Contact our ASC
Colleen Pustola to adopt this county!! I am Rebecca Maloney, Temporary Webmistress and Coordinator for
Gunnison County, COGenWeb. I hope you enjoy your visit. Please email me if you have any suggestions
or contributions you would like to make.
Gunnison County is located in the heart of the Colorado Rockies. It was named after Captain John W. Gunnison, who explored the area with a party of 60 men in 1853. The County boasts of some unusual town names such as Bacon, Citizen, Dinner Station, Old Man's Cabin, Ruby, Pie Plant, Tin Cup and Yule Creek.
The first settlement was Richardson's Colony which was founded in 1874 on the site of present-day Gunnison. It was abandoned shortly thereafter. In 1877 the Ute Indian Agency of Los Pinos was established. In the same year Gunnison County was carved out of Lake County. By 1879 Professor Sylvester Richardson and Colorado Governor John Evans decided to try again and founded the town site of Gunnison. Gunnison became the County Seat and the courthouse was finished in 1880. Pitkin County was carved out in 1881, and 2 years later, in 1883 the Counties of Delta, Mesa and Montrose were also carved out.
The elevation of the county ranges from 7,000' to 14,000'. Summers are pleasant, but Gunnison County is noted as being one of the coldest areas of Colorado in the winter (-20 degrees is common). Approximately 85% of Gunnison County is Federal land owned by the United States Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Curecanti National Recreation Area. The economic base is tourism, skiing, education, mining and ranching. Western State College of Colorado is located in Gunnison. The college has an enrollment of approximately 2,500 students. Gunnison County population was 11, 931 in July 1995.
The town of Marble, located in northern Gunnison County, is the site of the Colorado Yule Marble Company which produced the marble used to build many famous buildings and monuments in America, including the Lincoln Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Crested Butte was established in 1879 as a coal mining region, but nowadays is a popular ski area and resort town.
I hope you find my efforts helpful in your research of Gunnison County roots. I am unable to do additional research on your family as I live in North Carolina and do not have direct access to records. I post everything I have for all to use.
Make sure you check the "Research Resources" section! There are books on line: The Fabulous Valley: Some Facts and Conjectures about the Crystal River Valley in Colorado and indexes of many books, helpful links, look up volunteers and local researchers to help you out.
GUNNISON COUNTY |
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| HINSDALE COUNTY |
We are the chosen. In each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again. To tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve. Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the story tellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called, as it were, by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us: Tell our story. So, we do. In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors, "You have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us.". How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say. It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who I am, and why I do the things I do. It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying - I can't let this happen. The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to deep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are. So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those who we had never known before."
by Della M. Cummings Wright; Rewritten by her granddaughter Dell Jo Ann McGinnis Johnson; Edited and Reworded by Tom Dunn, 1943."
Taft Tunnel
Cart Gang
Monarch Pass
If you have questions, contributions, or problems with this site, email:
Coordinator - Available
State Coordinator: Colleen Pustola
Asst. State Coordinators: Rebecca Maloney - Betty Baker - M.D. Monk
If you have questions or problems with this site, email the County Coordinator. Please to not ask for specfic research on your family. I am unable to do your personal research.
