Gunnison County CO Archives Biographies.....Whipp, Smith L. 1861 - ?
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Judy Crook jlcrook@rof.net March 24, 2006, 8:06 pm

Author: Progressive Men of Western Colorado

     No man’s destiny, and scarcely any man’s vocation, can be predicted with

certainty in the mobile conditions of life which obtain in the United States. 

The land is full of opportunities and its institutions are in themselves an

education and a preparation for almost any call to study, and the conditions are

continually changing, so that the man we find at twenty-five following one

pursuit may be at forty engaged in a very different one.  Moreover, as each one

is in the measure of his capacities and his willingness a sovereign and part of

the government, the invitation is always open to a public career and

participation in political movements, which our young men have from the dawn of

their manhood, and often even before, taken advantage of.  It is therefore never

a matter of surprise when some worker in a mechanical or other non-political

field is chosen by his fellow citizens to the administration of important public

functions.  The wonder, if there be any about the case, is that men not

specially trained to public office are so ready and so capable in filling it and

perform so creditably its duties.  An instance worthy of more than a passing

notice is presented in the life of the present county treasurer of Gunnison

county, this state, Smith L. Whipp, of Gunnison, who is now serving his third

term in this important position.  Mr. Whipp was born in the state of Iowa in

1861, and is the son of Samuel D. and Mary (Smith) Whipp.  His father was a

native of Ohio and migrated from that state to Iowa early in the ‘forties,

settling in Jasper county, where he was married and where he farmed until 1871,

then moved his family to Kansas, locating in Mitchell county.  In 1859 he made a

trip to Pike’s Peak under pressure of the excitement then high over the

discovery of gold in that region.  But after a few months of unprofitable

prospecting and mining there he returned to his home in Iowa, and he continued

to live and farm there until 1891, when he came to Colorado to remain and took

up his residence at Crested Butte, Gunnison county. Here he died in 1902, aged

seventy-three years.  He was a veteran of the Mexican war, and a useful citizen

wherever he lived, giving to his fellow men an example of uprightness in private

life and of energy in behalf of the public welfare that was at once an

incitement and a fruitful source of good.  His wife was a native of Indiana and

went with her parents to live in Iowa while she was yet a school girl.  She died

at Crested Butte in January, 1891, at the age of fifty-four.  They had twelve

children, their son Smith being the third in numerical order.  His childhood and

youth were passed in his native state and Kansas. After leaving school he

learned the trade of a blacksmith, and at the conclusion of his apprenticeship

in 1880 he came to Colorado, locating at Georgetown.  The next year he moved to

Crested Butte and there worked at his trade and followed prospecting and mining

until he was seriously injured in an accident in a mine at Fairview, between

that place and Irwin, in Gunnison county, his brother, Owen P. Whipp, being

killed in the same accident.  After that he took up his residence at Gunnison,

and in 1897 was elected county treasurer as the candidate of the Fusionists.  At

the end of his first term he was re-elected as the candidate of the Republicans

and Populists, and at the end of the second term was again elected, this time as

a straight Republican.  In the fall of 1904 he was again elected on the

Republican ticket.  He has been an active and industrious man, and has

accumulated a competency of worldly wealth, having a fine ranch adjoining the

townsite of Gunnison on the north, and also interests in silver and gold mines,

including the Malibia claim on Ore creek in the southern part of the county. 

Throughout his mature life he has been active in public affairs, and is esteemed

as one of the lading citizens and public men in this part of the state.  He was

married in 1891 to Miss Mary McCourt, a native of England, daughter of James

McCourt, of that country.  Her father was an old-time miner who came to Crested

Butte in 1880 and was killed in a mine explosion in 1884.  Mr. and Mrs. Whipp

have two children, Ethel and Walter.  

Additional Comments:
From Progressive Men of Western Colorado.  Chicago:  A.W. Bowen & Co., 1905

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/co/gunnison/bios/whipp409gbs.txt

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