The Itinerant Doctor Garvin, His Cabin and Colorado City

By Dave Hughes May, 2005

Once again the Old Colorado City Historical Society Web site has garnered more history of some of the very earliest Pioneers and events of Colorado City. The great granddaughter of Dr. James Paul Garvin whom we knew to be the owner of one of the first Cabins built in Colorado City, now in Bancroft Park, found our web site. – Judy Garvin Yarbrough saw when she read our information that there was no picture for Dr. Garvin in our very brief online sketch of him. We didn’t have one. But she sure did!

And to her surprise she encountered in our online book store our ad for Commemorative Log Slices from the 1859 Cabin her great grandfather had built. She promptly bought via our online credit card Paypal system numbered log slice Number 27. It was shipped to her home in Alabama.

More significantly she generously agreed to donate to the Society pictures, papers, and newspaper clippings about Dr. Garvin and his life, both before, during, and after his years in Colorado Territory.

Her contributions, besides the fragmentary historical information we had, helped us put the dots together to compile a more complete picture of the life of a young 27 year old pioneer of Colorado City - the first doctor in the Pikes Peak region.

Early Life

James Paul Garvin was born in 1832, the son of Captain John James Garvin and Sarah Eldridge, whose lineage traces back to their seafaring history and the Revolutionary War.

He graduated from Pennsylvania Medical University in 1855, first opening up a medical practice in Falmouth, Massachusetts. After his father died in 1858 young doctor Garvin decided to go west and join the Colorado Gold Rush.

He arrived in Colorado City in 1859, coming across the plains from Lawrence, Kansas after having practiced medicine there too. He and pioneer Melancthon Beach, who had driven the first stake for Colorado City, built the Cabin that now stands in Bancroft Park, just east from its original location in the 2600 block of West Colorado Avenue. They cut and hauled their Douglas fir and Ponderosa Pine logs from the slopes of Cheyenne Mountain.

Dr. Garvin lived in the cabin himself. He set up a drug store, and commenced to practice medicine right on the main street – Colorado Avenue - of the frontier town, which was the gateway through which hundreds of wagons poured up Ute Pass to gold country.

Cabin in original location (left) 1859 to 1929, 2606 West Colorado Avenue; on the Broadmoor Golf Course 1929-1959, moved to State Capitol Grounds, Denver, 1959 for 2 years, then moved to Bancroft Park, Colorado Springs in 1961. Extensively renovated and preserved, 2004-2005.

Claim Club President

The earliest form of organized law and order in brand new Colorado City which was staked out two miles long and a mile wide on August 12th, 1859 – involved Dr. James Garvin from the earliest months. With no government on the Colorado frontier - which was still unclaimed Indian Territory as part of Kansas Territory, extralegal Claim Clubs sprung up. The El Paso Claim Club – named after the pass - was the very first such organization in the territory. Proof of Dr. Garvin’s role comes from a surviving fragment of ‘Record Book A’ of the Claim Club where both Melancthon (M.S.) Beach and James Garvin are noted as having ‘witnessed’ the recorded claim of another man, on December 15th, 1859.

M.S. Beach was known to have been the Claim Club’s first President – 1859 to 1860. But in a later Record Book entry it was stated that ‘James Garvin’s term as President’ expired in 1861. So Dr. Garvin, half owner of the Cabin with Beach, had become President of the El Paso Claim Club a year before, around August, 1860. He became a civic leader as well as a pioneer.
The Claim Club kept law and order, recording the first deeds for the Colorado City Land Company and other claims, and settled disputes. In once case it conducted a trial for the murder of Pat Devlin by James McLaughlin in a street shootout. The Club acting as Judge, appointed a prosecutor and defense, let the ‘people’ standing by be the jury – and in a 20 minute trial found McLaughlin not guilty. That was two weeks before Devlin died! The Club also took vigilante actions when needed, hanging horse thieves among other things. There are no stories of the good doctor Garvin having gotten into some of the more violent vigilante actions that happened in Colorado City from time to time. His term of office appears to have been peaceful. He may have presided over that street trial, carrying out all the elements of an American trial by jury, even on the rough and ready frontier. And he probably tended dying Devlin!

Itinerant Doctor

During those first years of Colorado City’s existence, the family story was that Dr. Garvin traveled to tend the sick beyond Colorado City. That was pretty much confirmed by an entry I found in my personal copy of the very rare November 28th, 1861 edition of the Colorado City Journal. In the same ‘Announcements’ section that tells of the arrival of the Reverend William Howbert and family from Buckskin Joe (one of whose children was young Irving Howbert, later the Clerk and Recorder of El Paso County who used that same cabin as the county seat), it mentions ‘Dr. Garvin’ coming down from French Gulch to ‘spend the winter in our romantic young city.’

French Gulch, near today’s Breckinridge, some 90 miles from Colorado City was one of the many mining camps where prospectors toiled away seeking their fortune. Some obviously became sick. They couldn’t very well travel to a doctor, days or weeks away – in Denver City or Colorado City. Doctors, like preachers – had to visit them in their rough camps. The record seems to show that young James Garvin was an ‘Itinerant Doctor’ just as the well known Father Dyer was known in the same area, as the “Itinerant Snow Shoe Preacher.’ It was not at all unusual for those who went into those camps during the summer weather, either prospecting or providing a service, or both – (which I suspect young James Garvin did, looking for gold himself) retreated back to the foothills and plains, such as to Colorado City, for the winter, at least. Thus the notice of his re-‘arrival’ in Colorado City in 1861.

Dr. Garvin, by his own later statements to his children ended up owning many ‘deeds’ to property across Colorado Territory and the Pikes Peak region. They quite possibly had been in payment of his doctor bills by impecunious prospectors who had staked claims and got deeds to the land – mostly worthless patches of promise – but often used as tender in the place of scarce money. He later told his sons if he had held on to his holdings he would have had title to lots of land that was later became Colorado Springs . He also told them he had to ‘trade’ some of his ‘land’ for teams of wagons and mules to get around the mountains on his doctor rounds those years. By all accounts he traveled a lot from his base cabin in Colorado City. He shows up in records in Georgetown, west of Denver City, and Idaho Springs, where he apparently served for a time as Coroner and Sheriff, as well as in the mining camps west of Colorado City.

Dr. Garvin stayed in Colorado Territory according to his own account, throughout the Civil War – 1861 to 1865. He apparently was not caught up in it, saying it didn’t mean much, even though Colorado City was a stopping over point for Union troops – like the 1st Colorado Infantry – and there were disputes and arrests of Secessionist ‘guerillas’ near Colorado City throughout. He obviously did not know that the first ‘Secretary’ of the Claim Club in 1859 who also was a Director of the Colorado City Land Company was W.B. McClure who turned out to be such a strong secessionist that he was killed in 1863 along with 18 other Confederate uniformed men by Osage Indians in Missouri when they tried to get to Richmond and raise a Confederate Regiment to come back and seize Colorado gold for the Confederacy after Jefferson Davis failed at La Glorieta Pass in 1862. But if he had spent much time in the mountains both practicing medicine and prospecting, not much Civil Warring would have occurred there in the mining camps. Both Southerners and Unionist were too busy trying to find their fortune, together as well as apart. The search for gold united as well as divided men.

After Colorado Territory

Dr. Garvin finally departed Colorado City and the Territory for good after the Civil War – about 1866 - and went back to Illinois, where he continued his studies and practice of medicine, marrying Cedelia Ann in 1875, having been all but a confirmed bachelor until he was 42. They had three children. He was a civic leader in Illinois. He died May 10th, 1902.
Benjamin Franklin Garvin, a grandson, visited Colorado Springs in 1952 looking for more information about his Dr. Garvin, relating some of the family history handed down he had to Miss Dorothy Smith, then Curator of the Pioneer Museum. They visited the Cabin which was then on the Broadmoor Golf Course, having been saved in 1927 by the Spencer Penrose’s and C. L. Tutt from being torn down on Colorado Avenue.

Garvin’s Famous Cabin

Dr. Garvin and M.S. Beach’s Cabin has become the landmark symbol for the original, exiting, Colorado City and the frontier from its earliest days. In 1958 it was even moved to Colorado State’s Capitol grounds for Colorado’s ‘Rush to the Rockies’ Centennial. With great fanfare, including Governor McNichols getting the keys to the Cabin – in the accompanying Rocky Mountain News picture - and opening the 42d General Assembly inside it January 7th, 1959, it was the toast of Denver for two years.

From Rocky Mountain News December 1959

Returned to Colorado Springs in 1962, with the volunteer physical help of local Labor Unions, given to the City, Dr. Garvin’s Cabin still stands with its stout logs, only a few of which had deteriorated so much over 145 years from water damage they had to be removed in recent years. But a certified slice of those removed logs is now back in the possession of his direct descendents. And in turn our society has gained valuable new information of those earliest days of Colorado City, and of the life of one of its noted Pioneers –Dr. James Paul Garvin, the builder and owner of our priceless cabin.

Cabin in Use Today

Details of James Garvin's life courtesy of James Garvin Jr, Benjamin Franklin Garvin, Judy Garvin Yarbrough - assembled and correlated with locally known information by Historian David Hughes, Old Colorado City Historical Society, May, 2005