The Wet Mountain Valley got about a foot on the valley floor around Westcliffe, with up to two feet at higher elevations. Westcliffe sidewalks were littered with broken tree branches, and Custer County Sheriff Fred Jobe was pleasantly surprised by the low number of highway accidents:

"Usually at this time of year, persons have forgotten how to drive on icy and snow-packed roads and as a result there are a lot of accidents. That just wasn't the case with this snowstorm."

Warm sunny days returned right after the storm, marking the start of an unofficial season, Indian Summer. According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, "the name arose from the fact that such weather was more pronounced in the lands formerly occupied by the Indians than in the eastern regions inhabited by the white population" in America.

Name that tool

Buena Vista is getting a new library building on the site of the old one, which was razed on Sept. 13. The picture in the Chaffee County Times showed a backhoe at work, but it was called a "track hoe" in the cutline - and that's a piece of equipment we've never heard of.

But the Times has some big-league company. We were watching CSI the other night, and several characters referred to a crowbar as a "tire iron."

Pining for the name

Residents of an unincorporated area in western Jefferson County, were pleased that the U.S. Board on Geographical Names agreed last year to change the official name from Pine to Pine Grove.

It had started as Pine Grove when the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad came through in 1878. The U.S. Post Office then said the place had to be Pine, rather than Pine Grove, because there was another Pine Grove and confusion could result.

So it was Pine (not to be confused with Pine Junction on U.S. 285 about 10 miles northwest of Pine Grove) until 2004, when it became Pine Grove again.

But Pine Grove residents did not ask for their post office's name to be changed from Pine to Pine Grove, because numerous other communities share that post office, including Sphinx Park, Buffalo Creek, Crystal Lake, and Pine Junction.

Last March, however, the Postal Service changed the name of the post office associated with Zip Code 80470 from Pine to Pine Grove. This led to some upset and confusion in nearby communities.

"All the people that are outraged are calling me," said Larry Means, president of the Pine-Elk Creek Improvement Association, which had sought the geographic name change.

He wrote the Postal Service, and Al DeSarro, western regional spokesman for the USPS, said the change was an innocent communications error. So 80470 should soon be changed from Pine Grove back to Pine.

Preservation

Not all prostitution in the days of yore took place in fancy parlor houses. At the low end, there were "cribs" -- small shacks rented by independent whores.

Since the structures were not substantial, and represented an aspect of commerce that many preferred to ignore, few cribs have survived the ravages of time. But one has been located in Leadville by Mary McVicar, and the Red Hat Ladies have taken on the task of preserving it.

The crib, which sat near the railroad yards, is being moved to the grounds of the Heritage Museum; Ed Jordan has agreed to move it at no charge.

There's still some work to do, though, which takes money. The Red Hats have already collected some, and donations are welcome; for particulars call Leora Hamm at 970-409-9403 or Betty Benson, 719-486-5454.

Rescued critters

When our publisher was a cub reporter in Longmont many years ago, he was talking to a fire department officer when a women called to say her cat was in a tree. The firefighter did not go to the rescue, though. Instead he concluded their conversation with "Drive around town, lady, and look up in the trees. Do you see any skeletons of cats that starved to death up there? Your kitty will come down all on its own."

That's essentially what happened in Leadville when a cat was stuck on a power pole for two days in September. The fire department, police department, sheriff's department and power company all declined to rescue it when the owner called. But there's no feline skeleton up there; the cat came down on Sept. 12 after a weekend on the pole.

Firefighters did rescue eight birds in Buena Vista on Sept. 19. They were caged in an apartment which caught fire. Neighbors heard a smoke alarm and called the fire department. The firemen arrived as smoke was billowing out, and were able to evacuate the birds, as well as a pet chinchilla.

A lost cow also got home. She had been missing since August, and was found near Climax on Oct. 7. Fred Cummings of the Colorado Department of Transportation moved the cow off the road, and found the owners through a classified ad in the Leadville Herald-Democrat.

Cold Cases

If TV programming is any indicator, Americans are fascinated by "cold cases" -- crimes of yesteryear which were not solved at the time.

The 11th Judicial District (Chaffee, Custer, Frémont, and Park counties) Homicide Task Force is looking for some help in solving two murders that happened more than 23 years ago.

On Jan. 6, 1982, two women were murdered on Hoosier Pass -- Barbara Jo Oberholtzer, 29, and Annette Schnee, 21. Both women were shot, and were probably hitch-hiking south out of Breckenridge on Colo. 9.

There's no record that they knew each other, but Schnee was wearing an orange sock similar to one found near Oberholtzer's body, and Shnee's backpack was found near the Oberholtzer crime scene.

The task force has set up a website, www.rockymountain.coldcase.com, where investigators may be contacted, and Crimestoppers is accepting anonymous tips at a toll-free number, 866-453-7867.

The timing could have been worse

Granted, State Highway 291 through Salida (First Street and Oak Street) teemed with cracks and chuckholes, and needed new pavement. But the Colorado Department of Transportation didn't provide much notice about the week-long job, which must have been scheduled long before anyone in Salida knew about it.

The first that anyone local heard of it was on Sept. 19, when CDOT passed out some flyers informing downtown merchants that the project would start on Sept. 21, just two days later.

During the project, parking was forbidden along the street, and getting around town was something of an adventure, on account of closed intersections. Most businesses stayed open, even if they were hard to reach; with more notice, some might have scheduled vacations or the like.

As a Mountain Mail editorial observed, it could have been worse: CDOT might have done the paving at the peak of tourist season in July.

No more categorical exclusions

Just about any event on Forest Service land is going to require public notice and time for comment, thanks to a ruling by a federal court in California on Sept. 16. It had an immediate local effect -- the Mount Princeton Mountain Bike Hill Climb, scheduled for late September, had to be canceled.

At issue is what the Forest Service calls a "categorical exclusion" from environmental reviews and hearings. Typically, these were issued for non-controversial events that use existing roads and trails, or to license hunting outfitters.

However, the Bush Administration in 2003 issued new rules that allowed for some logging and road construction under categorical exclusion -- that is, no public input or hearings. The Earth Island Institute sued in California, charging that a timber sale in the Sequoia National Forest, issued under a categorical exclusion, violated a 1992 law requiring public input and hearings.

The court ruled against the Forest Service, so now there's a bureaucratic review for just about everything, and any permit issued after July 7 is subject to the rules.

Keith Darner, organizer of the Mt. Princeton Hill Climb, had his permit canceled two days before the race. He said he lost about $1,500. It was too late to call everyone who had registered before they arrived, so Darner held a fund-raiser to help cover medical bills for Bryan Camp, a local mountain biker who was injured.

Observations

"The real irony of it all was that all of these happy-go-lucky ski bums were now working two jobs and had little time to enjoy their surroundings."

-- Mike Roselle in the Canyon Country Zephyr, October-November 2005, p. 15

"I just don't like people using our county as a dumping ground."

--Robert Sherill, U.S. Forest Service, p. 2, Sept. 30, 2005 edition, Fairplay Flume

After approving an agreement with Dennis O'Neill concerning water claims and ditches in the Twin Lakes area, Lake County Commissioner Ken Olsen said there were several benefits, one being that "It puts two lawyers out of work."

-- p. 3, Sept. 29, 2005 edition, Leadville Herald-Democrat.

"Warning: the word sustain ability is one of those fuzzy terms of art that is used adaptively by various parties, usually in the abstract. Meaning, it has no meaning."

--Ned Mudd in the Canyon Country Zephyr, October-November 2005, p. 20

"Back in my home part of Texas, we didn't have much natural beauty to preserve -- so it amazes me to see people show such disrespect for the law and the environment in this gorgeous area."

--Hazel Bracewell in the Leadville Herald-Democrat, Sept. 15, 2005 edition, p. 6

"When we got out of the air-conditioned car, the Texas heat hit us full blast. 'We're not in Texas,' I thought. 'We're in hell.'"

--Diane Alexander in the Chaffee County Times, Sept. 29, 2005, edition, p. 20