{"id":99205,"date":"2018-06-11T18:25:49","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T00:25:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-mans-father-helped-build-durango-brick-by-brick\/"},"modified":"2018-06-11T18:25:49","modified_gmt":"2018-06-12T00:25:49","slug":"mancos-mans-father-helped-build-durango-brick-by-brick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-mans-father-helped-build-durango-brick-by-brick\/","title":{"rendered":"Mancos man\u2019s father helped build Durango, brick by brick"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
When writers start a story, they never know what threads will weave together. I thought I would be writing about a 19th-century buggy. I had no idea I would learn about Durango\u2019s industrial past and an unexpected son born to an affectionate father who just happened to be 77 years old.<\/p>\n
This tale begins with a leather dashboard \u2013 the 19th-century term for the front of a buggy that protected the driver\u2019s legs. Lisa and Loren Skyhorse had created the leather panel, which reads \u201cTHOMAS G. PIERCE, Peerless Coal & Brick.\u201d The dashboard interested me. Little did I know that this story would take me back to a Durango coal mine, a brickyard and 35 graves from the same family in Greenmount Cemetery.<\/p>\n
We started in Danny Pierce\u2019s garage behind his three-story Victorian-style house in Mancos. I had seen an old black carriage in the front yard. Now, I saw a disassembled black buggy scattered in pieces, from the metal carriage steps to the highly varnished oak-spoked, rubber-tipped wheels.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Amish still deal in buggy parts, so all my parts come from Pennsylvania,\u201d said Danny Pierce, who has spent two years and hundreds of hours on his wagon restoration. \u201cThere\u2019s so much sanding and cleaning. Some pieces have been re-made by a local blacksmith,\u201d he said. In Pierce\u2019s garage, I saw metal parts, wood parts, the folding convertible top, leaf springs and parts painted in a shiny black lacquer as well as a deep maroon red.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an expensive carriage in its day. I\u2019ve made some changes to make the buggy stronger,\u201d he says, smiling. Pierce plans to completely restore the buggy and carefully hand paint original pinstriping on the wheels and body. This is a labor of love. He admits that. And when Pierce is through, he\u2019ll give the buggy away.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looks awful now. It\u2019ll take two more years to finish the job. But it was a sound carriage when I bought it in New Mexico. I don\u2019t have a horse. I won\u2019t drive it down a lane. When I\u2019m finished, I\u2019ll put it on display in my yard or donate it to a museum or historical society.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why go to all this careful work just to give it away? To honor the memory of Danny Pierce\u2019s father.<\/p>\n
Over a glass of wine, I learned of a son\u2019s love for a father who died when the boy was only 6 years old. Danny was the last of 16 children, four of whom died in infancy.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/div>\n
Thomas Guthrie Pierce was born in Cheriton, Iowa, in 1869, four years after the Civil War. Because of an abusive father, \u201cDad left home at age 15 and came out West on his own. He knocked around and did a variety of things,\u201d his son says. Thomas Pierce worked for Charles Goodnight in Texas and later on the narrow-gauge railroad over Marshall Pass near Sargent.<\/p>\n
A handsome young Durango entrepreneur in the early 20th century, Thomas G. Pierce owned and operated sheep camps, coal mines, a restaurant and the local brickyard.<\/span>Courtesy of Danny Pierce<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
In 1891, while laboring as a miner in Crested Butte, his older sister, Dora, and her young child died in an avalanche at the Bullion Gold Mine near Irwin. Dora was buried in a casket holding her daughter in her arms.<\/p>\n
Saddened by Dora\u2019s death, the family moved to Durango by 1892, where he ran Pierce Brothers Restaurant on Main Avenue and baked pies to perfection. The entrepreneurial Thomas Pierce branched out into coal mines west of town, including the Peerless Mine and the Sunshine Mine, producing high-grade coal for blacksmithing as well as domestic coal. He owned other mining properties at Red Mountain, up Junction Creek and in Nevada. He also started and managed the Durango Brick Yard.<\/p>\n
Contractors used Pierce\u2019s red bricks to build the western addition to the Strater Hotel, the J.C. Penny Building on Main Avenue and as structural bricks for the Smiley Building. \u201cHe was one of the earliest pioneers. He was a generous man, and he literally built the town with bricks,\u201d his son told me. Pierce ranched near Cedar Hill, New Mexico, and ran sheep at Lime Creek, beyond Silverton and to the top of Stony Pass. The nine older children that Danny came to know told numerous stories of tending sheep.<\/p>\n
When the Great Depression hit in 1929 and everyone owed money, Thomas Pierce understood. There were few social safety nets. Out of jobs, local people went hungry, and in winter, they froze. Poor families who owed Pierce money came quietly asking for coal. He rarely turned anyone away. \u201cDuring the Depression, he kept many families warm and alive,\u201d his son tells me, his voice choking up, tears welling in his eyes.<\/p>\n
If your father dies when you are young, an important father-son bond is shattered, but Danny said, \u201cI got to know my dad through so many of the \u2018Old Timers\u2019 who were still living. Those who knew my dad always spoke highly of him. Family members told stories, too. His word was his bond. When he went into the Burns Bank for a loan, he always walked out with cash. The bank president would say, \u2018Come back when it is convenient for you, Mr. Pierce. We\u2019ll have the paperwork ready for you then.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/div>\n
Thomas G. Pierce employed family members in all his business ventures, whether herding sheep, distributing coal, firing bricks or delivering finished bricks to job sites. He married his first wife, Belle Mathis. When she passed on, he was a handsome, wealthy businessman, suddenly available, who caught many a lady\u2019s glance. \u201cHe was a highly sought-after man between his marriages,\u201d Danny says with a wink.<\/p>\n
Like the famous Telluride mine owner and innovator L.L. Nunn, Thomas G. Pierce began his financial holdings in the Durango restaurant business. This photo is of the Pierce Brothers Restaurant on Main Avenue. Their specialty was baked goods. Thomas Pierce excelled at pies.<\/span>Courtesy of Danny Pierce<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
In 1935, in the depths of the Depression, Thomas Pierce married his second wife, Lilah Matilda Stonebarger Powell, a pretty young widow with three small boys. Her husband had worked in one of Pierce\u2019s coal mines before his untimely death in 1933 of kidney failure. It was a marriage of convenience. They were 33 years apart in age. Thomas was 66, Lilah was 33.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe freely admitted to marrying Dad for his money,\u201d Danny said, \u201cbut it was a great marriage. They each gained a good, reliable partner.\u201d Lilah grew to love him. When he died, he left her three houses and a coal mine, not knowing that natural gas would replace coal as a domestic heating source.<\/p>\n
They lived at Fifth Avenue and Fifth Street on Durango\u2019s south side. Danny says of his sisters, \u201cDaily they breathed in coal smoke and coal dust from the train. Later, when the winds were right, uranium particles and radioactive dirt blew into the neighborhood from the old smelter across the river. Sure enough, it killed them,\u201d he says, but adds with a grin, \u201cThey all lived into their 90s.\u201d<\/p>\n
When his mother was 45 and his father was 77, Danny was born. \u201cDad was embarrassed, so he wouldn\u2019t take mom to the hospital. He called a cab. But after I was born, he came to the maternity ward twice a day. People would ask, \u2018Is that your grandson?\u2019 And he\u2019d snort, \u2018No, that\u2019s my boy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
At 79, Thomas Pierce was still building five-room brick houses in Durango, working 12-hour days, digging basements by hand and laying bricks. \u201cI\u2019m the youngest, but luckily I got to know all my brothers and sisters,\u201d Danny Pierce tells me. He is now 71 with a handsome white beard. \u201cMy dad and I got along quite famously. We were buds. He never retired. He just worked.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/div>\n
A historic black buggy in the front yard of Danny Pierce\u2019s home in Mancos. He is lavishing attention on a second buggy and doing a complete restoration to honor his entrepreneurial father who was born in 1869 and owned coal mines, sheep flocks, restaurants and the Durango Brick Yard.<\/span>Courtesy of Andrew Gulliford<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
To honor his father, Danny Pierce is restoring an old buggy. It\u2019ll have a special strong box under the seat, and in it, will be papers and photos telling his dad\u2019s story. Family history is like that. Sometimes, love for a father deepens the ties that bind. Like the oak spokes of a buggy wheel, family tales go round and round.<\/p>\n