Nothing Daunted (41 page)

He hung a white sign at the end of the driveway:
The Carpenter Ranch was sold in 1996 to the Nature Conservancy, which runs it as a working ranch and a research and education center.

Cattle arriving in Denver from Routt County:
Cows, Cattle, and Commerce: 100 Years of the Railroad in Steamboat Springs,
Tread of Pioneers exhibition, June 8, 2007–May 9, 2008.

The homesteaders were paid well during the Great War:
Zars, 74.

“Something had to give”:
Lewis Harrison, “Sketch of the Life,” 73–75.

Roosevelt was impressed, writing to Ickes:
Hubbard, “Butting Heads,” 22–31.

Another was Isadore Bolten:
Sylvia Beeler, “County Profile:
Isadore Bolton, the West’s Outstanding Stockman,” first of a series in the
Daily Press,
January 23, 1974.

one of the largest singly owned tracts:
Ibid., January 28, 1974; February 5, 1974; February 14, 1985.

“There was nothing for me in Russia”:
“Isadore Bolten Dies of Heart Failure in Rawlins Home,”
Rawlins Daily Times,
February 17, 1951; “Bolton died at 66 after an Horatio Alger Life,” first of a series in the
Daily Press,
September 2, 1993.

Other early businesses also went under:
Still, in recent years, the city has had a renaissance in some quarters. In 2009 the heavy-metal band Manowar rented space in the Button Works’ early brick building on Logan Street. By the time I got there to look around, carpenters and electricians were at work turning the abandoned factory into condos.

Ros’s comments in the reunion book:
Smith College,
Class of 1909 Reunion Book,
June 1934, Smith College Archives.

Oak Creek’s depot, a former headquarters for the Moffat Road:
Mike Yurich e-mail, November 9, 2010.

In the summer of 1960, her great-nephew arrived from Auburn:
Chuck Underwood Kruger, e-mail, July 17, 2009.

A no-trespassing sign was posted:
Eunice Carpenter, “On Thinking It Over:
The Passing of the Elkhead School,”
Routt County Republican,
October 19, 1938.

“Ros joins me in sending love”:
In a letter to my mother three years later, in shakier handwriting, Ferry wrote about Dorothy, “She & I have a bond that never gets weaker—I guess it’s the joint venture we both partook of & whose echoes never died out.

“I’ve undertaken to write an autobiography—not just a series of happenings & events, but of what kind of ride you are in for, when you’re willing & anxious to get into the battle & try to make it conform to your ideals even tho they may not be 100% right.

“Good bye, dear, as time rolls on we become more & more family. With love, Ferry.”

her “great friend,” as she invariably referred to her:
Dorothy died five years later, on May 13, 1979. On her ninety-second birthday, her son Douglas thanked her for handing down a good set of genes. She replied, “Douglas, you are welcome. I only wish it could have been something a little more tangible!” (From Douglas Hillman’s remarks at Dorothy’s memorial service at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids.)

The windows were covered with yellowing paper that was designed to resemble stained glass:
Jan Leslie, e-mail, February 9, 2010.

At a time when only 10 to 15 percent of students in the country:
U.S. Commissioner of Education, Annual Report 1915, Washington, D.C.:
1915, quoted in Zars, 44.

“They really and truly had the interests of the children at heart”:
Ault interview by Zars.

Several of Ros’s and Dorothy’s former pupils spoke:
“In Memory of Rosamond Underwood Carpenter.”

Ferry had arranged the service, and presided with his usual aplomb. He lived to the age of ninety-four, working on the ranch until the end. He died in his bed on December 12, 1980. His three children were there, and his son Ed swore that his last words were “Do you want to hear a story?”

drove up from Strawberry Park with their new dance teacher, thirty-year-old Agnes de Mille:
Lucile Bogue interviewed Portia and Charlotte about the square dance, which Bogue describes as taking place at a country schoolhouse on a mountain behind Hayden. The school, undoubtedly, was Elkhead. I evoke the scene as Charlotte described it to Bogue,
Dancers,
82–83. Charlotte later recalled that when she and Portia saw
Rodeo
performed in New York, “we thought we caught overtones of this joyous outburst.” Ingrid Matson Wekerle, “Charlotte Perry, in Loving Memory, December 21, 1889–October 28, 1983,” 8.

among them Merce Cunningham and John Cage:
Silverman, 64.

Bogue writes that “Cage inserted nails and paper in the piano strings,” shocking even Portia and Charlotte with his innovations. That year Cunningham, still relatively unknown, headed the dance department. Portia said, “ ‘The girls liked him, although his defiance against the normal basic rhythms of dance shook them up a good deal. He was a severe teacher.’ ” Bogue,
Dancers,
105–6.

In the late 1920s, over three summers, Ferry Carpenter had taken his young nephew Richard Pleasant:
By all accounts, Pleasant was a shy, awkward teenager. Carpenter had no use for him on the ranch, but encouraged him to spend time at the camp and helped him get into Princeton. Pleasant and Lucia Chase started American Ballet Theatre in 1940. Ibid.
,
126–27.

Ferry’s son Willis told me that even though Ferry showed little interest in Pleasant around the ranch, Richard worshipped Ferry and left everything in his will to him. “Dad went to NYC,” Willis wrote in an e-mail on July 6, 2010. “Cleaned out Richard’s apartment in one weekend, selling everything (including valuable art pieces) to a junk dealer for a pittance, and came home with only a huge load of
Navajo blankets (the only items of ‘value’ in Dad’s estimation). Dad took great pride in his efficiency as an executor!”

The graduates of 1920 described:
They also wrote, in their foreword: “Manahna is an Indian word meaning ‘The Years.’ We have chosen it as the name for our book, because this is, not merely the history of our senior year, but the story of our school; of our hardships and our pleasures, our organizations and our classes—in fact, the history of our life during the four pleasant years that we have spent at Elk Head.”

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Heilbrun, Carolyn G.
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