Captain Ellen Jack’s colorful (and somewhat true) history
“Earlier, you claimed two hundred men died in that snowstorm on Maroon Pass,” I said, ruffling through my notes. “Now you say it was over three hundred. In all my years in the Colorado newspaper business, I’ve never seen a word written about that disaster – well, until your book was published. Do you consider your story fact or fiction?”
Ellen E. Elliott, alias Captain Jack, was known throughout Colorado as a rough-hewn pioneer of Gunnison County, as an audacious, anti-authoritarian woman who often sashayed about Gunnison City brazenly toting .44-caliber Smith & Wesson revolvers. She owned a saloon, a boardinghouse, and several mines. She was also a story-telling self-promoter who often made herself the center of any memorable event, even if she’d been nowhere near the action. Ellen Elliott was a singularly strong female character among a throng of male roustabouts and, therefore, exceptional, legendary, a ‘Mountain Queen.’ Certainly, Captain Jack wasn’t accustomed to other women questioning her, especially in a skeptical journalistic manner.
Really, though, I’d rarely encountered such blarney. And I’d interviewed notables from straight-shooting Annie Oakley to rough-riding Theodore Roosevelt to revolutionary Poncho Villa. Ellen hesitated. Then said, “You forgot the sixty burros.”
I interviewed her at Camp Jack’s, Ellen’s tourist attraction on the High Road above Colorado Springs, not far from the Short Line train station near Cheyenne Canyon. Ellen sat in her favorite rocking chair. Me, on a very uncomfortable wooden stool. We were surrounded by accouterments that made Camp Jack popular. Burros, too numerous to count, blanketed and saddled, carrying bits of prospector’s equipment. Exotic birds, a clowder of cats, various ground squirrels, and other Rocky Mountain animals.
Camp Jack was built on bogus tungsten claims Ellen staked in 1904 – no one has ever found valuable minerals in this area before or since. It was her way of holding the property under mining law by doing minimum assessment work on a prospect tunnel and then promoting it as a paying mine. Just another Captain Jack story.
“Yes,” I said, writing a thought in my notepad, “appears I have. Difficult to keep track.” Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of writing for the Denver Post. I’ve written exposés on Molly Brown, Alferd Packer, Buffalo Bill Cody, Frances Jacobs, Sherman Bell, Otto Mears, and other historic Coloradoans. Captain Jack, most assuredly, was a different card in that deck – more the ilk of Paul Bunyan than Horace Tabor or Winfield Stratton. Still, Ellen Elliott was an intriguing, quixotic Colorado personality.
“I couldn’t stay to help those men,” Ellen continued her story. “Had to get the Black Queen’s silver ore to Aspen.”
“But I thought you’d snowshoed from Crystal to Gothic, then over Maroon Pass to get medicine and food for men injured in an avalanche?”
“Monroe Pass,” Ellen said, incorrectly correcting me on the pronunciation of Maroon Pass. “And since I was goin’, I took along the silver ore we’d already sacked.”
“Three hundred pounds per burro,” I said, skeptical. “Lot of weight for those poor animals, especially in twenty feet of snow. And you said you’d encountered that in Schofield.”
“Scafield,” Ellen again corrected me. “Only saw one stove pipe above a white field while there.”
To be fair, I’d read Ellen’s book, The Fate of the Fairy, published back in 1910. It was a fanciful precursor to Tex O’Reilly’s book on Pecos Bill. I cross-referenced it against history books and newspaper articles written about incidents she claimed to have experienced in Gunnison County. Facts were an unnecessary burden for her. However, accurate or fanciful, Captain Jack’s adventures became the standard fare of Colorado folklore.
“When was this again?”
“Winter of ‘84,” Captain Jack said, a .44 revolver and mineral pick in her lap. “I didn’t just leave ‘em there, Amos Fraser and Bill Lindsay, if that’s what you think. They were my minin’ partners. Had to, though. Snow was still blowin’ down the incline of the Black Queen Mine. And Bill was badly injured. Amos had suffocated before I could get the snow and ice off ‘im. Ten feet deep, I remember his handsome face as I lifted it from the cold. Like a death mask, it was. A horrible blue.”
Was that regret in her voice? Had Ellen really tried to save Amos Fraser, a fellow miner? Hard to say. But what a character she was. A personality much bigger than any dime novel. A large Stetson hat covered her thick white hair, the front brim pushed back the length of a miner’s candlestick holder. Flannel blouse with epaulettes, ruffled sleeves, and a thick, full-length pleated skirt covering several petticoat layers. Laced mining engineer’s knee-high boots, leather, roughly scuffed and scarred. Captain Ellen Jack looked the mountain queen archetype. Or was she the archetype herself?
“I need to review some details before we proceed,” I said, wanting to see how much her stories might’ve changed. “You were born in Nottingham, England, 1842. Married Captain Charles E. Jack, American, first husband, 1860. Had four children with the Civil War captain. All died, except for Jenny. Then Charles died of heart trouble in 1873. In 1879, you arrived in Gunnison, Colorado. Opened a saloon and boardinghouse on Tomichi Avenue. Called it Jack’s Cabin. Correct?”
“You gonna get to Collarow and the Indian raid?” I could see Ellen would be offended if I didn’t.
“Yes, yes, but first, the history on your second husband, Jeff Mickey –”
“Ah, what a handsome man he was! Met in Parlin, he followed me to Gunnison,” she said, defensive. “Opened a saloon right next door to my restaurant… men were so handsome then… Jeff the most. But he wasn’t my husband.”
I smiled; I had her cold. “Gunnison Free Press, January 28, 1882, in an article titled, ‘Self Destruction!’ stated you were business partners, husband and wife, owned Jack’s Cabin Saloon, Tomichi Avenue, across the street from Cal Hayzes’ dancehall. And that’s why you, too, were arrested after Bill McLees killed Cal Hayzes and –”
“Shot ‘im in self-defense,” Captain Jack said, stern and rigid. “Possibly. But Officer McLees – a close friend of Mickey’s – was found hiding in your cellar.”
“Knew nothin’ of it. I was away in Crister Butte lookin’ over the Miners’ Boardinghouse. Mickey and I were thinkin’ a leasin’ it.”
“Wasn’t Jeff Mickey known as Gunnison’s bad man?” I asked, hoping Ellen would stammer at the truth. “That’s according to the Pitkin Independent. February 4, 1882.”
Captain Jack’s jaw flexed as her grip tightened on the revolver. “Already been through court on that. Couple a times. I’m not in jail, am I?” Captain Jack looked at me narrow-eyed. “Besides, it was Moraine Pass, not Monroe.”
I could only assume she’d told these tales so often they’d replaced the real events. “While you’re in Crested Butte, January ‘82, Jeff Mickey downs a dram of morphine and dies under the care of Dr. J. W. Rockefeller.” I paged through my notebook.
“Gunnison Daily News-Democrat also stated, ‘Mr. Mickey and his wife generally managed to live in peace and harmony –’”
“If that’s what it says – but that’s the Democrat.”
“But the Garfield Banner stated that, too.” I didn’t really like interviewing her like a lawyer, but her tall tales demanded it. “Not long after, you married Redmond Walsh.”
“That was a terrible mistake,” Ellen said, more serious than I’d yet seen her.
“Walsh deceived me. Beat me after accusin’ him of tryin’ to steal my Black Queen Mine. It took years to get rid of him. The ugly ones always stay too long. But finally, in Aspen – was it 1885? – county court divorced us. I should’ve— “ Ellen lifted her .44 to the sky, aimed, and said, “No matter now. He’s dead and gone.” Then lowered the revolver to her lap.
“Handsome men often influenced you. You point them out throughout your book. Was Colorow – your Ute chief beau – a handsome man?”
“Colorau,” she said, smiling floating through waves of airy memories. “Handsome he was. Best-lookin’ man in all the Elk Mountains. We first met in Gunnison in 1880. He was fascinated with my yellow hair. Had to touch it. I cut a lock of it and pinned it to his blanket. He was elegant and graceful. Called me his ‘mountain queen.’ Colorau saved my life after I was tomahawked in the forehead by his marauding brethren. That was after some ruffian, Andrew Jackson – not the president – shot and killed Chief Shavano’s son, Johnson.”
“1881,” I said. “Tensions rose, seriously, after that. Everyone believed treaties would be broken— ”
“Utes attacked Gunnison City.”
“Ellen, I need to stop you here. The Colorow of which I speak was chief of the Northern Utes. He was involved in the 1879 Meeker Massacre, up near the White River Reservation. That’s nowhere near Gunnison. Whereas Chief Ouray led the Southern Utes then. But he died before the Jackson-Shavano incident—”
“Like I said,” Captain Jack went on with her story, “if Chief Ouray would’ve been alive, the Utes would’ve never attacked Gunnison.”
“You’re confusing different events,” I said, hoping Ellen might realize her mistake.
“The Meeker site is two hundred miles north of here. Colorow was involved in that. The Johnson Shavano murder was done by freighters near Saguache, seventy miles southeast of Gunnison.
Different characters. Different places. And Gunnison was not attacked by the Utes in 1880. So, how could you have been struck by a tomahawk near your boardinghouse on Tomichi Avenue, and then saved by Colorow?”
“’Cause Colorau was a medicine man. A handsome one at that. He was so proud I gave him a lock of my yellow hair.”
“Incredible,” I said, astonished that anyone could so convolute details and repeat them with conviction. “Something else perplexing, you mention Doc Shores only once in your book. Throughout the 1880s, Shores was famous for being the one lawman people could trust to bring in the bad men. Even today, he remains one of Colorado’s most respected sheriffs—”
“So!”
“—yet, with all the trouble, disasters, and gunplay you talk about, one would think Shores would’ve played a bigger role in your book.”
“Miss Pry,” Captain Jack said, gripping her revolver once again, “I tell stories people want to hear.” Then, leaning closer and speaking in her most serious voice yet, she added, “Not facts they will soon forget.”
Ellen E. Jack died of a heart condition shortly after this interview on June 16, 1921.