Tag: B. Clark Wheeler

Possibly his betrothal hit a snag, or the countess puffery may have been a set up for a pretextual return to Aspen in 1907, when he took back control of the Aspen Times, announced he was running for the state House of Representatives and trumpeted reopening the Little Annie and Famous Tunnel.

Newspaper accounts reported claims against Wheeler, painting a pattern of manipulation and a life under pressure. But in the frontier era, when physical distance from problems created more insulation, Wheeler put off what he could by traveling and conducting state senate business, as he delayed and jockeyed assets.

The yarn is often spun of Wheeler’s Herculean mid-February 17-day roundtrip snowshoe odyssey from Leadville to Ute City over Independence Pass to inspect mining prospects and lay out a town.