Routt County CO Archives Biographies.....McKinnis, Philip R. August 13, 1851 - ?
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Judy Crook jlcrook@rof.net March 25, 2006, 7:24 pm

Author: Progressive Men of Western Colorado

     After trying his hand at various pursuits in different states and

experiencing alternate successes and reverses, which is the frequent lot of

wandering workmen, the subject of this review came to Colorado in 1887 and

became one of the first settlers in the vicinity of Sidney, Routt county.  He

had one dollar and seventy-five cents in money on his arrival, and with nothing

more than that sum and his hopeful and self-reliant nature, determined to throw

himself on the bounty of the soil and work out an estate in a wild but promising

region which then contained but one settler.  He took up a ranch of one hundred

and sixty acres of wholly uncultivated land under a homestead claim, which was

as yet virgin to the plow, was still covered with its uncomely growth of sage

and had not long ceased to echo the tread and bear the footprints of its former

savage inhabitants.  The denizens of the wilderness still abounded and they were

not only unable and unwilling to aid in the establishment of civilization and

the production of the fruits of cultivation, but stubbornly and ferociously

resisted every attempt toward such a change.  Mr. McKinnis was, however, not

daunted by these conditions, but resolutely set to work to reclaim his land and

make it habitable and productive.  What it is today he has made it, and if it

should in justice be said that his ranch is one of the good and promising ones

of this section, it must be allowed, with equal justice, that he alone is

entitled to the credit for the transformation, except so far as his family have

assisted him, which they have done with the same spirit of energy and

determination he has himself exhibited.  He was born at Knoxville, Marion

county, Iowa, on August 13, 1851, and is the son of Craner and Catherine

McKinnis, the former a native of Ohio and the latter of Pennsylvania.  They

moved to Iowa some years after their marriage, and there they ended their days,

the father dying on October 1, 1898, and the mother on October 12, 1900.  They

were industrious farmers and had a family of ten children, nine of whom grew to

maturity and are now living.  They are John L., Theodore T., Martha, Philip R.,

David W., Richard R., Bird D., Ernest C. and Ida.  The father was an active

Democrat and took a good citizen’s part in the public affairs of his community.

 Their son Philip received a good education, attending the common and high

schools, an excellent academy at Knoxville and Bryant & Stratton’s Business

College at Burlington, Iowa.  He remained at home until he reached the age of

twenty-one, then began farming for himself in his native county, following this

independent but exacting pursuit under such circumstances four years.  He then

sold his interests in Iowa and moved to Oregon, where he engaged in saw-mill

work near Summerville until 1881, finding his business profitable, as his

farming has been.  But the air around him was full of invitation to the mining

industry with golden promises of speedy and easily acquired fortune, and selling

his outfit and other property in Oregon, he went to prospecting, following the

will-o’-the-wisp, as that business so often proves to be, through Idaho, Oregon

and Montana, not only winning nothing in the pursuit but losing the results of

his former enterprises.  In 1886 he made a visit to his old Iowa home, and the

next year came to Colorado and located on his present ranch in Routt county, as

has been counted.  Eighty acres of his ranch are under good cultivation in hay,

grain and vegetables, and he has built up an extensive and expanding industry in

raising good cattle and horses for the market. He is about seven miles south of

Steamboat Springs, and therefore finds easy shipment and ready sale for his

productions, and as the country around him is rapidly settling up and improving,

his property is increasing in value by natural increment as well as by the

application of his own industry and business acumen.  Politically he supports

the Democratic party, as his father did before him, but not for that reason,

being a man of strong convictions by his own reading and observation. 

Fraternally he is associated with the order of Freemasons, finding pleasure and

profit in its mysteries and moral teachings and in the good fellowship which it

so richly engenders.  

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

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/co/routt/bios/mckinnis441gbs.txt

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