Vigo County Historical Society
Historical Treasure Article
February 21, 1988
By David M. Buchanan
Vigo County Historical Society
Link to Terre Haute unearthed in Colorado
History is made up only of facts still remembered or facts just discovered. Those still remembered can be fascinating, but there’s nothing that beats “discovery” in any research field. Often such discoveries will lead to new research and new discoveries. Or at times they are only interesting, of little importance by themselves, but adding to the knowledge of a subject as a whole. But in all cases “discovery” is a lot more enjoyable.
In the summer of 1986 a gentleman named Bud Pochon was exploring in the Colorado Rockies above Leadville. Poking around in a depression of earth he found fragments of broken bottles, rusted chunks of metal, bits and pieces of leather, and burned fragments of wood. Nothing of real interest was unearthed until he saw the neck of an old bottle sticking from the surrounding clay. Only the neck of the bottle, still crowned with its crimped cap, was exposed.
Bud had seen other, similar necks but usually the rest of the bottle had been long broken. Expecting the neck to come free, he grabbed and pulled. What came loose was a beer bottle, still full of beer which was even producing a foam from the shaking it had received coming free from its tomb.
Bud brought the bottle to his son at The Mining Gallery, a shop filled with art and, more importantly, a collection of mining exhibits dating to when the Leadville area was one of earth’s richest mining districts. The bottle, though its paper label had long disintegrated, had “Terre Haute Brewing Company” embossed on its side.
Bruce Johansing, one of the shop’s proprietors, decided to try to learn more about the bottle’s history. He wrote to the Terre Haute Convention and Tourism Bureau asking for information about the Terre Haute Brewing Company. The bureau referred the letter to the historical society.
I called Johansing because we were planning to visit Colorado within two weeks and thought we could stop, take the information about the brewing company, see the bottle and look at where it was found.
When we arrived, Johansing drove us in his four-wheeled vehicle up the face of the mountain. When we stopped we were 11,500 feet. Only a few hundred more feet up the mountain and even vegetation could not grow; there was only bare rock. What vegetation did grow was stunted and malformed from the winds and harsh winter weather it faced.
The only sounds, except for the quiet ticking of the engine cooling, were our voices and the hum of the wind. The terrain was covered with short grasses and small bushes. And signs of man were everywhere. Large piles of broken rock, yellow in color, scarred the landscape, tailing piles from the miles of mines that honeycombed the mountain top.
We had to walk carefully because of air shafts waiting for the unwary. A pebble dropped down one such shaft bounced and rattled for several seconds before the sound ceased with a cold and far-away splash.
Johansing took us to the remains of the old cellar and showed us exactly where the bottle was found. The shape of the bottom portion could still be seen in the earth. The rest of the fragments of broken glass, leather, rusted metal and charred wood told the story of some type of disaster having taken place here years ago.
In the 1920s. this area was a boom town. Not intended for permanence, building were hastily erected, their only purpose to provide shelter from the elements. The town was known as Stumph Town. It stood on Breece Hill.
The mountaintops were not then quiet. All day the snorting of the steam-powered donkey engines running the lifts and hauling the ore could be heard. There was the rumbling from the blasts of dynamite, and the call of pack animals. Overlaying all were the voices of countless men intent on making a fortune.
At night the roar of the machinery quieted, but the noise of the men grew louder, for that’s when they hit the bars, taverns and other places of relaxation known in all mining towns. One of those was a place called Cerise Tavern. And on one of the shelves of that tavern was a bottle of beer that had been brewed in Terre Haute and shipped by rail and wagon to the mountain tops of Colorado.
One night Cerise Tavern burned to the ground.
Today, after a fire, the rubble is poked and prodded to find cause and left until the insurance has compensated for loss. But that was not true in those days and in that place. Then, if you planned to stay in business you started again immediately. That is what happened at Cerise Tavern. The still-cooling rubble of charred wood, leather, metal, glass fragments, and one full bottle of beer, was dumped into the cellar hole. Dirt was tamped over it, and a new tavern almost immediately was built on top.
All of that is gone now, the only remains are an occasional flattened stove pipe, short sections of rotting boards, a curled and cracked leather shoe, and bits and pieces of broken glass. The tavern that replaced the Cerise has disappeared along with the rest of Stumph Town; it only exists as a name on old maps. But part of it remains, a small, brown beer bottle, still capped and filled with foaming beer.
The bottle is on display at The Mining Gallery, located in a restored Victorian storefront on Leadville’s main street. It’s a small facet of history, both for Terre Haute and Leadville.
The Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley, 1411 S. Sixth St., is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.