"A Look Back"

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

Moffat County homesteader goes to State
By Shannan Koucherik for the Museum of NW COLO

It’s a long way from the plains of Kansas to the U.S. Senate, especially if your route winds through northwest Colorado.

Edwin C. Johnson began his journey on New Year’s Day, 1884 in a small stone house built by his rancher father near Scandia, Kan. When the boy was four, the family moved to western Nebraska near the Colorado state line to take advantage of the rich prairie grasses that offered a better living than the dry plains of Kansas.

Young Johnson preferred the ranch to the schoolroom and he spent most of his energy learning to ride and tend the family’s herd of cattle. He would often stop during his chores to listen to and watch the locomotives in the distance. As he worked the cattle, he promised himself that someday he would hold the throttle of one of the mighty locomotives moving off into the sunset.

When he was 17, he took the only job available on the railroad for a young ranch boy. He earned 12 ½ cents an hour as a section hand but he quickly worked his way up to baggage man and within two years learned to operate a telegraph key. By the time he was 23, the ambitious Johnson was a train dispatcher in Green River, Wyo. It was while he was learning telegraphy that he met the girl who would travel with him throughout his life’s adventures.

Fern Johnson enjoyed her new role as wife and homemaker. She liked the excitement of meeting new people and wearing “city clothes.” Her “large feathered hats, fancy, high-buttoned shoes and long dresses made her feel the part of wife of a future official or railroad president.” (“Memories of my father, Ed Johnson,” by Gladys Johnson Marshall)

As he moved up in the railroad, Johnson realized that his lack of education was a serious handicap. He sought to remedy that problem by attending school during the day and working at night. He carried on this frantic schedule until his body rebelled, and he found himself a victim of tuberculosis.

Heeding his doctor’s advice, the young couple moved to a tent colony in Fountain, where the Colorado sunshine worked its healing in a year. Johnson loved the railroad, but his doctors warned him that to return to his former lifestyle would be fatal. He determined to remove himself as far as possible from the lure of the steel ribbons.

The couple took the daring step of moving to a new country just opening up to homesteaders. They found land to their liking near Lay, and began the hard life of dryland ranchers. Johnson’s father came with him to the new land to help build a small house, barn and other ranch buildings and dig a well.

The cattle operation grew with their hard work and they made some good friends, including B.A. Arbogast. The doctor would later encourage Johnson to take on a challenge that would change his life dramatically.

The couple grubbed sagebrush and planted wheat and rye as well as vegetables for their table. Johnson added income by teaching school and freighting in supplies for the increasing number of neighbors who joined them in the Lay community.

In 1914, Johnson was encouraged to run for the office of superintendent of schools for Moffat County. His first venture into politics would be his only defeat. He was beaten by only five votes by a Rhodes Scholar turned homesteader, George W. Norvell. Four years later, Johnson won his first election as his neighbors voted him county assessor.

Area farmers had purchased the grain elevator in Craig and formed a Farmers’ Cooperative. They soon discovered that management of the elevator could make or break the project and found themselves closing the doors of this much-needed enterprise. Johnson was asked to step in and take the reins and for the next ten years, he turned the fortunes of the Coop around with his good business sense.

Johnson enjoyed his work in Craig, but his early political races had given him an appetite for public service. At the urging of his friends he entered the state legislative race and, to no one’s surprise, won.

His daughter Gladys wrote of the day the family left their home in Craig to head for the political life. “I remember the day well, when Mama rented the house at Craig and a host of well-wishers saw us to the Moffat railroad station. And we stood on the observation car and Papa waved to the well-wishers and we started for Denver and the State House. That was in 1922 – a Lincolnesque memory that was the beginning of new far-reaching importance for a most remarkable man.”

Johnson spent three terms in the Colorado Assembly before his election as lieutenant governor in 1930. He followed that office with one term as governor and then 16 years as a U.S. senator.

He returned home to Colorado in 1955 and served another term as governor. Throughout his political career, Johnson never forgot where he came from or who put him into office. He kept in close contact with his constituents and was always available to listen to their concerns.

Johnson died in 1970 at the age of 86. Among the memorials to him is the Johnson Bore of the Eisenhower Tunnel, which was dedicated in 1979. The tunnel had been an important project to Johnson since 1956, when, as governor, he encouraged the project that would link the eastern and western parts of his beloved state. He received numerous other awards during his career, but the things that remained most important to him were his family and his home. It is fitting then, that a memorial to Edwin C. Johnson stands near the site of the homestead home that he and his father built so many years ago when the young man made the most of the second chance he had been given. An ornate wrought iron fence, moved from the Boettcher estate surrounds the small brick building that shelters the original house. A small historical marker at a rest area points to the place on U.S. Highway 40 west of Craig. Many of Johnson’s mementos are now on display at the Museum of Northwest Colorado.

The newspapers of the 1930s were replete with accolades for the Craigite who made a name for himself, but perhaps the most fitting was contained in a poem written by Mrs. R.A. Breeze during a campaign: “You’ll find him all wool and a full yard wide.”

E.C. Johnson was the real stuff.