State honors owners of burned ranch near Fountain

It will be a bittersweet moment when six generations of an El Paso County family gather this afternoon at the state fair to be honored for owning and operating their ranch for more than 100 years.

On Aug. 1, a wildfire swept over the 101-year-old Pease-Clements Ranch east of Fountain, destroying every building, including an old schoolhouse converted into a home and the original homestead where 88-yearold Virginia Pease was born and where generations of the family have lived.

Pease won't be in Pueblo to accept the 2008 Colorado Centennial Farm award from the Colorado Historical Society.

She uses a wheelchair, tires easily and just can't summon the excitement she once had for being the recipient of an award that will go to just 11 Colorado families this year.

Her husband, 90-year-old Paul Pease, also won't be there. He was rushed to Memorial Hospital on the day of the fire, suffering from smoke inhalation and ailments unrelated to the fire. He remains in the intensive care unit.

Thursday, Virginia Pease tried not to dwell on the tragedy that has hit her family, instead expressing gratitude to a neighbor who helped evacuate the family as flames moved toward the house and to firefighters who unsuccessfully tried to save the two homes, a big barn and several outbuildings.

Her daughter, Marilyn Vasquez, said that's just the nature of her mother:

"On the night of the fire, while we were all feeling horrible, she spent the whole night thinking of all the things we should be grateful for."

It has been said that farmers and ranchers are naturalborn optimists, otherwise they would never tie their fate to the fickleness of nature and markets.

It's an optimism that runs deep in the family's history.

Virginia Pease's grandfather, Olive Boone Clements, came west to Cripple Creek in 1897 after his wife died of asthma. He hoped the mountain air would help one of his three daughters who also suffered from asthma. It didn't. She died soon after the family arrived at their new home. Pease's father, Ralph, then a young boy, struggled with the high altitude of Cripple Creek, so Boone Clements moved to the prairie east of Pikes Peak in 1907, homesteading 160 acres, with another 320 adjoining acres homesteaded by his two remaining daughters.

The family built their first home in an area that proved to have no water. Undeterred, the family took apart the house and moved it to the top of a hill, where they had found water.

The home was expanded in 1929 and sheltered kith and kin until the fire took it three weeks ago.

Virginia Pease remembers the first big threat to the ranch occurred in the Great Depression, when her father lost $10,000 worth of cattle - a huge amount of money back then. To save the ranch, he moved to Cripple Creek and leased what was called the "Bluebird Dump," essentially the unwanted tailings left from earlier mining. Ralph Clements lived in Cripple Creek for seven years, sifting through the ore to make enough money to keep his family and the ranch afloat.

"We never knew when dad was coming to visit, but we had this little black dog who knew," Pease recalled. "He would lay on top of this hill and wait for him. I don't know how he knew Dad would show up that day, but he did."

When Ralph Clements returned to the family for good, the cattle were long gone, but he soon bought 80 pigs. Decades later, Pease still remembers the kick she and her brother got by scratching the pigs' bellies and watching them roll over for some more tickling. The two were responsible for running the pigs through a cornfield their dad had planted so they could root on the weeds.

"They were tough old times, those Depression days," Pease said. "But Mom was a seamstress and made all of our school clothes, so we never felt poor."

After that crisis, the ranch thrived, eventually expanding to 2,300 acres with the help of Virginia's new husband, a Black Forest boy who would become such an integral part of the ranch that it eventually also bore his name.

Then, World War II struck, and Paul Pease was sent overseas, fighting on the front lines for 41/2 years.

"He always said if he could get back and could see Pikes Peak, he'd never leave," Virginia Pease said. "And he didn't."

Vasquez has vivid memories of how much her dad loved working the family's land.

"Dad was never so happy as driving around in his pickup looking at how green the grass was getting and how fat the cows were," she said.

"He loved his cattle and his horses. He didn't do it just for the money. It's such a hard life, you're only a success if you do it for the love of it."

It's all gone now. But the family has insurance, the help of good neighbors and friends - and some of the optimism that kept it in the ranching business for more than 100 years. Virginia Pease and her daughter say at least one home eventually will be built on the ashes of the homestead, and they know the land will heal itself.

"It's a legacy to be passed on," Vasquez said.

But the women are worried about the patriarch of the family, lying in Memorial's ICU.

Paul Pease lived to see his beloved ranch blackened and ruined. He's too old to take his pickup into the fields and watch for new growth sprouting from the ash. He likely won't see a new house rise from the foundation of the homestead. And his wife and daughter fear that knowledge has broken something inside of him.

"He doesn't have much of a will to live," Vasquez said.

"They ask him at the hospital if he wants to go home and he says ‘I don't have a home.'"

-

Contact the writer: 636-0197 or bill.mckeown@gazette.com