‘Beneath Blue Mesa’ travels back in time

Historic sites beneath Blue Mesa Reservoir.

Driving west out of Gunnison along Hwy. 50, it’s easy to get the idea that Blue Mesa Reservoir has been there forever, as much a part of the ancient landscape as the volcanic rock formations all around it.

Then you reach the dam and, if you pause to think about it, you are reminded that there was a time before the canyon was closed and the water rose. You might be inspired to wonder what — and who — was there in the first half of the 20th century, prior to the onset of America’s obsession with dam-building.

Many of the voices that could answer that question from first-person experience are gone now — ranchers, business and property owners and the thousands of others for whom the Gunnison River, this side of the Black Canyon, was a paradise of agricultural and recreational plenty.

But the story itself lives on in a new book by local historian and author David Primus. “Beneath Blue Mesa: The Gunnison River Valley Before the Reservoir” provides a glimpse into the rich social and economic landscape that was submerged in the 1960s along with prime cattle pasture and Gold Medal fishing reaches. Primus recreates the trip west from Gunnison like a tour guide, revealing what you’d have seen then from today’s Lake City bridge to the dam.

It’s an emotional story of deeply-felt loss and even betrayal among those who were displaced to make way for what amounts to a very small drop in a very big bucket of western water.

“I really tried to look at census data and to figure out how many people actually lived in that 23-mile stretch,” Primus said. “I think if there were 300 people displaced, that's generous. I don't think there were that many people. But there were thousands who were affected that would come there year after year after year to fish.”

Indeed, the banks of the Gunnison River were lined with as many as 18 popular fishing and recreational resorts with still familiar names: Neversink Resort, Cooper’s Resort Ranch, Elkhorn Resort and the Sapinero Hotel, just to name a few. Primus brings them back to life with numerous photos and vintage posters advertising dances and dinners — “Electricity!” and “Innerspring mattresses!”

Ranches also bore names we still recognize today: the Mergelman/Blackstock Ranch, Stevens Ranch, Moncrief River Ranch and Zugelder House.

Primus is not a historian by training. He came by his love of Colorado’s rich past as a young man trailing in the wake of his grandfather — who, among other things, was an avid fisherman and deeply enthralled with the Gunnison River.

“He fished here in the 30s,” Primus said. “He fished the Taylor before the dam was built. I remember, when I was a kid, he was just as bitter as could be about Blue Mesa. I didn’t know why then, but I’ve met a lot of people now who feel that way.”

Primus said his initial interest in writing the book was sparked by wanting to learn more about the history of water development in the West. But it didn’t take long for his motive to shift toward telling the human story he couldn’t escape. Interviews commonly turned into relationships — friendships with people willing to share the pain they felt at losing a home or livelihood.

“Bob Robbins, who's a descendant of the Stevens family, shared with me his grandmother's two unpublished manuscripts, one on her running the Elkhorn Resort, which is right there at the Lake City bridge for like 40 years, and another on the family ranch, which was the Stevens Ranch,” Primus said. “There's a part in there where she shares the experience of sitting on the hill and watching the ranch house burn to the ground.”

Reading “Beneath Blue Mesa” is like taking a ride on a glass-bottomed boat that magically unbuilds the dam and lets the sun shine again on a nearly forgotten chapter of Gunnison history. It can be purchased locally at Abracadabra and online at barlazym.com.

(Alan Wartes can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or publisher@gunnisontimes.com.)