The Meeker Herald Sept. 17, 1887, told this story: It is not generally known, but it is a fact nevertheless, that Morgan Edgar and Frank Barton roosted in a tree in the Lime Kiln mountains a few days ago. How they came to select such a singular place to pass the night came about in this wise: It became known some day ago that Morgan Edgar was going East in a week or two to spend the winter, and Captain Armit and Frank thought it would be the proper caper to invite Mr. Edgar over to the Lime Kiln country to participate in a bear hunt before he departed for the desolate shores of New Jersey.
A party consisting of Cap Armit, Mr. Edgar, Frank Barton and Burt Parker was gotten up and started out in the early part of this week for the bear country. On reaching their destination the party discovered lots of bear sign, but although they hunted diligently for several days they were unable to bag any game. In the meantime, the hunters ran out of provisions and Messrs. Edgar and Barton were dispatched to town for a fresh supply. They bought a sack of flour, some beans, bacon, eggs, butter, canned fruits, a small keg of molasses, and some beer, which they put on the pack saddle and started back for camp.
As they started late, darkness came on them before they reached their destination they concluded to camp for the night. They selected a nice spot near some tall trees on this side of the mountain, unsaddled the horses, put the pack at the foot of a tree, and prepared to make things comfortable. Morgan led the horses to a spring nearby to water them, and to hobble them where there was grass, and Frank went skirmishing for dry wood to make a fire. They returned to their camping place together, and were grievously surprised.
It was dark, but they could see that something was the matter in camp as they came through the brush. When they emerged into the clearing a big piebald lump of something came rolling toward them. It growled in a very terrifying manner, and it was too big to be stopped by revolver bullets.
Morgan and Frank had no weapons other than their revolvers, and they did not try to stop the singular monster. Morgan went up the nearest tree and Frank threw his armful of wood at the piebald object and skipped. He got up another tree, just in time to escape a vicious blow of a paw that made the bark fly. The piebald object growled and went back to the place where the provisions had been left. The two men in the trees then made out two large animals rolling and tumbling about in camp. They were black and white, but the arrangement of color seemed to be variable. The more they rolled the bigger grew the white patches. They were evidently having a great deal of fun with something.
Morgan started down from his perch to investigate, but his boots made a noise, and Frank shouted to shin back up the tree. He got back. One of the things in black and white galloped lumberingly toward the tree, made a slap at it, and went back. When the moon came up and the light struggled through the trees, Frank and Morgan saw two large grizzly bears making a wreck of the things in camp.
They knocked in one end of the molasses keg, ripped open the flour bag, smashed the eggs, eaten the bacon, and got themselves smeared with butter and molasses. As they rolled about on their backs trying to discover some way of getting at the inside of the beer bottles, they covered themselves with flour that stuck to the molasses.
The men in the trees tried their revolvers on the bears, but the excitement and exertion had rattled their nerves, and their shots told only occasionally. The result of the firing was to bring both bears growling to the trees, and in their rage they made efforts to climb up that were not so absurdly unsuccessful as to be reassuring. Morgan and Frank concluded that it would be safer to let the bears run the camp in their own way for the rest of the night. The molasses orgy lasted until near daylight, and the two men were about ready to drop from their perches when they saw the disreputable looking revellers pick themselves up and move away. In rolling about the bears had got their faces covered with a mass of molasses, leaves, dirt, and forest debris, and were nearly blinded. They blundered through the chapparal, bumped their heads against trees, growled at every bump, and made a great row getting away. A series of furious growls and the crashing of branches told that they had gone head first over the brink of a precipice nearby.
Then the Messrs. Edgar and Barton dropped to the ground. When the stiffness of their limbs wore away, they drank a bottle of beer each caught their horses and cleared out for the camp of the hunting party, where they related their experience, and after a hasty breakfast, returned to the scene of their recent adventure, accompanied by all the members of the hunting party heavily armed. The trail of the bears was followed until the spot was reached where they had tumbled over the cliff and on looking down the other side Captain Armit discovered both bears about one hundred yards below wedged between two huge rock apparently dead.
The boys lost no time in getting down to where the bears were laying which proved to be two of the largest grizzlies ever seen in this part of the country. Each had several bullet holes in his carcass, but whether the bears died from the effects of the bullets, the fall over the precipice, or from disappointment at not getting away with the beer was a point the boys could not settle among themselves, but Captain Armit proposes to get together a number of our most eminent bear hunters and have this point settled.
Messrs. Edgar and Barton peeled the hides of the two monster grizzlies and will keep them as mementos of the night spent in the timber on the Lime Kiln mountains.
End of Story.
Notes from Ed Peck: This issue came out shortly after what some named “The White Man’s War” on the Utes in 1887 when Garfield County Sheriff Kendall’s armed attempt to arrest two Ute men almost escalated into an all out battle with State militia, U.S. Army Buffalo soldiers, and Meekerites.
Meeker was still part of Garfield County at this point in time. I am certain that James Lyttle, Proprietor of the Meeker Herald, was the author. It has his flair for weaving a few facts into a great story. I believe the cast of characters are C. Frank Barton who homesteaded in section 30, 1N, 94W in 1890; Captain John Lees Emlyn Armit who later moved to Colorado Springs and became a lawyer; Morgan Edgar who was probably the cattle rancher who homesteaded in Powell Park in 1886 and moved to Denver in 1893, becoming a partner in a law firm. Morgan’s brothers Stuart and Howard were also in RBC in 1886. On a side note, the Edgar brothers’ mother was Adriana Augusta Meeker. I found no family ties to Nathan Meeker and Burt Parker.