to Colorado in 1859. He decided to find people who had known Packer to see if he could uncover the truth. First he interviewed Robert McGrew, the owner of the four-horse team. McGraw remembered that most men in the group disliked Packer. McGrew also recalled vividly Packer's claims that he could act as a guide. He worried that if the Board pardoned Packer he might seek revenge. Next, John R. Pond, another longtime Colorado resident, who worked in Saguache at the time of the deaths, told Lawrence "Of course, all agreed that Packer killed them as he was the only one that came out alive." (84) Finally, Lawrence questioned James Fullerton, who had moved to Saguache in 1868. In 1874, while surveying for the Saguache and San Juan Toll Road Company, Fullerton discovered a camp (close to where the bodies lay, though he did not find them) that looked like "a camp where someone had stayed for quite a length of time. The one who stayed there showed that he was used to camping." (85) This comment again alluded to Packer's supposed experience in the mountains, an important factor in how the old-timers judged his actions.

But Lawrence ignored the evidence. As such, he chose to recast Packer's case from the vantage point of the twentieth century. He remembered that of the members of the second jury, none had arrived in Colorado more recently than in the year and a half before the trial. Lawrence thus twisted events to suggest that it was newcomers who misunderstood the conditions and culture that operated in southwestern Colorado. He added, "no one of them knew what it was to be lost in the mountains, to be in deep snow, to be starved or know that there might be a scarcity of game in certain places at times and It was sufficient that they had a man-eater before them." (86) Furthermore, Lawrence urged that Packer should receive a full pardon as he concluded Packer seemed insane, and he had either killed the men in self-defense, or else Bell killed them all. Lawrence delivered his findings to Stonaker. But Lawrence stood out as an anomaly. Even the venerable Otto Mears, architect of the San Juan region's toll roads and railroad system reminisced, "that Packer, being a mountain guide, could not, upon any rational hypothesis, have disregarded these instructions [of Chief Ouray]." (87) Undoubtedly Chief Ouray's experience in the mountains made him the most authoritative figure on traveling safely in the San Juans. While Lawrence allowed nostalgia to color his memories of the old days, others stuck to their convictions of Packer's guilt. In their minds Packer's experience and familiarity with the mountains exposed his guilt.

As Packer fought tirelessly to get his case appealed from prison, interest in his release caught the public eye when a well-known muckraking reporter, Polly Pry of Denver, took up his case. In Denver, support for Packer's release grew as Pry published his claims of innocence, the testimony of character witnesses, and explained that prison exacerbated his declining health. (88) Packer gathered support by suggesting that his release presented a business opportunity. Packer claimed he could tour the country as "Packer the Man Eater" and turn a profit by trading on his associations with the Wild West, much like the other spectacles that showcased the rough, wild days of Indian fighting and gunplay. (89)

Contentions over Packer's release even resulted in attempted murder. A lawyer, William W. "Plug Hat" Anderson, spoke with Pry and owners of The Post, Frederic G. Bonfils and H. H. Tammen, about obtaining a letter of reference form the paper as he desired to meet with Packer and help with his pardon. But before he obtained the letter, Anderson traveled to Canon City and convinced Packer to give him an interview and $25 to help with his plea. On January 13, 1900, Bonfils and Tammen accused Anderson of "bad faith." The men argued, Anderson went and got his gun, and shot both newspapermen. (90) While tensions ran high in Denver, they had little to do with the actual case.

For most of the people in the San Juans and in other mountain communities, antics in Denver failed to address the serious nature of Packer's crimes. Most residents agreed with Nutter, McGrue, and Pond, rather than Lawrence and Pry. Sally B. Cross, a reporter for the Lake City Times, wrote an angry response to Polly Pry that defended the conviction of Packer by the original jury and asserted that no one in Hinsdale County believed Packer innocent. She reiterated the question, if Packer did not kill those men, who did? Judge Gerry, now living in Telluride, told Cross that Pry should come to Lake City and interview surviving members of the jury. Furthermore, he claimed that no "old-timers who will remember the circumstances of the crime" believed Packer innocent. (91) Opinions of Packer had changed little in the intervening years, pointing to mountain communities' reliance on the codes of conduct that had ordered and still ordered their lives decades later.

For example, response to a slide in Telluride in 1902, at the Liberty Bell Mine, replicated the rescue efforts of community members in the 1880s. The avalanche demolished many buildings and buried two engineers. A rescue party of miners hurried to dig out the men "when another avalanche descended, burying nearly twenty of the rescuers." By the end of the day "no less than six masses of snow came down ... and the bodies of the victims were not recovered until several months afterward ... In all twenty-three men were killed at this place by slides that day." (92) Even though more and more rescuers died trying to dig out the victims, they did not stop in spite of the danger to themselves. And even as Denver residents read about a miner lost in a snowstorm near Ouray who survived only because of the help of an experienced miner who stocked his cabin every fall and saw the man floundering in the snow on broken skis and came to his rescue, they did not appreciate the importance of the customs that guided behavior in the San Juans. (93) Denver's citizens did not rely on the same networks of aid used by mountain people and could afford to relegate nature's cruelty to a problem of the old days or as a story of passing interest. Mountain people had no such luxury.

The actions of those in Denver discredited Packer's trials and re-interpreted Packer's deeds as those of a desperate man lost in the wilderness and compelled to eat his companions. The power of nostalgia for the early days of prospecting, when men battled the elements, resonated with the more "civilized" society of Denver. (94) Forgiveness for Packer became possible with such sentimentality. In the mountains, however, where the perils of living and traveling in winter still existed, public opinion that romanticized the early days clashed with the reality of their daily experiences, where snow slides killed nine friends and relatives and buried ten who survived between 1893 and 1900 in San Juan County alone. (95)

Enduring attitudes towards Packer and belief in his guilt reflected the importance of reciprocity in mountain culture. His guilt lay not in cannibalism per se, but his failure to act for the good of the group. His ultimate betrayal, using the difficulties of winter travel to his benefit by persuading men unschooled in mountain crafts to go to a remote location, killing them, and stealing their money, proved unforgivable to mountain miners when it happened. His deeds continued to repel community members at his 1885 trial and those commenting on the events twenty-five years after they occurred. In a place where the "gentlemen's agreement" of hospitality existed, and where Father Gibbons found "When sickness, accident, or death comes to the cabin, all thoughts of self are dismissed," Packer's self-interested actions stood out starkly.

To outsiders, Packer's acts seemed tempered by time and place. As a Utah paper rationalized in 1901, "Packer's alleged crime was the murder of a party of five prospectors in the wilds of Colorado ... Packer was one hundred miles from civilization at the time and was compelled, he said, to eat the flesh of the murdered men to keep himself from starving." (96) Driven to the brink of starvation, Packer responded to ensure his survival. Some Colorado residents like Lawrence and Pry, removed from this earlier period of development, could overcome their revulsion and forgive his actions. That pressure led lame-duck Governor Charles S. Thomas to parole Alfred Packer in 1901. Packer lived out his life in isolation and died in 1907. One obituary recalled "Twenty-five years ago, when the tale of his killing and eating several of his companions was still fresh in the minds of the public the story of Alfred Packer was told to children and recounted among the old pioneers and scouts as a most horrible tale." But time had "softened judgments and the events of that period and in later years the name of Alfred Packer was not held in awe and dread as it was years ago." (97) But for mountain miners, who had built a culture around shared knowledge and reciprocity, Packer remained an abomination.

Conclusion

In 1906, an editorial appeared in the Silverton Standard, a San Juan county newspaper. The article called for a state law that would allow mining counties to assign inspectors or a commission to oversee the safety of miners. The concern: snow slides. The author believed that the community supported such actions, and the state should too, as it already endorsed horticultural, cattle, and mine inspectors. The editorial added that a commission that oversaw the location of mines and guided "by the wisdom of experience instead of the immature judgment of tenderfoot M.E.'s [mining engineers] knowing and caring nothing about snow conditions," would save both lives and capital. (98) As this article showed, methods of coping with avalanches changed over time to meet existing social realities. By 1906, miners sometimes looked outside their own community for help with snow problems, yet the place of experience remained valuable in mountain culture.

Events that began in the San Juans in the 1870s threw strangers together into extremely tense situations where lack of preparedness and skills could lead to tragedy. Dependence on the help of new acquaintances sped the development of a cultural code that allowed miners to undertake great risk with the certainty that others in the area would help them should the need arise. This ethic, fostered by the extreme environment, blended with and reinforced a sense of responsibility among miners. As winter hazards did not disappear, the risks that bound individuals together before corporate mining took hold continued to influence how mountain miners understood their natural and social world into the twentieth century. Therefore behind this tale of murder and cannibalism in the wilderness, the case of Alfred Packer reveals that myths of frontier violence can hide truer stories about how places develop and respond to environmental problems.

Following opinions held towards Packer by mountain residents, attitudes shaped by their environment, emphasized the central role that natural hazards played in residents' interactions with one another. In doing so I introduced the concept of a mountain culture that governed certain behaviors in mountain communities. Over time, as mountain communities became integrated into the outside world, they adjusted and adapted their earlier codes so that they remained useful within the context of an industrializing society. Thus, the existence of a mountain culture has implications beyond southwestern Colorado, for it establishes that the advance of industrial capitalism did not exert a monolithic influence over how people understood and interacted with their environment.

Department of History

Tacoma, WA 98447

ENDNOTES

I would like to thank the following for their generous input on this article: John Enyeart, Laura Avedisian, Wendy Rex-Atzet, AnneMarie Di Stefano, and Julia Hobson Haggerty. Also, this project would have been impossible without the wonderful archives at the Colorado Historical Society.

1. Charles Adams to Office of Indian Affairs, 9 May 1874, Alfred G. Packer Collection, Stephen H. Hart Library, Colorado Historical Society, Denver, CO (hereafter cited as CHS). See also A.W. Brian Simpson, Cannibalism and the Common Law: The Story of the Tragic Last Voyage of the Mignonette and the Strange Legal Proceedings to Which It Gave Rise (Chicago, 1984) and Pat Jacobs, Mountain Madman Or Mountain Madness? (Lake City, CO, 1965).

2. The controversy over how to spell Packer's first name is almost as contested as his guilt. Rumor has it that a careless tattoo artist misspelled Alfred's name, "Alferd", and he sometimes spelled it that way afterwards. Court records consistently spelled his name "Alfred", as did the Denver Post. I have chosen to use the more conventional "Alfred" for the purposes of this article.

3. There exists some controversy over the number of people in the Donner Party, and how many survived. In Richard White "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own" A New History of the American West (Norman, OK, 1991), 207, he found that of the original 89 members, 42 died and 47 lived. J. Quinn Thornton, Oregon and California in 1848 in Johnson Kristin, ed., Unfortunate Emigrants: Narratives of the Donner Party (Logan, UT, 1996), stated that out of 80 members 36 died and 44 lived. I have chosen to use the most recent numbers of Donald Grayson, "The Donner Party: Sex and Death on the Western Immigrant Trail," Inside Chico State 31 no. 15 (April 26, 2001): www.csuchico.edu/pub/inside/archive/01_04_26/02.donnerparty.html, January 2004, who says the group started with 87 members, 5 died on the trail, and 35 died in the mountains, leaving a total of 47 survivors. See also George R. Stewart, Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party (Lincoln, NE and London, 1936, 1960, 1986).

4. In addition to Simpson and Jacobs see: Paul H. Gantt, The Case of Alfred Packer, the Man-eater (Denver, 1952); Ervan F. Kushner, Alferd G. Packer, Cannibal! Victim? (Frederick, CO, 1980); Fred Mazzulla, Al Packer; A Colorado Cannibal (Denver, 1968); Joseph G. Hodges, "The Legal Experiences of Mr. Alfred Packer," Dicta 19 (June 1942): 149-154; Albert L. Moses, "Judge Gerry's Sentence of Alfred Packer," Dicta 19 (July 1942): 169-171.

5. Wendy and Kimberly Spurr, Alfred Packer's High Protein Cookbook (Grand Junction, CO, 1995).

6. Whether beginning with Walter Prescott Webb's argument in The Great Plains (Lincoln, NE, 1931), that the Great Plains environment "affected the various peoples, nations as well as individuals who came to take and occupy it" (Webb, 8), such changes were part of the "economic conquest" of nature that characterized the Industrial Revolution (Webb, 271). William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York, 1983), Carolyn Merchant, Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England (Chapel Hill, 1989), and Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York, 1985), referred to the primary relationship that guided people's use of nature as the capitalistic ecological revolution, attributable to participation in a capitalist economy, or predicated on a "managerial relationship with nature" (Worster, 5), respectively. William Cronon, in Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York, 1991), again links economic and ecological changes, with a view to controlling and using nature as the primary cultural influence in how people understood the environment. David Igler, Industrial Cowboys: Miller & Lux and the Transfromation of the Far West, 1850-1920 (Berkeley, 2001), Kathleen A. Brosnan, Uniting Mountain & Plain: Cities, Law, and Environmental Change Along the Front Range (Albuquerque, 2002), and Kathryn Morse, The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush (Seattle, 2003), all more recent works, make similar arguments.

7. Mark Wyman, Hard Rock Epic: Western Miners and the Industrial Revolution, 1860-1910 (Berkeley, 1979), 9. The labor activism of Mountain West workers has captured the attention of many historians who focus on the rise of the Western Federation of Miners and the International Workers of the World rather than on mountain miners' natural and social world. See for example, Elizabeth Jameson, All That Glitters: Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek (Urbana, 1998) or Richard E. Lingenfelter, The Hardrock Miners: A History of the Mining Labor Movement in the American West 1863-1893 (Berkeley, 1974). Works that pay more attention to the social world of miners include Susan Lee Johnson's Roaring Camp: the Social Life of the California Gold Rush (New York, 2000), Mary Murphy, Mining Cultures: Men, Women, and Leisure in Butte, 1914-41 (Urbana, 1997), and Anne F. Hyde "Transients and Stickers: The Problem of Community in the American West," ed. William Deverell, A Companion Reader to the American West (Malden, MA, 2004), 304-328. Environmental historians Dan Flores, The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (Norman, 2001) and Kevin R. Marsh, "The Ups and Downs of Mountain Life: Historical Patterns of Adaptation in the Cascade Mountains," Western Historical Quarterly 35 (Summer 2004): 193-213, suggest that the mountain environment had unique impacts on development. While not about the mountains, works that prove the connections among the environment, land use, and social change include: Richard White, Land Use, Environment, and Social Change: The Shaping of Island County, Washington (Seattle, 1980, 1992); William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York, 1983); Peter Boag, Environment and Experience: Settlement Culture in Nineteenth Century Oregon (Berkeley, 1992). Some studies have begun to explore the connections between non-elites (that is those outside of the conservation movement and leisure class) and their natural world, such as, Louis S. Warren, The Hunter's Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth Century America (New Haven, 1997); Karl Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation (Berkeley, 2001). One of the most exciting of these is Kathryn Morse's, The Nature of Gold, where she argues that "no matter how thoroughly industrial culture transformed nature, human beings remained connected to their environment" (Morse, 15).

8. Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas, and Martha Merrill Umphrey, eds., The Place of Law (Ann Arbor, 2003); Sarah Barringer Gordon, "Law and the Contact of Cultures," ed. William Deverell, A Companion to the American West (Malden, MA, 2004) 130-142; John Philip Reid, "The Layers of Western Legal History," eds. John McLaren, Hamar Foster and Chet Orloff, Law for the Elephant, Law for the Beaver: Essays in the Legal History of the North American West (Pasadena, CA, 1992); Andrea G. McDowell, "From Commons to Claims: Property Right in the California Gold Rush," Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 12 (Winter 2002): 1-72.

9. This agreement took the most valuable mineral lands located on the Reservation away from the Utes. Over the next few years continued problems between the miners and the Utes led to the U.S. army's systematic removal of the Native Americans to reservations on less profitable land. For more see: Carl Abbott, Stephen J. Leonard, and David McComb, Colorado: A History of the Centennial State (Niwot, CO, 1994).

10. Morse, The Nature of Gold, uses the term "disassemble" to describe the physical impacts that miners had on the soil, water, and wood, as they literally took apart the landscape to find gold.

11. Several sources cover the history of the San Juan region--some of the most useful for this study included: Josie Moore Crum, "The San Juan Country," Sarah Platt Decker Chapter of the D.A.R., Pioneers of the San Juan, Vol.1 (Colorado Springs, 1942); Betsy R. Armstrong, Century of Struggle Against Snow: A History of Avalanche Hazard in San Juan County, Colorado (Boulder, 1976).

12. As reprinted in Crum, The San Juan Country, 7.

13. J.J. Gibbons, In the San Juan, Colorado: Sketches by Rev. J. J. Gibbons (copyright 1898 by Rev. J. J. Gibbons), 16.

14. Charles Fox Gardiner, M.D., Doctor at Timberline (Caldwell, Idaho, 1938, 1939, 1940), 7.

15. The San Juan (Silverton, Colorado) 27 January 1887.

16. Day Allen Willey, "Rocky Mountain Avalanches," Scientific American (25 February 1905): 164.

17. Betsy R. Armstrong and Knox Williams, The Avalanche Book (Golden, CO, 1992) and Colin Fraser, Avalanches and Snow Safety (London, 1978).

18. For more on the very physical implications of precious metal rushes see Morse, The Nature of Gold.

19. "In the San Juan," Harper's Weekly 27 (9 June 1883): 365; the San Juan country generally refers to the mountainous region of Colorado composed of parts of present day Ouray, Gunnison, Hinsdale, and San Juan counties.

20. Gardiner, Doctor at Timberline, 216; Kenneth N. Owens, in "The Mormon-Carson Emigrant Trail in Western History," Montana: The Magazine of Western History 42 (Winter 1992): 14-25, discusses the importance of draft animals to immigrants on their way to California. Many diarists wrote about their concern and affection for these beasts. Similar attention and feelings about their animals seem probable for the miners in San Juan country too.

21. For an incredible list of pack-animal disasters see Gibbons, In the San Juan.

22. "In the San Juan," Harper's Weekly: 366.

23. J. M. Goodwin, "The Prospector," Overland Monthly 34 (August 1899): 165.

24. "In the San Juan," Harper's Weekly: 365; Sources refer to what we know as "skis" as "Norwegian snowshoes," just "snowshoes," and sometimes "skees" before 1900. The term "skees" became more common after about 1900, and then evolved into "ski." I will use the term "ski" throughout the paper when I refer to all above terms, unless in a quotation.

25. James K. Hastings, "A Winter in the High Mountains, 1871-72," Colorado Magazine (July 1950): 225-234, 228. For an overview of the history of skiing in Colorado during this period see Abbot Fay, Ski Tracks in the Rockies: A Century of Colorado Skiing (Evergreen, CO, 1984), 1-8, and Jack A. Benson, "Before Skiing Was Fun," Western Historical Quarterly 8 (October 1997): 431-442.

26. Gibbons, In the San Juans, 350. Dr. Gardiner also remarked on the importance of skiing. He wrote "[d]eep snow made it impossible to clear the roads or trails and, very early in the history of these camps, the long, narrow snowshoe, the Norwegian ski, was introduced. Nothing surprised me more in my first sight of this strange settlement than to see people going about on skis. Everyone used them quite as a matter of course, and slid over the top of the deep snow with the utmost skill. Even little children just able to walk were flying about on their little snowshoes ..." 18.

27. A. W. Dimock, "Adventures on Skees and Snowshoes," Country Life in America (Dec. mid-month, 1910): 187-188. Dimock also explained that, "Outside of the Rockies and a few other mountainous regions the skee form of snowshoe is seldom used on this continent. In other parts of the country where the need and use of snowshoes is universal, like the sparsely settled districts in Canada, the Indian form of shoe is almost exclusively used."

28. Needleton sits on the San Juan/La Plata County line, about 10 miles south of Silverton.

29. Dimock, Country Life, 186.

30. Dimock, Country Life, 185-188.

31. Reverend John L. Dyer, The Snowshoe Itinerant: An Autobiography (Cincinnati, 1890), 150.

32. Enos A. Mills, "Snow-blinded on the summit," Country Life 33 (1918): 41-44.

33. Gardiner, Doctor At Timberline, 28.

34. For a series of letters on the common practice of nose-blackening in Colorado see: "Nose-Blackening as Preventive of Snow-Blindess," Nature 38 (3 May 1888): 7; Nature 38 (31 May 1888): 101-102; Nature 38 (21 June 1888): 172; Nature 40 (5 September 1889): 438.

35. Dyer, The Snowshoe Itinerant, 216.

36. Robert L. Brown, An Empire of Silver: A History of the San Juan Silver Rush (Caldwell, ID, 1965), 75.

37. Most sources I referred too used avalanche and snow slide interchangeably, with snow slide used more commonly before 1900, and avalanche after 1900.

38. Statistics compiled by Betsy Armstrong from regional newspapers, Armstrong, Century of Struggle, 76-81.

39. Armstrong, Century of Struggle.

40. Gardiner, Dr. at Timberline, 44. Dr. Gardiner, here, is actually talking about the area around the Elk Range near Aspen, but the same held true throughout the High Country.

41. All quotes this paragraph, J. M. Goodwin, "Snowslides in the Rockies; A Perilous Study," Overland Monthly xxix (April 1897): 381-385. He adds, however that "Still there are times when they do not fear such as[sic] slope below forty-five."

42. Gibbons, In the San Juan, 121.

43. H. L. Wason, "The Slide at the Empire Mine," Letters from Colorado (Boston, 1887), 154-156.

44. Johnson, Roaring Camp, on the friendships and relationships between men fostered by the California Gold Rush.

45. Gibbons, In the San Juan, 123.

46. Gibbons, In the San Juan, 123.

47. Gibbons, In the San Juan, 33.

48. Wyman, Hard Rock Epic, 12.

49. Morse, Nature of Gold, discusses the let-down miners felt when their hard-work did not reap rewards. Carlos A. Schwantes, Radical Heritage: Labor, Socialism, and Reform in Washington and British Columbia, 1885-1917 (Moscow, ID, 1994), 11, explains how work-related concerns, even in isolated mining and logging camps, could "produce identical feelings of class-consciousness," or in this case "environmental consciousness."

50. Day Allen Willey, "Rocky Mountain Avalanches," Scientific American (February 25, 1905), 166.

51. Armstrong, Century of Struggle, 11, 76-81.

52. Armstrong, Century of Stuggle, 19-23.

53. Armstrong, Century of Struggle, 23.

54. As quoted from Silverton (Colorado) Democrat, 29 January 1887, in Armstrong, Century of Struggle, 25.

55. Gibbons, In the San Juan, 42.

56. Karen Buckley, Danger, Death, and Disaster In the Crowsnest Pass Mines, 1902-1928 (Calgary, 2004), xvii.

57. Russell R. Dynes and Kathleen J. Tierney, eds., Disasters, Collective Behavior, and Social Organization (Newark, 1994), 130.

58. Silverton (Colorado) Standard, 21 March 1891.

59. Miners used the terms "great powder" or "giant powder" interchangeably with dynamite.

60. Gibbons, In the San Juan, 134.

61. Robert McGrew to John Lawrence, 1899, Packer Collection, CHS.

62. O.D. Loutzenhizer, to John Lawrence, 1899, Packer Collection, CHS.

63. Charles Adams to Office of Indian Affairs, 9 May 1874, Packer Collection, CHS; "A Colorado Tragedy," Harper's Weekly 18 (October 17, 1874): 852.

64. Alfred Packer to D.G. Hatch, 27 June 1897; O.D. Loutzenhizer to John Lawrence, 1899, Packer Collection, CHS; Ervan F. Kushner, Alfred G. Packer: Cannibal! Victim? (Frederick, CO, 1980).

65. Kushner, Alferd G. Packer, 226. Oliver D. Loutsenhizer, a member of the first group, referred to "cotton wood snow shoes" in his statement to Pardons Board Secretary C. L. Stonaker, but it seems likely he meant what we now call skis: Loutsenhizer to Stonaker, 25 July 1899, Packer Collection, CHS.

66. According to a 7 August 1886, article "Packer's Ghastly Story," in The New York Times, Alfred Packer claimed himself that he had "been in the mountains for many years." McGrew and others supported this claim in their statements that recounted Packer's assertions upon joining the Utah group.

66. Gibbons, In the San Juan, 33.

67. Second Packer Confession, 16 March 1883, Packer Collection, CHS.

68. Second Packer Confession, Packer Collection, CHS.

69. Simpson, Cannibalism, 156; "A Tale of Terror," Ogden (Utah) Standard Examiner, 19 March 1883.

70. As reprinted in Albert L. Moses's, "Judge Gerry's Sentence of Alfred Packer," Dicta 19 (1942): 169-171.

71. Charles Adams to State Board of Pardons, 31 May 1894, Packer Collection, CHS.

72. For a more complete explanation of the legal complexities of the Packer case see, Simpson, Cannibalism, and Kushner, Alferd G. Packer.

73. For a full explanation see: Packer v. The People 8 Colo. 361; 8 P. 564; 1885 Colo.; Another line of defense included a "motion murder was committed on an Indian reservation and that, heretofore, this court has no jurisdiction ... from "Colorado Crime," Odgen (Utah) Standard Examiner, 19 March 1883; 14 April 1883, New York Times, also noted "A motion for a new trial on the ground that the murders were committed on an Indian reservation, and that this court has, therefore, no jurisdiction, will be made this afternoon." See also transcript of trial records, The People of the State of Colorado v. Alfred Packer, State of Colorado-Hinsdale County. In District Court 7th Judicial District, Packer Collection, CH.

74. According to Simpson, Cannibalism, this was the longest sentence given to a criminal by any American judge, up to that point, Cannibalism, 273.

75. Simpson, Cannibalism, 274.

76. Charles Adams to the State Board of Pardons, 31 May 1894, Packer Collection, CHS.

77. Charles Adams to the State Board of Pardons, 31 May 1894, Packer Collection, CHS.

78. For a fascinating description of sailors' customs and the repercussions of cannibalism see, Simpson, Cannibalism.

79. Alfred Packer to D.G. Hatch, 27 June, 1897, Packer Collection, CHS.

80. Packer to Hatch, 27 June, 1897, Packer Collection, CHS.

81. First and second quote this paragraph, C.L. Stonaker to Preston Nutter, 18 August 1899, Packer Collection, CHS.

82. Third and fourth quotes this paragraph, Preston Nutter to C.L. Stonaker, 25 December 1899, Packer Collection, CHS.

83. Abbott, Colorado, 247, 250.

84. John R. Pond to John Lawrence, Alferd G. Packer Collection, CHS.

85. James Fullerton to John Lawrence, 29 December 1899, reprinted in: Kushner, Alferd G. Packer, 246.

86. John Lawrence statement to C.L. Stonaker, 1899, Alferd G. Packer Collection, CHS.

87. Otto Mears to Herman Leuders and Charles S. Thomas, 21 October 1899, Packer Collection, CHS.

88. Packer had epilepsy his whole life and had frequent episodes that left him confused. Simpson, Cannibalism, 279, suggests that these "lost" periods could account for his vague and ever-changing accounts of what happened in the mountains.

89. Interview with Nathaniel Hunter, 8 June 1923, by Thomas F. Dawson, for the State Historical and Natural History Society of Colorado, Packer Collection, CHS.

90. "An Assassin Visits the Post," The Denver Evening Post, 13 January 1900.

91. As reprinted in Kushner, Alferd G. Packer, 270.

92. First and second quotes this paragraph, Willey, Scientific American: 166 (it seems likely that Willey exaggerated these numbers).

93. "A Miner Lost in A Snowstorm," The Denver Evening Post, 12 January 1900.

94. For example part of this civilizing process included Denver's citizens, especially its middle-class, embrace of the "City Beautiful" movement. Like other urbanites around the United States at the turn-of-the-century, an effort to clean-up city streets, build parks, and elegant civic buildings became part of the Progressive Era's reform movements. See Abbott, Leonard, McComb, Colorado, 257; Simpson, Cannibalism.

95. Armstrong, Century of Struggle, 76-78.

96. "Famous Colorado Case," Ogden (Utah) Standard Examiner, 8 January 1901.

97. Second and third quotes this paragraph, "The Colorado Cannibal Dead," Eastern Utah Advocate (Price, Utah), 2 May 1907.

98. The Silverton (Colorado) Standard, 7 April 1906. Evidence that mountain miners sought protective legislation against avalanches appeared as early as 1887, in The San Juan (Silverton, Colorado), in an article memorializing the death of an old-timer in a slide, 27 January 1887.

By Diana Di Stefano

Pacific Lutheran University