A grassroots nonprofit aims to turn Alonzo Hartman’s elegant 1890s castle into a public house and event venue.

Old photos of grand, bygone buildings – like Crested Butte’s Elk Mountain House and Gunnison’s LaVeta Hotel – show the glamorous side of this valley’s history. Many dated back to the late 19th century, when a large–thinking country endeavored to accomplish the impossible – and did.

Alonzo Hartman figured into that era of prosperity. He arrived as a young cowboy at the Ute Indian Agency on the Cochetopa in 1872 to take charge of the cattle that fed the Utes and other employees of that government facility. Alonzo set up shop for himself in about 1874 on the remote cow camp of the Indian Agency, but he then helped move the agency to land near what is now Montrose.

By then, Lon, as he was called, had fallen in love with the Gunnison Valley, and he homesteaded 160 acres there around 1874 or ’75. He called his ranch The Dos Rios. He wasted little time in pulling together a 2000- acre cattle ranch that stretched roughly from what is now the Gunnison airport to McCabe Lane west of Gunnison and up over
Hartman Rocks.

Alonzo didn’t stop with cattle; he continued to build the community, along with his friend Jim Taylor. They dug
the ditches we see today along some of Gunnison’s residential streets, applied for and got a post office, and began to construct beautiful buildings, large and small. In 1881, Alonzo built the original courthouse, where his future bride came to work in the county clerk’s office. They married in 1882. Lon and Annie lived in a log cabin on the ranch at first, and in 1883-84 he commissioned a stone house on Wisconsin Street and Denver Avenue, likely built by a stonemason named Zugelder, who had a similar house nearby. The couple lived there until 1886. Alonzo bought lots around the newly platted town as he could afford them from cattle sales and likely a postal salary of some sort. The building next to the Corner Cupboard at the intersection of Main and Tomichi housed the early post office. “Hartman” is carved in stone at the top of the wall facing Main Street.

The man cut a wide swath, with his “can do” attitude, natural skill and integrity. His impact lingers all over the Gunnison Valley – in trails, organizations, relationships and buildings. Alonzo was the first president of the Gunnison Cattlemen’s Association, formed to create organization among the ranchers and build some political clout.

With the birth of his son Bruce in 1886, Alonzo built a small brick and stick house at the ranch. It is considered the first lumber house in the county – some say the first on the Western Slope. It’s fairly ornate, with lattice woodwork on the gables on the cross-gabled roof structure.

This article was published in the Crested Butte Magazine, Summer 2024.