Otto Mears

Background

Otto Mears was born on May 3, 1840 in Courland, Russia, of mixed English and Hebrew stock. Orphaned at the age of two, he was taken into the family of an uncle who had thirteen children.

Career

When ten years old, Mears emigrated to California, where he was to have met an uncle, but failed to find him. In a strange land, unable to speak English, the boy was thrown upon his own resources. He began selling newspapers and later took odd jobs of various kinds. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted in Company H of the 16t California Volunteers and saw service in the New Mexico region. When his term expired he became a store clerk in Santa Fé, then he began business for himself at Conejos, Colo. , in 1865. With a partner he established a pioneer sawmill and a gristmill, and to increase the grists of the flour mill, he began to grow wheat. He brought the first mower, reaper, and threshing machine into the region, much to the astonishment of his Mexican neighbors. Mears found a demand for flour in the mountain mining camps to the north, but there was no wagon road to this market. He, therefore, built a road over Poncho Pass. This incidental project inaugurated the great road-building projects that were to become his chief contribution to the development of Colorado. When rich mines were discovered in the inaccessible San Juan Mountains, he organized a company and built a toll road to the region. To aid in promoting the district he published newspapers at Saguache and Lake City. He extended his system of toll roads until they embraced 300 miles of road. After the Meeker massacre of 1879, Mears assisted in rescuing the women captives. He then accompanied an Indian delegation to Washington where a treaty was negotiated, further reducing the Indian reservation. The Utes at home refused at first to accept the treaty, but Mears secured their acceptance by privately paying each Indian two dollars. Charges of bribery were preferred against him but were dismissed by the secretary of the interior, who reimbursed him for the $2, 800 he had paid the Indians. Mears continued his toll-road building and operated freighting outfits and pack trains. Then he began railroad construction, building the Rio Grande Southern and the Silverton Northern railroads in southwestern Colorado. He also acquired an interest in certain mining and smelter properties in the district. In 1884 he was elected to the Colorado legislature and continued for many years thereafter as an important influence in the Republican party of the state. He accumulated a fair-sized fortune, much of which was lost in the panic of 1893. His last railroad venture was the building of the Chesapeake Beach Railroad in Maryland. He spent his last years in California where he developed ranch and hotel property. He died on June 24, 1931 at Pasadena, California.

Achievements

• Mears created over two hundred miles of toll roads for wagons and stagecoaches, and then laid many more miles of railroad tracks. His interests also included the ownership of mines, mills, telegraph lines, stores and hotels. He has been honored as one of Colorado's pioneers with a stained glass likeness in the rotunda of Colorado's State Capitol Building. His portrait appears in one of the stained-glass windows of the Colorado Capitol and a historical tablet is set in the granite wall of the mountain beside one of his picturesque pioneer roads in the San Juan Mountains near the present town of Ouray, Colorado.

Connections

In 1870 Mears had married Mary Kampfschulte, by whom he had two daughters.

Wife:

Mary Kampfschulte

References

• Otto Mears and the San Juans
• Otto Mears: Pathfinder of the San Juan Mountains (Great Lives in Colorado History) (Great Lives in Colorado History / Personajes importantes de la historia de colorado) (English and Spanish Edition)
• Otto Mears: Paradoxical Pathfinder
• Early Days on the Western Slope of Colorado and Campfire Chats with Otto Mears the Pathfinder from 1870 to 1883, Inclusive
• Otto Mears: Pathfinder of the San Juan, His Family and Friends