Dear Ad,

I have at last an opportunity of writing. I have been busy lately getting Ed and Newcomb ready for a trip off among the Mexicans. They are going to buy hides, pelts, wool, furs, and grain, will probably be gone a month and I am left alone with the store. But I am getting used to that as I have been left several times since I have been here. It is quite a common practice among business men here to leave their wives in charge of their affairs and go out to the mines or off trading. Across the street from the store is a butcher shop, and the butcher often leaves his wife to tend shop while he goes after cattle. She cuts off a steak or a roast as easily as a man. But to go back to the men, if they do well this time they will go right out again so there is a chance of my being alone all winter. We are living back of the store. Have two very good rooms and that is more than a great many have in Del Norte. I think that we are in a very pleasant part of town. We are right on the main street called Grand Avenue about a mile long. Back of the store is a bluff 150 feet high covered with moss and sage brush and along the sides there are goats generally leaping from rock to rock. I am beginning to like Colorado well. The climate has only one drawback and that is the winds. Every few days it blows a hurricane. Eddie can not stand up against it. Dust flies in perfect clouds. It has not been warm enough to wear a muslin dress all summer, but there have been no cold days. One day is just like another. Frost did not come 'till the 4th of Sept. then not again 'till the 13th when snow fell on the mountains, but here in the valley it was pleasant. About the middle of July our rainy season began and lasted about six weeks. Every afternoon we had a slight shower, just enough to lay the dust and that was all. We are about 7200 feet above the sea, or about twice as high as the highest of the Catskills. That accounts for our cool summers. They tell me that the winters are not cold. I do not think they can be as every one keeps warm by a fireplace. On the other side of the mountains it is very warm in summer and in the winter they have no snow to speak of.

Everywhere I have been in Colo. there is a profusion of wild flowers but perfectly scentless and I have never seen such vegetables of all kinds in my life. They are so tender and large. Onions as big as saucers and so mild that one may eat a slice alone. Potatoes are as mealy as flour and some weigh 3/4 a pound a piece. I suppose there is no country that surpasses Colo. in potatoes and flour. Our flour is really as white as snow. People here will not use flour made from other than Colo. wheat. They just cut the wheat in this valley about a week ago. I wish I could send you some. It grows about 41/2 feet high and just as thick as it can stand. The kernel is a pale straw color. Wherever water can be had this is a splendid farming country. There are only two things that can injure a crop and those are grasshoppers and hail. But a man runs a good chance of getting a big crop as sure as he puts seed in the ground if he can irrigate. But the water is not plentiful.

Then there is a great deal of wild fruit here. I have just finished putting up some wild plums. There are three kinds of currants growing wild that make excellent jelly. The skins are too tough to make anything else. There are bright yellow ones that make a nice yellow jelly. Red ones that make red jelly and black ones that make a deep purple jelly.

Then wild gooseberries as nice and smooth as those that grow in gardens. They are good any way you may fix them. Bushels of red raspberries and another berry called service berry. We have all kinds of meat except pork. The mutton and beef are very fat and good from July 'til January, then the grass begins to get poor so they are not so fat, still they are eatable. In the winter there is plenty of fat venison, bear meat, and antelope. From May 'till now there has been any quantity of speckled trout, little bits of things but as rich and creamy as butter. We have had them two or three times a week all summer. Then the river is full of other kinds of fish, and in the spring there are hundreds of wild geese for 30 cents a piece and wild ducks for 30 cents a pair. When we get a cow and some hens so that we can have all the eggs and milk and butter we want we shall do very well. We have a pig so we shall have pork next year. Butter has been 80 cents a pound this summer and never less than 50 cents. Eggs 50 cents a doz. I have not made a cake since I have been here. We have had two good meals of peaches, all we could eat. Fruit is very scarce except the wild and that, one must pick himself and in mighty rough places. I went hopping and got hops enough to last a year. They grow wild and very plentiful just as they are in Illinois only twice as large.

The children grow very fast, especially Eddie. They play out doors all the time as happy as kings. They have not forgotten any of you folks and talk about you every day. They play go and see, Nan too. They both play with mares as much as ever. Newcomb says the stable is full of sticks that they use for mares. Eddie talks very plainly. The other day he found a piece of one of Grandma's dresses in my patch bag. That's Grandma's dress he says in a minute. Newcomb puts them both to distraction. just now he is learning Charley to count. When he succeeds he gives him a loaf of sugar. So Eddie sets up one, two, three so as to get some sugar too.

It is getting cold enough now to have a little fire in the fireplace every day. It makes our sitting room very pleasant. We have excellent wood, pitch pine and cedar. I often wish you had as good. The pine is dry as a bond and makes as hot a fire as coal, the cedar is also dry and I use it mostly in the kitchen.

Newcomb had bought me a very fine chromo before I came. A mountain scene in Switzerland. Then he has a smaller one of some chickens and birds. The large one is 20 x 25. We have to have a bed in our sitting room, a striped red, green and grey carpet, a round table with a red spread, some book shelves, a lot of fine sea shells on the mantel and a great many specimens of ore, agates, crystals and so on that the boys have picked up.

Newcomb went out in mines prospecting this summer. He struck a silver mine that the top rock is worth $11.41 a ton. This is considered very good for top rock. He has not worked it any however, and I don't believe he ever will. It would take all he could make in any other way to get the silver out and it would be 4 or 5 years before we should realize anything from it. He thinks he can make money quicker in hides, pelts, & wool. Still he may work on the mine next summer. The mines here are very rich and if they hold out Del Norte is bound to be a big place. One mine 30 miles from here is worth over $3000 a ton in gold. There are silver mines that are worth over $7000 per ton but we need a R.R. This ore has to be brought down the mountains on mules or jacks. Then hauled to Pueblo, 150 miles on wagons over some of the worst mountain roads you ever heard of. That is one of the drawbacks to mining here. There are countless mines of great richness of copper, lead, and iron but they cannot be worked because it costs so much to get the ore reduced and carried away.

The stockings you sent for Eddie are an exact fit. Everything you sent came all right. Cheese, book, Bazaar and Floral Cabinet with the things they contained. As to sending those things by express, do not do it, at present anyway. I will send how to direct and so on, when I write again. I get along first rate with my housework. Only one thing troubles me, and that is the washing. I am getting along better with that than at first. Ed has made me a pounder and when they are here one of them pounds the clothes for me. It is hard for me to do such work on account of the lightness of the air, I cannot breathe easily. But I am getting used to that, so I can breathe all right. If Anna¹ and all you folks were out here I think I should be willing to stay here always. I think of Mat Merrill almost every day, there are so many things here I have heard him speak of.

Give my love to all and tell Grandma this letter is as much for her as you. Also tell Grandpa² all the news in it. The children talk about him very often.

Write soon.

Yours,
Alice Newcomb
West Del Norte,
Colorado

¹ Anna -- Anna Turesdell Hyde, sister of Alice Russell Newcomb
² Grandpa -- George Truesdell father of Alice Russell Newcomb

Letter courtesy of Peggy Newcomb Barr
This page was produced by Bob Newcomb in Brea, CA