Fremont County CoArchives Obituaries.....Hunt, Elda [Koch}, May 10, 1998
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Anne Koch  Leibldkoch@aol.com   October 2001


Wet Mountain Tribune, May 28, 1998

Death of Elda Hunt marks end of pioneer Valley family by Raymond Koch

The death of Elda Elizabeth Hunt, 96, in Denver on May 10, 1998, marks the end
of an era for a well-known Wet Mountain Valley [Custer County] pioneer family. 
Mrs. Hunt was the last surviving immediate member of the August Koch family that
had begun ranching near Hillside [Fremont County] over 100 years ago.

Elda's father, the patriarch of the family, August, was born in [the village of
Breitenborn near] Frankfurt-on-the-Meine, Germany, in 1866.  He had immigrated
with his parents, Frederick and Elizabeth, and brothers, Conrad, Peter, and
Fred, to the United States [in 1867]. The young German family joined the German
Colonization Company organized in Chicago in August 1869 by Carl Wulsten, a
Prussian who had served in the Union Army during the Civil War.  The resulting
German colony consisted of 92 families, comprising 337 souls.  They journeyed
from Chicago to the Wet Mountain Valley-or El Mojada, as it was known by the Ute
Indians and early Spaniards-in the spring of 1870.

Thirty-eight six-mule government wagons and nearly as many ox teams and wagons
loaded with machinery, agricultural implements, household goods, provisions and
machinery for a grist mill, sawmill, flour mill and a sash and door factory
entered the Valley on March 20, 1870.  They proceeded to the six by eight mile
area in the south part of the Valley that had been scouted the previous year by
a three-man group.  The colony parceled out one-acre plots to each family,
surrounding the town of Colfax, so named to recognize the positive support
provided the German colonists by President Grant's vice-president, Schuyler
Colfax.  The site of Colfax was on what is now the Hartbauer Ranch seven miles
south of Westcliffe.

The colony failed to survive until the five-year anniversary when--if all had
gone according to plan--assets of the venture were to be divided among the
surviving company members.  A crop failure related to late planting and an
unusually early frost and the destruction of the common storehouse by fire led
to a dissolution of the colony only a year after its founding.  Like many of
their fellow colonists, the Koch families were determined to find a way to
survive and remain in their newfound homeland.  They spread to several areas in
the Valley.  Some homesteaded land or purchased or traded with those leaving the
colony for needed acreage.

As young August came of age, his parents returned to Germany to find him a
bride.  Marie Noll, a young, strong, adventurous fraulein from an old Germanic
family in the Bavarian village of Breitenborn, accepted both the challenge and
the opportunity of the new western land and returned with Frederick and
Elizabeth.  August and Marie were married in 1889 in the Wet Mountain Valley. 
And their family grew, from first daughter Katie's birth in 1891 to Elda's birth
in 1902, including eight sons, with George, born in 1910, the youngest.

The Koch's pursued various ventures during these early years--all related to the
maturing family work force.  Centered around the family ranch near Hillside,
they included cutting and milling timbers for the mines dotting the hills east
of the valley.  They also built an ice house and cut ice off ranch ponds and
lower lakes or reservoirs in the Sangre de Cristo range.  On a siding built on
the ranch they filled ice bunkers on Denver and Rio Grande Railroad refrigerated
cars carrying Valley produce from the Westcliffe produce packing sheds to Texas
Creek and on to distant markets.  Later they operated a commercial ice and cold
storage business.  The family owned some of the first steam-driven tractors and
engaged in hay and grain harvesting in addition to cattle ranching.  They also
built a family-operated dance hall just off the highway at the ranch entrance. 
The Saturday night dances became a must-attend social event in the Valley,
especially during the lean days of the Great Depression when few could afford
more expensive forms of entertainment.

Elda carried on her mother's avocation for fine sewing and was a practicing
seamstress.  She married Norton Hunt in 1923.  Although she lived in Denver for
years, and in a rest home in Thornton prior to her death, Elda and Norton were
frequent visitors to the Valley and to the family ranch.  Norton was a devoted
trout fisherman and enjoyed climbing to the high lakes in the Sangres as soon as
the ice was off in the late spring.

Elda's survivors include a son . . . , a daughter, Betty Ginther-Nielsen of
Texas [who died in September 2000]; five grandchildren; five great-grandchildren
and a host of nieces and nephews.  Mrs. Hunt was interred at Crown Hill cemetery
near Denver on May 15.

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