The Steamboat Pilot & Today

50 years ago

From the Thursday, Aug. 21 edition of The Steamboat Pilot:

Five highway deaths were racked up in Routt County for the year as a Florida couple apparently died instantly in a collision Monday on Colorado 131 near Yampa.

Both Manuel R. Enos, 66, of Miami and his wife, Elia Todd, had their necks broken, causing the fourth and fifth fatalities in the county this year — the most since 1951.

The driver of a second 1958 automobile, Perry A. Millikin, 26, stationed at an Air Force base in California, said he saw Enos coming down the highway, his car weaving side to side at a high speed.

In an attempt to avoid a collision, Millikin claimed he tried to sneak his car by on the wrong side of the road. However, Enos has righted his car at the time of the crash.

The left fronts of the two cars sideswiped, throwing both cars out of control. Millikin’s car went into a borrow pit, while Eno’s car continued south and collided head on with another vehicle.

The driver of the third car, Finlay McCallum, 66, of Denver, state coal mine inspector for this area, is in the Steamboat hospital, suffering a fractured pelvis and multiple bruises and lacerations.

Millikin, and his wife, Jane, and son, Perry David, were not injured in the three-car collision.

Mrs. Thornton Brown has story in Reader’s Digest

Writing fame came this week to a 75-year-old Steamboat Springs widow who for some 40 years has blended an interest in literature with the exciting business of sheep ranching.

Mrs. Margaret D. Brown, whose 713-acre Elk River ranch near Clark is a landmark of the area, was revealed as author of a first-person, award-winning article in the September issue of Reader’s Digest.

For her inspirational narrative, “A Little Bunch of Sheep,” Mrs. Brown was paid $2,500.

Her heart-warming story contains an incident which occurred in the spring of 1930, when Mrs. Brown was struggling to maintain the ranch her husband, Thornton Brown, left her upon his death in the influenza epidemic of 1918.

Mrs. Brown said she will set aside the money received for the Reader’s Digest article as “a sort of traveling fund.” A portion of that fund will be used next fall to finance a trip to Houston, Texas, to visit her elder sister, Mrs. John Forbes.

Her article in Reader’s Digest is a reaffirmation of the faith and determination with which Mrs. Brown developed her sheep raising business against odds which might have caused a lesser known to quake. It illustrates a profound knowledge of the Bible, which has been a constant source inspiration in her personal and business.

A native of Victoria, Texas, she was a teenaged school teacher when she was married to Thornton Brown, whom she had known since early childhood. In 1900, the young couple moved from Texas to the booming gold rush town of Cripple Creek, Colo., to seek their fortune.

Mr. Brown worked for a time in an assay office operated by his brother, and later became cashier of the Cripple Creek State Bank. In 1915, he and Mrs. Brown visited Steamboat Springs on a fishing trip and decided to enter the cattle business in this area.

They purchased 160 acres, including the eight-room house of sawed-log construction in which Mrs. Brown still lives, and started to raise purebred Herefords. Her husband’s untimely death in 1918 left Mrs. Brown with a ranch that was heavily encumbered. She decided to continue in business, but to cast her lot with sheep. She sold her cattle and purchased 25 Rambouillet ewes.