By Vince Phillips
In the spring of 1881, Chaffee County was raw frontier, born of silver and gold strikes that lured thousands into the high valleys west of Buena Vista. The mountains rose like jagged teeth against the sky. Roads were little more than rutted wagon tracks through pine and aspen. Above 10,000 feet, survival depended on your horse, your instincts, and the uncertain shelter of a distant miner’s cabin.
Lucien J. Morgan, 45, a Civil War veteran who had ridden with the Confederate 6th Mississippi Cavalry, became the county’s first elected sheriff. On a crisp May morning, he and two deputies set out to serve eviction papers on claim jumpers at a remote mine high on Jones Mountain, near South Cottonwood Gulch, terrain that climbed above 12,000 feet.
Even in late spring, the high country could turn lethal in hours. The ride tested every measure of frontier grit. Deep snow still choked the shaded gulches. Trails were narrow, rocky, and slick with meltwater. A sudden storm could plunge temperatures below freezing and blanket the path in fresh powder. Hypothermia lurked constantly: wet clothes, knife-edge wind, and no hope of rescue. Many a prospector or lawman had simply vanished in these hills, their bodies entombed until the spring thaw.
That night, a fierce late-spring blizzard roared off the Continental Divide. Snow fell in blinding sheets. Visibility dropped to zero. The temperature plummeted.The next morning, with the storm still raging, Morgan stepped out of the cabin alone, determined to make his way down to Buena Vista on foot. He was never seen alive again.
For 11 days, search parties fought through chest-deep drifts and brutal conditions. A $250 reward was offered, but another heavy snowstorm hampered their efforts. On the eleventh day, prospector William Johnston made the grim discovery: Sheriff Lucien J. Morgan’s body lay in a gulch along South Cottonwood Creek, just three miles from the cabin. He was on his hands and knees, crawling toward shelter beneath a bush, buried under more than five feet of snow. He had died of exposure, alone in the white silence.
Morgan left behind no wife or children in Colorado. His modest estate, furs and personal items valued at roughly $300 — was used mostly for burial costs. His grave in Buena Vista has been lost to time.Yet his sacrifice has not been forgotten.
In recent years, Lucien J. Morgan’s name was added to the Colorado Law Enforcement Memorial in Golden. It will also be inscribed on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C. — a quiet tribute to a man who died in the line of duty, not by outlaw’s bullet, but by the merciless hand of the mountains themselves.
(Photo: Andy Colwell / Special to The Colorado Sun)
Interestingly, one of the mines on Jones Mountain, the Wide-Awake, was partly owned by Margaret Nachtrieb, widow of pioneer Charles Nachtrieb. The prominent Nachtrieb family gave their name (shortened and mispronounced) to the town of Nathrop. Charles Nachtrieb himself was murdered in a wage dispute earlier in 1881, the same year Sheriff Morgan perished in the blizzard.
Today, fourth-generation descendant Dana Nachtrieb and other family members still live in the Salida area, keeping the pioneer legacy alive. In the rugged early days of Chaffee County, Morgan’s death carried no scandal and no mystery. It was simply one more reminder of how unforgiving the high country could be, even for its toughest and most determined men.
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