I had an interesting conversation with Ron Bambrick at the Chromo Store a few days ago. Initially I’d approached him inquiring about the Chromo area and the Price Lakes Forest Access Road, as Ron and his extended family have lived there for well over a half century.  I asked for an interesting bit of the past.  Ron disappeared into his house and returned with the photograph shown below. The inscription reads “KIT CARSON 1859.” I immediately wondered if this could be true.

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The Carson carving in southeast Pagosa Country

The tree was found by Dave Sanchez while hunting for lost cattle by horseback. He was high in the mountains in the general area east of Chromo, and the carving was not along a trail.

Ron revealed that some people have doubted the authenticity of the carving. I did a bit of research and came to believe it is real. Some said that Carson was known to be illiterate, but that does not mean he couldn’t spell and carve his own name. Others have claimed that aspen trees don’t live this long.  I found an academic biology website that listed the “age window” of aspen as 40 to 150 years. This particular carving is 147 years old, meaning Carson would have etched it on a young tree; Dave reported the tree is near dead now.  So, time-wise, it isn’t much of a stretch.

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The 1844 carving in California.

After some research on the internet, I found a similar tree carving from 1844, discovered in Northern California. This carving was done on the trail that later became Carson Pass on California Highway 88. When the tree was cut down, the section with the carving was saved, and it is now in a museum under government protection. The carving is similar in that it is all capital letters and the letters are carved in the same proportions. There is a third known Carson carving, but it is different, having lower case letters and a script like font.

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The 1859 drawing of Chimney Rock

Carson lived at times in the Southern San Juan around 1859. He was the Indian Agent for this area, headquartered in Taos, New Mexico, and was known to travel to the Pagosa region for hunting and fur trapping. There is a historical reference of an injury incurred from a horse accident; “In the fall of 1860, Kit went hunting with some friends in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado. On a steep trail his horse took a spill and Kit suffered serious internal injuries. He recovered but was left with recurring pain and physical damage that would eventually cost him his life.”

It is interesting to consider the area at this time. The San Juan Mountains had long been a barrier holding back settlers and exploration. Harsh winters and rugged terrain were quite a bit more than the Spanish or early Anglos wanted to deal with. Settlers learned to navigate and travel east-west by detouring many miles south of the San Juan Mountains on what became the Santa Fe and Old Spanish Trails. Many people traveled these routes, moving west to California. Although the California Gold Rush was over by this point and a good deal of the west had been settled, the San Juan remained an unknown wilderness. Indians roamed as they had for centuries and a few fur trappers worked the area.

1859 turned out to be an interesting and important year. During the same summer that Kit was hunting and carving along the western divide, a small band of men crossed into the area just a few miles away. A Captain J. N. McComb led a government expedition through the area, and his expedition produced the first decent map of the region.  Following roughly the same route as Dominguez and Escalante from Santa Fe to near the present Colorado state line, the group went farther north before turning west, and their twelfth camp was at what the Indians referred to as “Pa-go-sah.”  J. S. Newberry, a geologist accompanying the expedition, commented that the spring was "well known, even famous, among the Indian tribes."  He continued: "there is scarcely a more beautiful place on the face of the earth."  Leaving the spring, McComb led the expedition west along the present route of US 160 and camped two days later on the banks of the Piedra River.  Here Newberry described and sketched Chimney Rock.

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The Great Pagosa and San Juan River as seen from the south.

During 1859 and 1860, Charles Baker and a few miners made their way up the Conejos River directly east and across the divide from Carson’s location and ultimately discovered gold at what would become Summitville. This gold discovery would finally bring population to Pagosa Country and open the area to settlement.

So: men were entering the San Juan at this time, but it is entirely possible they never knew of each other.  Taking this circumstantial evidence into consideration, I believe the carving is authentic.

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http://pagosa.com/artman/uploads/kit_2.jpg

For a history of Kit Carson see;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_Carson

For more reading on the area at this time see;

http://pagosa.com/adventure/history/h_sanjuan.htm

http://pagosa.com/adventure/history/h_lostgold.htm

http://pagosa.com/adventure/history/h_timescale.htm