EDITOR’S NOTE: In preparation for the Town of Meeker’s 140th birthday in September, we are publishing the histories of the Town’s founders who’s names are listed at the White River Museum and on the plaque on the boulder in front of the courthouse. If you would like to participate in a Founders’ Day celebration (basically a giant birthday party) on Sept. 27 please contact [email protected] or call 970-878-4017.
Charles Dunbar is remembered in Meeker as one of our mystery town founders. We have no pictures to hang of him on the White River Museum wall. Charlie was here early enough and had enough cash to invest in shares of the original Meeker Town Company.
I am going to begin Charlie’s story at his end. Charles Dunbar was shot in Meeker in the middle of a fight among the many drunks filling the town on Election Day, Nov. 6, 1883. The facts are in dispute, depending on which side of the fight you were on.
I would like to use Ed Wilbur’s account of the melee. Ed was serving as temporary help behind Charlie’s Bar. Election Day was traditionally an excuse for men (the only voters before women’s suffrage) to buy votes at the local saloon with beer and fine whiskey imported all the way from Rawlins or Leadville. Meeker was no different. Ed Wilber is quoted: “The man that started this Meeker Hotel, Charlie Dunbar, was running a bar room and lodge. The day before the election, Charlie said, ‘Ed, I want you to help me behind the bar,’ and I said, ‘I don’t know a darn thing about it,’ and he said, ‘Well, I don’t either, but you can wash and dry glasses.’ So I got ‘Maj’ [Newton Major, manager of Hugus and Major] to let me off for that afternoon, and this same afternoon Pete Stewart shot Charlie. It happened this way: The boys were full, all had been celebrating, and Dick, a friend of Charlie’s and mine, was too full, so we took him to bed. Later Charlie said, ‘Ed, go and see if Dick is in bed.’ I did, and he wasn’t, so I came back and told Charlie. The Wilson boys and fellers from down the river had it in for Dunbar, and so when Charlie went down there, [Pete] Stewart had Dick pasted against the wall, and beating him. Charlie grabbed Stewart, and pasted him in the eye, then he, Charlie, took Dick and started out the door with him. Dick caught hold of the door — meanwhile Stewart came to, and when Charlie turned to loosen Dick’s hold, Stewart shot in the corner of Charlie’s mustache, and the bullet lodged in his cheek.”
That was Ed Wilber’s point of view. Depending on which newspaper account, Charlie could have been shot inside the saloon, out in the street, in the doorway, shot in the mustache/cheek, between the eyes, or in the body. It was written up as a cold-blooded murder or self-defense by Stuart.
The only facts that newspapers could agree on were that Charlie died instantaneously and that Pete Stewart was the confessed. Meeker acquaintances only knew that Charlie had arrived at the Camp on the White River in 1883. One Wyoming newspaper stated that Charlie Dunbar had drifted from Wyoming into North Park and then on to Carbonate when the boom began at that place. Next he traveled to the military Camp on the White River, where he opened a saloon and restaurant with Mrs. S.C. Wright. Thus began Meeker and ended Charlie Dunbar’s life.