"A Look Back"

The Stories presented here are about people and events during the early days when this corner of Colorado was first settled.

Piecing together a good life
By Shannan Koucherik for the Museum of NW Colo

In the history of Moffat County and Northwest Colorado, the mid 1880s are generally considered to be the beginning of established communities. The connections between the people who came here to make a life fit together like the pieces of a well-planned quilt.

One of those pieces was Belle Barber Hodges, who came to the Yampa Valley as a child and spent most of her life here.

Belle was born on April 14, 1876 in Golden, the daughter of Oscar and Jennie Barber. Her father owned and operated the first flour mill on the eastern slope. It provided a good living for the family of six.

As part of the milling process, Barber would “bolt,” or sift the flour through silk material. This fabric could be used several times before being discarded. Mrs. Barber taught her two daughters to clean the pieces of silk after which they incorporated the colorful fabric into pieced quilts.

Mr. Barber enjoyed hunting and would take trips around Colorado on a regular basis. In the fall of 1885, he traveled to Steamboat Springs and was impressed by the abundance of wild game as well as the grass and water that could feed livestock.

By the summer of 1887, he had sold his flour mill and moved his family to the Maybell area near the Bear River.

“Mr. and Mrs. Saunders and family lived across the river from our house and Mr. and Mrs. Shaw and baby lived close to us as well as the Frank Haynes family,” Belle’s sister May remembered later in an article she wrote “Settling in the Maybell Valley” (Craig Courier Jan 1, 1925)

“We got our mail at Lay (where A.G. and Augusta Wallihan kept the post office). There was mail once a week, I think, to the Maybell post office on down the river 12 or 14 miles.” (ibid)

The small community was close-knit and when the Utes began to show some aggression, they joined forces, keeping the women and children in the Saunders’ home while the men kept guard outside. The group moved to Lay, and soon after to Steamboat Springs until the threat was over.

There was no school in the Maybell area at the time, so Mrs. Barber took her children back to Golden during the winter months so they could attend classes. She taught her daughters to sew buckskin gloves to bring in money.

During the warmer months, the family was reunited and they enjoyed working and socializing with their neighbors around Maybell and Lay. Belle completed her education in Maybell and served with her sister as postmistress there.

Edward “Ed” Hodges was working in Georgetown when he met Adrian Marshall. Marshall was a charcoal miner and had seen the area of northwestern Colorado. He told tales of lush grass, deer, elk, beaver and fish in abundance. Hodges and his friend Zenas Maudlin decided to check out this promised land for themselves and struck out with a four horse team and a lot of dreams.

Marshall bid his traveling companions goodbye at the Dawson Ranch near Mt. Harris and Hodges and Maudlin moved on to Hayden, where they spent the winter taking care of cattle for Bert Smart. The following spring, the two men decided to stay on and they worked the land and kept the cattle.

One day as they were cutting hay using hand scythes, they heard a man yelling at them. He rode up hard and told them to head for Steamboat Springs because the Utes were coming. The men joined other settlers in an improvised fort until the danger was past and then returned to Hayden.

Mauldin decided to try his luck at the gold camp at Hahn’s Peak, but Hodges stayed on and opened a meat market. He had a contract to supply meat to the soldiers who patrolled the valley. He was soon appointed postmaster and settled down – for a while.

By 1882, Hodges had quit the butcher shop and he and Maudlin had moved farther west, camping at what would become the Sweeney ranch. They liked what they saw and decided to homestead their own place. Hodges was the cook and Maudlin did the chores outside.

The two bachelors continued their partnership, with Maudlin riding out with other ranchers and Hodges tending the home place. The community was growing around them and they often got together with neighbors to celebrate holidays.

In 1895, Maudlin married Maggie Frawley, whom he had met when she visited her nephew Frank Sweeney. The couple had kept up correspondence and finally decided to save on postage and join in marriage.

Ed Hodges helped the newlyweds to build a three-room home. Before long, he and Maudlin dissolved their partnership and Hodges went to work for the K Diamond Ranch as a foreman. He married Belle Barber on April 14, 1897 and she joined him on the K Diamond.

The couple had two daughters and the family was an integral part of the growing Maybell community until Ed’s death in 1906. After his death, Belle and the girls moved into Maybell where Belle operated the Maybell Drugstore and operated the telephone exchange as switchboard operator, using the exchange as her home. She worked as she had to, ensuring that her daughters had a decent life, if not elaborate.

She moved back to the eastern slope in 1913 and Belle made a living with a sewing shop. She did exquisite decorative hand sewing as well as mundane repairs and alterations. She passed on the quilting tradition that she had begun with her mother and sister and together they pieced many beautiful quilts, both for sale and for their own use.

Belle moved back to the western slope in 1948 when she joined her daughter Rosamay Savage and her husband on their ranch 12 miles east of Rangely. When Rosamay’s husband died in 1962, she and her mother moved to Meeker where they kept busy with the needlework that had been such an important part of their lives.

Belle Barber Hodges died on January 15, 1975 in Meeker at the age of 98. She had seen dramatic changes in the world in those years, from ox cart to men on the moon. She left a rich legacy of beautiful embroidered pieces and quilts that tie together bits of history for us to enjoy and learn from today.

Several of her quilts – ranging from carefully pieced and appliquéd patterns using flour mill silks and sacks to richly embellished crazy quilts using scraps of velvet, satin and other materials – are on display at the Museum of Northwest Colorado.

A special part of the exhibit is an unfinished quilt that was loaned to the Museum by Belle’s family. Museum visitors are invited to take a seat and stitch on the quilt to lend their hands to the ever growing history of Northwest Colorado.