Pioneering in the San Juan

Pioneering in the San Juan is the story of two brothers who went into Colorado's San Juan country in 1876. George M. Darley and his brother Alexander, an ordained Presbyterian minister, became the first non-Catholic ministers to hold church services on the Western Slope. They settled in Lake City, one of the main gateways to the San Juan Mining Region, and organized the Lake City Presbyterian Church there.

George was a carpenter before he was ordained, and the description says he put that trade to work. He built the first church structure in Southwest Colorado, made the pews from scaffolding left over from its construction, and later built the church manse. His wife became the first minister's wife to live on the Western Slope.

This is a Western Reflections reprint. The original, according to a library transcription of its title page, was published in 1899 by Fleming H. Revell Company under the full title Pioneering in the San Juan: Personal Reminiscences of Work Done in Southwestern Colorado during the "Great San Juan Excitement." Our catalogue lists this edition at 252 pages, with catalogue subject headings of missions, pioneers, church history and frontier and pioneer life.

Readers of Colorado church history will find a first-hand account of how congregations began in the mining camps of the San Juans. It also suits anyone researching Lake City, since the Presbyterian church Darley organized is still part of the town's story. Genealogists and local historians can use it as a primary source written by the minister himself rather than by someone looking back a century later. It is a memoir of ministry and building work, told by the man who did both.