Saguache is Colorado’s up-and-coming paradise

Goin’ to Saguache! This place in southwest Colorado, with about 600 inhabitants, has moved up on the must-see “tour America” list for scads of travelers…when it’s safe to go and mix and mingle. 

Saguache is pronounced as “suh-WATCH,” and the town is smack-dab in the middle of quaint and quirky. Some say it’s the quintessential western village. 

Here, you can ride with real cowboys and walk among gardens full of tall and colorful hollyhocks…as well as read the world-famous weekly newspaper – The Saguache Crescent. 

It is the only community newspaper on the planet that is still being produced with “hot metal” on a 100-year old letterpress.

“Saguache” is a form of a Ute word meaning “water at blue earth,” due to deposits of blue clay that were once found along Saguache Creek. The town was incorporated in 1891. 

Mayor Elvie Samora said: “We are the northern gateway to the San Luis Valley – surrounded by the Sangre de Cristo mountain range on the east and the San Juan range on the west.” 

“We are located in a high alpine valley with an elevation of 7,703 feet. Saguache County has 1,000 miles of roads, but not a single traffic light,” he remarked. 

“We enjoy the small-town life here. We have abundant trees and wildlife. In the evening you can see deer walking around the neighborhoods.”

It is the only community newspaper on the planet that is still being produced with “hot metal” on a 100-year old letterpress.

Farming and ranching are the region’s premier industries. Leading crops are grains and vegetables, although some farms are moving into cannabis production. 

It’s fertile land. Beneath the valley is an “enormous two-tier aquifer” that contains at “least 2 billion acre-feet of water,” reports The Colorado Sun, an online media outlet. (One acre-foot of water equals about 326,000 gallons.) 

Suffice it to say, the aquifer is one of the largest in America. It provides Saguache “with clean water, which is better than any bottled water. No fluoride or chlorine is added to our water,” Mayor Samora said. 

The Saguache Chamber of Commerce is dedicated to preservation and progress. Its logo features the “cowboy and the hollyhocks,” combining the western heritage and culture with a natural beauty – symbols that represent the glory of the past and the hope for the future.

 

Elvie R. Conley Jr., chamber president, and about 60 fellow chamber members, say: “Welcome one and all. Come shop, play, stay and live with us.” 

The town has become a magnet for artisans, and that attracts a certain breed of tourists.

 Saguache is also on the radar of outdoor adventurers – horseback riders, rock climbers, hikers, campers, mountain bikers, hunters, fishermen and river rafters. 

Nearby is the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, which includes the tallest sand dunes in North America. It’s a 30-square mile sand dune field at the base of the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo range.

Sandboarding and sand sledding down from the tallest dune, with a 750-foot vertical drop, is an exhilarating experience. 

In late spring, Medano Creek, which flows down the mountains through the park, offers a rare experience, one that is akin to riding ocean waves. 

As the snow melts and flows down the mountain, the water creates amazing “surge flows” in the creek. The fast-flowing current pushes sand grains into small underwater ridges called “antidunes.” Like dams, antidunes trap water until they finally break, sending waves of water gushing downstream. 

Each surge flow creates a beach-like playground.

Last letterpress paper keeps on ‘clicking and clacking’

 Living “over the shop” was never an option for Dean Coombs in Saguache, Colo. He owns and operates the local weekly newspaper, which is produced in a single-story building erected in 1874.

So, Coombs has done the next best thing. He converted a back room off the main office of The Saguache Crescent into his living quarters. The aroma of printing ink permeates every pore of his existence. 

The weathered newspaper building leans a little, but that’s “Saguache charm.”

The name of the town is easier to pronounce than it is to spell. Just say “suh-WATCH,” and you’ve got it. 

Coombs’ grandfather, Charlie Ogden, bought the newspaper in 1917, and after more than a century, not much has changed at The Crescent. 

It holds the distinction of being the one and only U.S. newspaper that still prints each edition on an old-timey letterpress. 

Coombs comments: “I’m in a small town that didn’t grow, but it didn’t die, either. So, I’m still here and so is the newspaper.”

His four-page broadsheet with a six-column format sells for 35 cents an issue. There’s not much advertising, but he gets paid for publishing all of Saguache County’s required legal notices. 

“You have to admire Dean Coombs whose ancient Linotype machine still chugs out lines of hot type spewed from a pot of molten lead, exactly as it did when it was first fired up,” wrote Lou Varricchio, editor of the weekly Vermont Eagle of Middlebury, Vt. 

The Crescent…keeps on clicking and clacking. The sound of its Linotype resembles “a slot machine that isn’t paying off.” 

“We often don’t appreciate things until they’re gone,” Varricchio wrote. “Then, we lament their passing and wonder how it all happened.” 

In 1970 – some 50 years ago – Canadian artist Joni Mitchell sang: 

Don’t it always seem to go

That you don’t know what you’ve got

Till it’s gone. 

Saugache, which has about 600 residents…in a good year…is developing a reputation as an arts enclave. Coombs, who is pushing 70, has no heirs and no “succession plan” for the newspaper. He jokes: “There’s nobody I dislike enough to give The Crescent to.” 

The newspaper has enormous tourism value to offer visitors an opportunity to experience what is “real and authentic.” The Crescent could be the hook upon which the Saguache Chamber of Commerce builds its hospitality initiative. 

Glenn Fleishman, creator of the “Letter Rip” blog, said: “With a new generation looking to counter all things digital, letterpress is poised for a resurrection” and “a new community of creative artists and designers.” 

Allison Sylte of KUSA-TV of Denver reported that the cost of living in Saguache is luring artisans from trendy (but expensive) locales such as Salida and Boulder. 

Saguache resident and art afficionado Stacey Amos Holden said: “Saguache County is one of the poorest counties in the state, so my hope is, maybe if we develop tourism more, that will be beneficial for the people of the town. We need some kind of economic boost.” 

Stacey Amos Holden is a quilter.

Heidi Wong is doing her part. She bought and refurbished the Ute Theater in town and has created a vibrant performing arts center to support the artists, crafters, potters, authors, photographers, quilters, weavers, basket makers and painters who now call Saguache home. 

Katrina Pratt is a children's storyteller and puppeteer.

The prize catch, though, might be the Saguache Hotel, built in 1910. It needs a lot of work to reclaim its glory years, but it has been purchased by singer/songwriter Andy Hackbarth.

Saguache newspaper is last of the ‘hot metal’ breed

Pigs were once an essential commodity in the production of newspapers, but today only one weekly newspaper in the United States has them. 

It’s The Saguache (Colo.) Crescent. This is the only newspaper in the country that still has a fully functional Linotype (albeit 100 years old) to set “hot metal” type for printing on a 100-year old letterpress. 

“Pig” is an affectionate printing industry term given to a bar of lead. Each weighing about 22.5 pounds, the pig fueled the Linotype typesetting machines that revolutionized newspaper typesetting in the 19th century. 

One traditional method of casting the ingots (or pigs) involved pouring molten lead from a kettle-like contraption into a central channel that typically fed six or more molds. The process reminded people of piglets feeding off a sow; hence the lead bars became pigs.

A unique feature of the Linotype was that “boiling lead, kept burbling in the belly of the machine, would shoot out and fill matrices, producing a solid and neatly cast ‘line o’ type’ that was pushed by the machine into a galley,” explained Glenn Fleishman of Seattle, Wash., a freelance journalist and editor.

Within today’s newspaper world, Dean Coombs stands out as a cult hero. He is the third generation of his family to run The Saguache Crescent out of a “taxi-cab yellow” building with dark green trim in funky downtown Saguache. 

“I’m the editor, publisher, owner and janitor,” Coombs said. “Then I look around and say, ‘If I’m the janitor, I should be fired.’” 

The Crescent is the official newspaper of record for Saguache County. The county’s paid legal notices are all that keep the paper alive. 

The newspaper has approximately 550 subscribers, about the entire population of Saguache. The readers are also the writers.

“If you bring it, and it’s not just absolute insanity, and you want to sign your name to it, then I’ll generally print it,” Coombs said. 

Hard copy only. There are no computers to plug into at The Crescent. No internet, email or cell phones either. Coombs punches in everything on his trusty Linotype, maintaining a second machine for backup. 

Saguache’s a hard place to find, and to get directions, you must know how to pronounce it. 

Mary Morfitt, a longtime resident, offers a tutorial. “It’s an Americanized version of a word in the Ute language. “Say ‘suh-WATCH’ (not ‘sag-u-AH-chee).’” 

The word means “water at the blue earth” (blue clay deposits) found in Saguache Creek that begins in the San Juan Mountains and flows through town. 

Fleishman said: “As you cross the threshold of the doorway at The Crescent, you are transported back in time. Shards of lead coat the floor; a charming sense of chaos fills the cavernous space.” 

“The paper itself is full of important stories, posts and announcements that have become the lifeblood of this small community. The positive vibe of the paper is a reflection of Dean Coombs’s demeanor. He doesn’t really print bad news – he leaves that stuff for others,” Fleishman said.

“Good news sells papers,” Coombs said. Fleishman is a subscriber. 

“Every other week I receive my papers (two editions come together) in the mail, and I try to catch up on what’s happening in Saguache,” Fleishman said. “I’ve developed a strange sense of ‘connection’ to a place I’ve only visited once. I know whose birthday it was last week, who died, who graduated and who visited – all of which I can’t say about my own neighborhood!”

Does pizza qualify as a ‘Southern food?’

Is pizza a Southern food? Sabina Montevergine, an editor at La Cucina Italiana magazine, says “yes, in a way….” The birthplace of the modern pizza is in “southern Italy.” 

Montevergine said: “The origins of pizza, which has become the trademark of Italian cuisine, lead to Naples,” the largest city in the south of Italy. 

Naples is situated on Italy’s west coast facing the Tyrrhenian Sea. Its people are known as Neapolitans.

 

Italian peasants (about 1,000 years ago) were known to knead milled farro grain (a form of wheat) into flour by adding water, aromatic herbs and salt, Montevergine said. “Then they put this round loaf to cook on the hearth, in the hot ashes.” 

“The Neapolitans are probably not going to take this very well,” she wrote, “but it was the Romans (from central Italy) who actually started to use discs of bread to hold saucy dishes – creating round pizzas, more or less, but still distant relatives of the pizzas of today.” 

Montevergine said that in 1535, the famous Italian writer Benedetto di Falco noted that focaccia, a flat oven-baked Italian bread, had been perfected by Neapolitans, and “they called it pizza.” 

“And so it became official. Since then, in the Naples region, the evolution of pizza and its tradition has never stopped. Olive oil replaced lard, cheese was added and herbs were resurrected from the Roman tradition.” 

“In 1600, the tomato arrived in Italy and everything took on a different flavor. The tomato was first used in cooking sauces simmered with a little salt and basil; then later, someone had the idea to use the tomato in a different way, inventing, unbeknownst to them, the pizza as we know it today,” Montevergine said. 

In 1889, Italy’s King Umberto I and Queen Margherita visited Naples. She had a penchant for wanting to sample the best local foods wherever they traveled. In Naples, the royal chef knew just the guy: Chef Raffaele Esposito of Pizzeria di Pietro, was known far and wide as the best pizzaiolo (pizza-maker) of the time. 

He chose to make three classic pizzas for the royals. One was red, white and green, the colors in the Italian tricolor flag, using San Marzano sul Sarno tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and fresh basil, dabbled with extra-virgin olive oil and sprinkled with salt. 

Esposito named his culinary creation “Pizza Margherita.”

 

Mozzarella was first made in Italy near Naples from the rich milk of water buffalos. Because it was not made from pasteurized milk and because there was little or no refrigeration, the cheese had a very short shelf-life and seldom left the southern region of Italy near Naples where it was made. 

Cheese historians say: Today, the buffalo mozzarella is still found south of Naples where small factories continue centuries-old traditions making buffalo mozzarella fresh daily for local customers, who line up at the factories to buy this delicacy.” 

Pizza was first delivered to the United States from Naples in 1895 by a teenage baker named Gennaro Lombardi. He found work in a New York City bakery and used the same pizza dough recipe his father and grandfather had used in Naples.

Lombardi and other Italian immigrants who became bread bakers in New York “started taking their extra dough and making pizza. In 1897, Lombardi opened his own bodega (micro-grocery) and bakery in the “Little Italy” neighborhood. In 1905, Lombardi was issued a “mercantile license” from the city, becoming America’s first pizzeria.”

 “National Pizza Week” is Jan. 10-16. Get hungry. 

Southern cooks know to watch ‘astrological signs’

Sherrie Morris of Boone, N.C., says: “Country girls know you’ve got to follow ‘the signs’ of the zodiac when making sauerkraut – and I can assure you, I wouldn’t do it any other way. (I’ve tried and it ended in disaster!) It’s not something I can explain, but I know it to be real.” 

She’s not the only one. 

Editors of “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” report “there are different traditions as to when the best days are to can or to make pickles or sauerkraut, and astrologers also have different interpretations.”

 “The almanac’s astrologer goes by ‘the dark of the moon’ when the moon is in the astrological sign of Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces (water signs). The dark of the moon (waning) is between the full and new phases.” 

There are other traditions, however, that go by different astrological signs, such as those signs associated with the “Man of Many Signs,” as depicted in the Almanac. (You will find him on page 224 in the 2021 edition of the Almanac.) 

The best times to make sauerkraut relate to when the dark of the Moon is within “the signs that are above the man’s waist,” such as Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer and Leo. 

Avoid dates when the moon is found in the signs that are “below the waist.” 

Don’t pass this age-old wisdom off as just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. If you do, you’ll be sorry. 

The late Eula Vines of Boone, a mentor of Sherrie Morris, always said: “Never pickle when the sign is in the feet.” 

If you try to overrule “the signs,” you’re asking for “kraut that goes soft and smells bad, like dirty feet.” 

The first-time sauerkraut maker needs to brush up on his or her astrology before forging ahead. When in doubt, consult the Almanac. It’s been the go-to guide of the “farming community” since 1792. 

The 2021 edition recommends the best sauerkraut-making dates coming up this winter are Feb. 3-5 and March 3-4. 

Middle and northern European farmers in 15th century were accustomed to long, cold winters, and they would anticipate the passing of feast days of the “three chilly saints” – Mamertus, Pancras and Gervais – May 11-13. Traditionally, these dates were the last of frosty nights of the season, according to editors at The Old Farmer’s Almanac. 

“It was never safe to plant until the ‘three icemen’ were gone. Another bit of folklore claimed: ‘Who shears his sheep before St. Gervais’ Day loves more his wool than his sheep.’” 

According to an old English proverb: “Ne’er cast a clout till May be out.” The translation is: “Don’t take off your winter clothes till the end of May.” 

In central Europe, May 15 was the feast day of Saint Sophia, known fondly as “Cold Sophie.” She would produce rain that would “wash away” the last shreds of cold weather, preparing the soil for planting.

The Rev. Stephen P. Morris, a Roman Catholic priest at St. Paul the Apostle Church in Hancock, N.Y., is an Almanac fan who read about the “chilly saints” in the 2016 edition. 

“I’d venture if we were to talk with the ‘holy three’ they’d reveal a much greater interest in the transformation of icy or chilly hearts than protecting corn seedlings from the night frost,” Rev. Morris said. 

“The Christian religion isn’t about the weather, but about the transformation of hearts. We’ve cultivated all kinds of ways to keep Christ at arm’s length,” he said. “Holy Ice Saints, pray for us!”

‘Kraut Creek’ has relevance in Carolina mountain lore

Sauerkraut helped put Boone, N.C., on the state’s agricultural map in 1923 when a group of Watauga County farmers established the North State Canning Company to process cabbage into sauerkraut. 

The company’s flagship product was “Watauga Mountain Grown Old Fashioned Chopped Kraut,” and a legendary secondary offering was known as the “Watauga Cocktail.” 

The latter was a unique and tasty sauerkraut-tomato juice blend, which scientists from North Carolina State University helped develop, according to Julie Hubbard of the Wilkes Journal-Patriot in North Wilkesboro, N.C. 

The beverage was described as “a salty, slightly sour concoction that many believed had a variety of health benefits, such as alleviating cold, flu and hangovers.” 

Thus, it became quite popular among college students who attended Appalachian State University in Boone (known as a teachers’ college back in that day and time). Tales were told about boozing forays over to Blowing Rock where the hooch was readily available. 

Anyway, locals always referred to the sauerkraut canning plant simply as the “kraut factory.” 

Outer leaves, cabbage cores and excess liquids from the factory were piped into nearby Boone Creek, earning it an alias – “Kraut Creek.” The distinct “aroma” hovered over the middle of the college campus. Back then, folks said “it was the smell of money.” 

In its heyday, the sauerkraut plant was churning out an average of 2,200 to 3,000 tons of kraut per year, canning 24,000 cases per day of the Watauga chopped kraut. As market conditions changed, production was discontinued in the early 1980s. 

(Ironically, the Watauga County Cooperative Extension Service office is now on the site of the original kraut factory.) 

Since 1995, Appalachian State and the community have pioneered stream restoration practices, making the creek healthy and beautiful for all to enjoy.

Boone Creek is today a designated trout stream, a tributary of the South Fork of the New River. (This New River flows north and joins the Kanawha River below Charleston W.Va.) 

Cabbage continues to move down off the mountain from Boone in Hollar & Greene Produce Company trucks. In 1963, Dale Greene and his father-in-law, Lige Hollar, founded the company that is now “the largest fresh cabbage operation for retail in the entire United States.”

 Hubbard kindly shared a treasured recipe from the family of the late Sue Gilley Roberts of Ronda, N.C.

 

Get three “fair size” and firm heads of cabbage, one gallon of water, two-thirds of a cup of salt and one cup of vinegar. Chop up the cabbage and put it in a 5-gallon bucket.

 

Pour the salt and vinegar into a separate pot with the water, bring to a boil. Pour it all into the bucket with the cabbage and stir. Put a plate directly on top of the kraut in the 5-gallon bucket, a rock on top of that and then a towel over the plate and the rock.

 

Let this stand for five days, stirring once daily with a big spoon. After five days, it’s ready to eat. 

Caution: Don’t use a metal container because metal reacts with acids and salt in the sauerkraut, discolors it and leaches into it. Instead, use a large stoneware crock, large glass jar or food-grade plastic container, Hubbard said. 

“Cabbage must be completely submerged (covered by one to two inches of brine) to limit air and support growth of lactic acid bacteria,” she said. (That’s why you need a heavy plate and a big rock to weigh it down.)

Cabbage is central to N.C.’s agricultural heritage

Cabbage is an important Southern food, and this leafy vegetable grows well in certain sections of North Carolina. 

“You can chop it, shred it, stuff it, steam it, boil it, ‘pickle’ it (to make sauerkraut); fry it, and best of all, you can eat it and never feel guilty about it”…because it’s good for you. 

This is the opinion of Sherrie Norris of Lovin’ Spoonful, who is based in Boone, N.C., and writes a weekly foods column.

North Carolina ranks ninth nationally in cabbage volume, producing almost 70 million pounds of cabbage annually, according to North Carolina State University. 

Cabbage is the hunkiest of the cruciferous vegetables that have cancer-fighting properties. Cabbages are kin to cauliflowers, Brussels sprouts, turnips, kale, radishes, broccoli and collards. 

The best cabbage and sauerkraut once came from the mountain communities like Boone in Watauga County. Sheri Castle grew up in Zionville, an unincorporated settlement in northwest Watauga County. 

“My granddaddy’s house on the top of the hill was in North Carolina, but his cows lived in Tennessee,” she said. “For several generations on both sides, my people farmed cabbage. A few of my cousins still do.” 

“There’s an old folk tale that says that new babies are found under cabbage leaves, perhaps in places too far inland for any poor stork to fly, and although I was young when I figured out that wasn’t factual, it always sounded like an auspicious start for any mountain child,” Castle wrote. 

Now living in Fearrington Village in Chatham County, Castle is a food writer, educator and storyteller. 

For a recent article in Our State magazine, Castle wrote: 

“When I think of cabbage, I recall one of my earliest memories: I am a tiny barefoot girl standing in dense, damp, dark earth that looks like crumbled chocolate cake, the kind of topsoil found in the rich bottomland that straddles the New River and nestles into the hollers, the kind of soil and climate that’s the promised land for a cabbage.” 

“Ahead of me, parallel rows of cabbage stretch as far as I can see. I now think of those cabbages as thumbtacks, with their taproots sunk into the earth, holding the very ground in place so that it wouldn’t slide off the side of the mountain or slip over the bank into the river.” 

“Cabbage was an essential crop for mountain families, both for gardeners who hoped to grow all they could eat and farmers who hoped to sell all they could grow.” 

The best way to make cabbage last through the winter season was to convert it into sauerkraut – a German term that means “sour cabbage.” 

Julie Hubbard of the Wilkes Journal-Patriot in North Wilkesboro, N.C., said the fermentation process that makes sauerkraut was developed centuries ago in Europe and Asia as a way to preserve vegetables for months on end. 

“During fermentation, lactic acid bacteria changes vegetable sugars to acids and flavor compounds that have health benefits,” she wrote. “Cabbage is high in vitamins A and C and is a rich source of phytonutrient antioxidants. Studies have shown that cruciferous vegetables can help lower cholesterol levels. 

Sauerkraut may even be better for the human digestive system than raw cabbage. 

Put some cabbage on your grocery shopping list. (We’ll talk more about making sauerkraut soon.) The fermentation process requires nothing more than shredded cabbage, water, salt, time…and know-how.