Occasionally, I get feedback that fills in a gap to my story. It is important to me to get these things in print before that knowledge disappears forever. When the Herald Times published the story of the Rio Blanco Store, several people came to us with their memories. One of them gave us the back story of the original builder of the store.
In my newspaper research, I missed a small article in the Meeker Herald. The November 29, 1913 issue announced that “Paul Ottens, a Rio Blanco settler, has opened a general store at Johnsons, on the Meeker-Rifle Road. Mr. Ottens is an old hand at his line of business.” I interviewed several descendants of Paul and found that they had a copy of an old interview of John ALBERT Otten: “He [Paul Otten] came out from Denver after the divorce with my step-mother [Augusta L. Jurgens] …he came out…he had a wagon, a kind of “odds and ends” wagon, a kind of a tinker’s wagon… he sold thread, bolts of cloth and all kinds of things like that. It was a kind of covered wagon. And he came out from Denver and come all through the Western plains. He came by Hamilton. He came by Steamboat Springs. And then he came to Rio Blanco, but he settled 3 miles north of where Rio Blanco store is now. There was kind of a little settlement there…homesteaders… Dad [Paul] done business in his little wagon… then he built the store down there at Rio Blanco where it is now.”
Paul, whose full Dutch name was Paulus Ottens, immigrated from Germany in 1872 on the ship “Wisconsin” with his parents and two brothers. Paul married his first wife, Wilhelmina, in 1901 and they had two sons Albert and Paul F.
Wilhelmina died in 1906 when the youngest boy was less than a year old. Paul remarried in 1907, but apparently they were separated in 1911. Paul wanted to try his luck in Rio Blanco County, but with no one to care for two young boys, that was a problem. Paul’s solution was to leave the boys in the care of Mount St. Vincents in Denver. St. Vincents was a Catholic orphanage and school. The boys, Albert and Paul F. were boarded there while he set things up in Rio Blanco. Once established, Paul sent for the boys still in Denver. Two nuns brought them as far as Rifle in August of 1911, but refused to get off the train. It was arranged that a freighter [Edwin Fairfield, son of Freeman W. Fairfield] bound for Meeker take the boys the rest of the way. About 11 miles up the road, the freighter left the two boys with a wagon overnight alone while he returned to Rifle with the horses to pull up another wagon. Camping out, cooking beans, and sleeping on a bed roll was a lasting memory for two city boys.
In 1913 the Rio Blanco store was in operation and in 1914, Paul was postmaster of Rio Blanco, Colorado. The Meeker Herald July 3, 1915 repeated an article from the Rifle Telegram. “Paul Otten is having lumber hauled from Rifle out to the Rio Blanco County for building purposes. Last week, it is stated , he visited the Glenwood land office and filed on 120 acres of land, part of which, at least, had been under fence and supposed to be part of the PL ranch for a great many years.” Paul gave up the Rio Blanco Store but could not make a living on the Piceance Creek ranch either. In 1918 Paul and son Albert went back to Denver and worked for a while. In June of 1919 both were in Rifle working when Paul heard about an opening in Hamilton. Paul rented a building owned by Oldland and set up a store. In 1920, Paul built his own store closer to the new road alignment. When Paul was in Hamilton, he was sometimes called “Dutchy.” Paul ran the store until his health failed in 1933, requiring two surgeries in Denver. Paul died November 3, 1933 and is buried near his first wife, Wilhemina in Denver.
Sources: Coloradohistoricnewspapers.org; Meeker Herald; RM News; members of the Otten/Counts family