A president’s Hunting Guide: Rustic Teddy Roosevelt liked to melt into the local populace during bear hunting in the Gypsum – Eagle, Colorado area. This is in the Colorado River location on the southeastern Flat Tops uplift. His customary guide was legendary Jake Borah, a dedicated backcountry hunter of bear, lion, coyotes, wolves, and bobcats. In the 1894 winter, Borah’s group killed 65 mountain lions in the Gypsum area. Ten years later, his clients killed 34 lions and 43 bears. Borah’s entourage of clients was well supported by 75 pack animals, twenty bear hounds, and various support wagons. Borah and his wife Minnie ran resorts at Trappers Lake and at Deep Lake in the Flat Tops for ten years at the end of the century. President Roosevelt contracted with Glenwood Springs outfitter John Goff for a six-week bear and lion hunt on Divide Creek near New Castle. A temporary White House was assembled in a hotel, but Roosevelt preferred to spend as much time as possible with his twelve hunting companions (including personal physician). Jake Borah described the President as a completely common, good sensed, affable, uncomplaining, good rider and talented hunter. They became friends, in spite of Borah’s penchant for practical jokes and dry humor. Roosevelt killed six of the ten bears taken. The hunt had to be scaled back to three weeks, because of problems in Washington. The celebratory hotel dinner was festive with all attendees dressed in flannel field shirts at the President’s request. The down-to-earth fellow advised his friends confused with the multitude of eating implements to just grab anything and dig in! The evening ended with what all hunters do – joke, recount and relive their hunting trip. Jake Borah got good recommendations from the President. He continued to guide many congressmen, eastern bankers and businessmen, and Denver capitalists. Mr. Borah retired to a small ranch near Gypsum, where he died July 29, 1929 after a Gypsum Hospital stay. (Largely based on Kathy Heicher, Vail Today News 9/12/2004) Train Wrecks: Early in 1909 two Denver and Rio Grande trains colloided near Dotsero, a train station at the east entrance to Glenwood Canyon. Twenty three people died. The engineer accepted full responsibility for the accident. He said he had simply misread time on his pocket watch. This was not a shocking revelation, since D and RG engineers were known for their ineptitudes. One failed to notice a Denver house being moved across the tracks and smitherined it with not so much as a whistle blast! Near Florence, Colorado, two D and RG trains collided head on, killing 35 people. An eighteen year old telegraph operator left to man the station had fallen so deeply asleep that he failed to hear a train thunder past a mere twelve feet away. So the Dotsero shot-through was not that big an oversight. The Dotsero Cutoff tracks along the Colorado River from Burns to Dotsero was a decades-long dream. It allowed rail traffic from northern Colorado to join tracks from Denver, thus allowing freight service to and from Salt Lake City and saving seven hours and hundred of miles.