Colonel Channing Franklin Meek

Colonel Channing Franklin Meek. . , Colorado Stone Quarries, a subsidiary of the international Italian stone quarry corporation R.E.D. Graniti, extracted and donated this 2,300-lb. marble slab from the company's Colorado Yule Marble Quarry in Gunnison County. The slab is displayed at Hinsdale County Museum in recognition of the Yule Quarry's early 20th Century developer, business magnate Channing Franklin Meek, who had significant impact both in Lake City and at Bachelor Cabins on the Continental Divide in the late 19th Century. , Born in Iowa in 1855, Channing Franklin Meek worked as a marble cutter in his youth before beginning a successful career in the booming and highly competitive transcontinental railroad business. He worked successively as trainmaster, chief dispatcher, and superintendent of the Rock Island Railroad with such success that in 1885 Iowa Governor B.R. Sherman bestowed the honorary title Lieutenant-Colonel. , Through wise investment as General Manager of Denver, Texas, and Fort Worth Railroad and General Manager of the Gulf Division of the Union Pacific Railroad, Col. Meek amassed a fortune which he invested in Colorado. In conjunction with coal magnate John C. Osgood, he consolidated the Colorado Coal and Iron Company with the Colorado Fuel Company. The result was the Pueblo, Colorado-based Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I), a financial juggernaut of Colorado and the West. , Col. Meek then became involved in national and international business ventures, in 1895 organizing the Shredded Wheat Co. and the American Biograph Co. In 1896 he looked south of the United States and purchased the street car system in Mexico City. After converting the streetcar system to electricity, he brokered its sale to a London firm at substantial profit. , It was in the wake of these successful business ventures that Meek turned to mining with the Bachelor Mine on the Continental Divide in Hinsdale County and the Lion Tunnel, in partnership with George Burrows, in San Juan County. , Meek's Hinsdale County mining ventures ultimately proved unsuccessful and in 1903 he acquired Colorado-Yule Marble Quarry and was an early promoter and financial backer of the Town of Marble on the Crystal River in Gunnison County. Col. Meek poured over $3 million into development of the marble mine and milling operation. , He did not, however, live long enough to realize the success of his efforts. He was accompanying four workers as they came down from the quarry on the company's electric tramway in early August, 1912. The air brakes on the tram car failed, sending the car hurtling down the mountainside. In a moment of panic, the men jumped from the car before it reached the bottom. In an odd twist of fate, the four quarry workers escaped unhurt; Col. Meek, however, sustained severe internal injuries and lingered two days before his death August 14, 1912. , Prior to burial at St. Paul's Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, District of Columbia, Meek's body lay in state in the State Capitol Building in Denver, the floor of which , you guessed it , came from the Yule Marble Quarry.