Pueblo-El Paso County CO Archives Biographies.....Adams, Alva 1850 - 
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 January 13, 2009, 8:54 pm

Author: Wilbur Fiske Stone (1918)

HON. ALVA ADAMS.

    The active connection of Hon. Alva Adams with the history of Colorado, its
development and its upbuilding, covers nearly forty years and the record of no
man in public life has been more faultless in honor, fearless in conduct or
stainless in reputation. From youth to old age Alva Adams has been a factor in
Colorado life, business and government. Starting without capital, friends,
profession or trade, he has made a creditable success in the various activities
in which he has engaged.

    Though but an alumnus of the rural log school house, Mr. Adams has read
widely and has gathered perhaps the largest private library in Colorado. His
collection of books relating to this section of the Rocky mountains is
especially valuable.

    Mr. Adams was born in a log house in Iowa county, Wisconsin, on May 14,
1850. His father was from Kentucky and his mother from New York. The former was
a merchant and farmer. The illness of a son caused the family to seek a change
of climate. In prairie schooners they crossed the plains to Colorado, where they
arrived in the spring of 1871. Young Alva's first work was hauling from the
mountains the ties that were placed upon the first miles of the Denver & Rio
Grande Railroad. In July, 1871, he went to the proposed site of Colorado
Springs. There he entered the employ of C. W. Sanborn, a lumber merchant. While
working for Mr. Sanborn he built a small house on South Cascade avenue for an
office and sleeping room. It was finished on the seventh day of August, 1871,
being the first house built on the site of Colorado Springs. In October, 1871,
Mr. Adams purchased the business of his employer for four thousand one hundred
dollars. Not having the capital, he gave his notes in payment, bearing two per
cent per month interest. The business was soon converted into a hardware store.
In 1873 a branch was established in the new town of South Pueblo. Leaving his
associates in Colorado Springs, Mr. Adams moved to Pueblo and from there branch
stores were started in all of the prominent mining camps of the San Juan.

    In 1873 Mr. Adams was chosen as a member of the first board of trustees for
South Pueblo. In 1876 he was elected to the first state legislature from Rio
Grande county and in 1884 he was nominated on the democratic ticket for
governor, but was defeated. Two years later he was the successful candidate and
was sworn in as governor in January, 1887. In 1896 he was again elected governor
and a third time elected in 1904. A well known writer describes him in these
words: "The keynote of Alva Adams' character throughout has been purpose. He is
not a great man but he is a good man—a clever man, an ambitious and cultured
man. He has made the most of the excellent talents with which nature endowed him
and that is why he seems to be the most admirable man in the state. What he is
he has made himself and my heart goes out in unreserved sympathy toward the high
and honorable and forceful character he has established." To the solution of
every public problem Mr. Adams has given the most thoughtful consideration and
has been actuated by a spirit of the utmost devotion to the general good, ever
placing the public welfare before partisanship and the interests of his
constituents before self-aggrandizement. Though in touch with politics for a
generation, he was never a candidate save when the logic of political events
seemed to point to him as the available nominee. A sense of party and civic duty
often won his assent when he would have preferred his home and books and private
affairs. He held the theory that the community had the right to command the
service of any efficient, competent citizen when the public welfare needed that
service.

    Mr. Adams is still connected with the mercantile concern he founded in 1871.
He is also president of the Pueblo Savings & Trust Company, director of the
Denver branch of the Federal Reserve Bank, and director in the International
Trust Company of Denver. He is also a thirty-third degree Mason and sovereign
grand inspector general in the state of Colorado.

    Mr. Adams has circled the globe twice, once as head of a semi-ambassadorial
commission. His travels, studies and work have given him a wide view of life and
made him a liberal-minded gentleman whose ways are those of refinement and whose
worth no man can question.


Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

HISTORY OF COLORADO

ILLUSTRATED
VOLUME II
CHICAGO
THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING COMPANY
1918


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