Coors Heritage Calendar Series Art Display

Clara Brown
by John M. Thompson

(1800-1885), pioneer philanthropist, born in Kentucky. After the Civil War, Clara Brown headed west to follow the Colorado Gold Rush. Though she was almost 60, “Aunt” Clara made her way across the plains by working as a cook on a wagon train. She arrived in Central City, Colorado almost penniless, but her generous nature and indomitable spirit soon make her a favorite in the town, She grubstaked miners, took in several needy black people, and was the moving force in the drive to build a Methodist church in town. In 1879 Aunt Clara, nearly 80, traveled to eastern Kansas to spend her time and money helping homeless, sick and hungry blacks who had moved there believing the government would provide them the land and farming equipment. In 1882 Aunt Clara returned to Central City, where she died in 1885. She was buried with honor by the Society of Colorado Pioneers and awarded a memorial chair in the Central City Opera House.

Bill Pickett
by John M. Thompson

(1871-1932), rodeo rider. The original bulldogger. Pickett was the first cowboy to master steer wrestling, the feat of throwing a steer on its back with his bare hands. He first performed this formidable task in 1890 at the Arkansas Valley Fair in Rocky Ford, Colorado. The crowd response to this man-against-animal contest was overwhelming, and soon western folks were requesting bulldogging as a regular part of their rodeos. Pickett wrestled steers for wildly enthusiastic audiences in the 1904 Cheyenne Frontier Days celebration, and took on a Spanish fighting bull in Mexico City in 1908. For the next 10 years, he traveled across the U.S., South America and Great Britain with Tom Mix and Buffalo Bill Cody in Wild West shows. He was killed in 1932, still practicing his bulldogging skills. In 1972 he became the first black man to be elected to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Jim Beckwourth
by John M. Thompson

(1798-1866), trapper. The son of a Missouri planter, Beckwourth’s courage and daring on the frontier soon earned him the title “the famous mulatto of the plains.” He was a member of the elite fur trapping clique and traveled with the great mountain men of the time; Jedediah Smith, Louis Vasquez and Jim Bridger. During his trapping days, Beckwourth lived closely with the Crow Indians and became a chief. When the fur business waned in the 1840s, Beckwourth moved to New Mexico to trade and married a señorita. Later he moved north on the Arkansas River in Colorado, then on to California where he opened a trading post. In 1851 he discovered Beckwourth’s Pass through the Sierra Nevadas, carried mail between Monterey and Southern California, then moved on to Colorado in 1858 to work the gold rush with Louis Vasquez. In 1860 he married once again, wedding a young girl he called “Lady Beckwourth.” In 1866 he rejoined his trapper friends in Utah and also served as an army scout and messenger on the Bozeman Trail to Montana. He died while hunting buffalo with his old friends the Crow Indians.

Businessmen
by Thomas Blackshear II

The individual with extraordinary business acumen stood to gain fame as well as fortune on the western frontier. Many of these talented business people were black men like Barney Ford. Escaped from slavery, he became a restaurant and property owner in Denver. Ford foresaw the day when the Union Pacific Railroad would extend from Omaha, Nebraska to Cheyenne, Wyoming. There, he started a second restaurant, said to sell 1,000 meals a day at a dollar a meal. His Inter-Ocean Hotels, showplaces in Denver and Cheyenne, played host to both prospector and president. Other black businesses thrived in Denver during Ford’s time, including J.G. Sims’ Eldorado Saloon and H. Wagoner’s Tavern. William Leidesdorff, influential merchant, did much to turn a coastal town into the major port city of San Francisco. He built the City Hotel, San Francisco’s first, served as the city’s first treasurer, and owned 35,000 acres in the Sacramento Valley, near Sutter’s Mill. At his death in 1848, William Leidesdorff left an estate estimated to be worth $1.5 million. The success stories are many. Indeed, the black businessman was a force in the economic development of the west.