Russell, William C., Jr.
June 9, 1915-May 24, 2009
William C. "Bill" Russell, Jr., was born in Denver on June 9, 1915. Bill was the heir of two great lines of Westerners. His maternal great-grandfather, John Hittson, was one of the pre-eminent Texas cattle kings, who relocated his operations to Colorado in the 1870s. Bill's grandfather, W.H.H. Cranmer, worked as a foreman for Hittson and eventually married Hittson's daughter, Martha Jane. W.H.H. took his growing family to Denver, where he developed (with his cattle raising partner Finas P. Ernest) one of Denver's first modern commercial structures, the Ernest & Cranmer building; the family lived in a Frank Edbroke-designed house at 925 East 17th Avenue.
The Cranmers prized education and emphasized world travel; the children went on to make distinguished contributions in Colorado and elsewhere in mining, business, government and the arts.
Jane Leontine Cranmer was the second of the Cranmer children, and the first born in Colorado. A remarked-upon beauty in her day a bust of her sculpted by Josef Korbel in Paris won an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. She married a young mining engineer named William Carroll Russell in Denver on July 16, 1913. "Jennie Leontine became the wife of William C. Russell, a mining man, and has one son, William C, Jr." -- Source: History of Colorado, 1919, Volume IV
Will Russell's family favored not cattle raising, but mining; the family moved west from Buffalo during the California gold rush. Russell was born in 1873, in Kernville, California; his mother died when he was just four, and his father when he was 17. His grandfather was at one time sheriff in Plumas County, California, and head of the Nevada militia; his father briefly ran a stagecoach line serving the Comstock, and an uncle was Charles Lyman Strong, superintendent of the fabulous Gould & Curry silver works in Virginia City, Nevada. Russell graduated from the University of California in 1898, and immediately set out for the new gold camp in the Klondike; failing to find his fortune, he prospected in Nome, mined briefly in California before hanging out a shingle as a mining engineer in Tonopah, Nevada. He made his name setting a world-record time for tunnel digging with an adit at the Rawley mine in Bonanza, Saguache County, Colorado, before moving to serve as superintendent for the legendary Caribou mine in western Boulder County.
Bill's first memories were of growing up in Cardinal, where the family lived while his father managed the Caribou operations. His father continued his peripatetic lifestyle, so to receive an education Bill was shipped out to a number of military and boarding schools all over the west, finally completing his formal schooling at Denver East High School. By the time of his graduation, the Great Depression had settled in upon the country; mining was in decline, and the Cranmer family fortune had been largely dissipated.
Bill's parents moved to a small house at 730 Josephine in Denver. After a few odd jobs in Denver (including one that involved delivering liquor to the state capitol on a motorcycle!), Bill moved to the Gilpin County mining camp of Nevadaville on June 15, 1937. Depression-era mining was not exactly thriving, but it was one of the few industries hiring at all; Bill did some work for "Doc" Muchow at the ever-expanding Glory Hole complex, but spent more time working in construction and demolition projects around the area, and with some of the smaller mine operators.
Bill recalled that he lived one month on a $10 bill, eating mostly "potatoes and pancakes." Bill indulged a literary bent by writing a short column of "Nevadaville Notes" for the short-lived Gilpin Miner; the column had to be short, as there were only about 10 people living in the town at the time! History had always held a special fascination for Bill he was pictured in the Denver Post back in 1929, over the caption "Youth Collects Antiques" and he gathered hundreds of old newspapers, documents and other memorabilia from his remodeling and demolition work in the town. But the tiny town proved too limiting for Bill's aspirations, and he moved to the comparatively thriving metropolis of Central City on January 1st, 1944.
It was around this time he was working in Russell Gulch, trying to free a power shovel that had become stuck that he saw a young woman named Catherine "Kay" Tracy, walking her dog up Spring Street in Central City. Bill recalls that the first time he saw her he "thought it would be a good idea I meet up with her." Kay had recently arrived from her home state of New York, after a stint working in Chicago; after a brief stay in Nederland, she moved to Central City to work first in the assessor's office, then for County Treasurer Hugh Lawry. Bill was smitten, after a brief courtship, the couple married at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Denver on September 8th, 1945.
Bill had been living in an apartment over Ramstetter's grocery on Main Street, but he had earlier purchased (for $1000) the two-story business block at 109 Eureka Street, where he operated an antique store; he had purchased the stock of Mrs. Belle Tobin that June. While Bill kept the lower level as his antique store, he added a third story and turned the upper floors into a comfortable, spacious apartment. Upgrading the property was a years-long project; Bill employed several local craftsmen who would later become well known, like Pascal Quackenbush. The furnishings were an eclectic mix of antiques from Bill's family, and pieces he purchased from the old-timers and the frequent sales in the area.
Bill became more and more involved in Central City business and politics. Gold mining had ground to a halt during World War II (most large mines were ordered closed in October, 1942), and Bill diversified into other interests. Though fascinated with the town's past, he was also convinced of its bright future, and backed his confidence with a number of speculative investments. Bill first ran for office in 1946; he won election as one of the City's Aldermen, and would continue in that post through 1962. In 1950 he opened the Central Gold Mine & Museum, which was later housed in the old (1868) Mason Seavey building on Spring Street. Bill also offered mine tours, of his own Diamond Lil mine. He acquired the collection of Mona Robb, when she gave up her own museum on Main Street, and over the years advertised regularly in the Register-Call, "Wanted for Cash:" Old original photographs, stereopticon slides, glass plates, and other negatives of GILPIN COUNTY SCENESTownsCentral City, Blackhawk, Nevadaville, Russell Gulch, etc., roads, mines, interiors, all before 1932. HIGHEST CASH PRICES PAID, WANTED FOR DISPLAY AT THE CENTRAL GOLD MINE & MINING MUSEUM, CENTRAL CITY, COLORADO, EST. 1950.
The history of Central City would become Bill's passion for the next half-century; he amassed an unparalleled collection of local treasures. But though fascinated by the area's rich past, he bitterly opposed outsiders who tended to portray Central City as a nearly deserted ghost town. He had a particularly rocky relationship with the Central City Opera House Association. Though Bill loved the productions and the players he and Kay often entertained theatrical visitors in their home he resented the widely held view that the opera "saved" the dying city. As an alderman, too, he was concerned about the tendency of the Association to remove their properties, including scores of private homes, now used for cast housing, from the tax rolls.
Bill personally owned a number of Central City properties himself, and through his long-time association with the Central City Development Corporation, ended up with still more, including most of the parking lots in the City. Besides his business and government roles, he was involved in much community work, with the local mine rescue group and the volunteer fire department. Bill's mother moved to Central in 1956, buying the stately home once owned by pioneer pharmacist John Best at 207 Eureka Street; she donated the Lawrence Street building that became the home for the fire department.
Bill's association with the summer theater festival casts (real operas were rarely produced in those days) led to his having a small part in a spoof of Thomas Hornsby Feril's And Perhaps Happiness. From that small beginning developed a successful second career. Bill acted in a number of stage performances at the old Bonfils Theater on East Colfax Street in Denver sometimes staying at the apartment of history doyenne Caroline Bancroft while working and did some television commercial work. Bill also was comfortable enough to indulge his avocations as writer and historian, working with Frank R. Hollenback to produce a slender volume entitled Pikes Peak by Rail, the story of the famous cog railroad.
Bill contributed a number of historic photographs from his growing collection, and also an account of the similar Mt. Washington cog railway in New Hampshire's White Mountains. By 1962, the still-young Bill Russell was well-known enough in Central to run for Mayor, succeeding his friend and business partner George Ramstetter. He won handily, and would continue to serve as Mayor for nearly 30 years. He donated time, equipment and expertise to dealing with many of the struggling town's infrastructure problems; many public buildings, especially the schools, had long suffered from lack of maintenance, and the water and sewer systems were disasters waiting to happen.
Bill worked with other entities when possible with the City of Black Hawk on the sewer issue, and with the school district (he was treasurer for a number of years) to solve the school building quandarybut he always put Central City interests first; he was not reluctant to use the court system to further his (and the City's) positions. Most importantly, on May 1, 1970, Bill purchased the town's historic newspaper, the Weekly Register-Call. The paper provided a regular outlet for his sometime vitriolic political opinions.
After his mother's death, he and Kay moved into the stately home at 207 Eureka Street, and it became the political and cultural center of Central City life for the next quarter-century. After getting a taste of motion picture acting in 1975, when The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox was filmed in Central City, Bill pursued other movie roles. The next year he had a small part in a televised movie, The Disappearance of Aimee, with Faye Dunaway and the legendary Bette Davis. Other roles followed throughout the 1970s Centennial, Butch and Sundance: the Early Years, and others. But he made his greatest mark in 1981's Continental Divide, playing a crusty mountain guide who takes Chicago newspaperman John Belushi to the isolated hideaway of reclusive naturalist Blair Brown. Though there's no evidence the Central City voters ever resented Bill's dabbling in acting indeed, Central City continued to serve as a movie set through 1986, when Dream West was filmed there -the political winds were nevertheless shifting.
That November, local businessman Bruce Schmalz defeated Bill in another run for mayor. Though Bill was out of elected office, he continued to be engaged particularly through the pages of the Register-Call with local affairs. And there was much to be concerned about; though the passage of limited stakes gaming in 1990 would ultimately bring Bill considerable wealth, it also brought a cast of new and to Bill's mind, unsavory characters into the town's political mix. Though Bill's often-strident opinions had earned him enemies, he was finally more recognized for his accomplishments in his later years.
A city park was named for him around the time he left office for the last time. He celebrated his 90th birthday with a celebration his friends organized at the new Gilpin County Community Center; a building with amenities far beyond anything even the boosterish Bill could have imagined for Central City even twenty years before. When the Opera celebrated the 75th anniversary of the company in 2007, Bill was present at several of the celebratory events, feted as the only man present who attended the Association's initial presentation of Camille in 1932.
But Bill suffered a grievous blow later that same year, when Kay became critically ill; she passed away on New Year's Day, 2008, with Bill at her side. Though Bill's mind was still sharp, his own body was beginning to wear down. By mid-2009, he rarely left the house on Eureka Street.
Bill was taken to Lutheran Hospital in Wheat Ridge on Tuesday, May 19th; he had been on supplemental oxygen for several months, and was having increasing trouble breathing. Once down there and stabilized, though, his sharp mind and spirits returned. He wanted to return home, though he was advised of the consequences. Bill Russell returned to his home at 207 Eureka Street on Saturday afternoon, May 23rd. With the help of good friends, he was taken upstairs to his familiar bedroom; he died there peacefully on the morning of Sunday, May 24th, 2009 in the home and town he had loved for so long.
He will be buried in the Cranmer family plot in Fairmount Cemetery next to his beloved wife, Kay, on Saturday, May 30th, in a private ceremony. A celebration of Bill's life will held at 11 a.m. that morning in the Fairmount Memorial Chapel. Memorial donations in Bills honor may be made to Mt. Evans Hospice, 3081 Bergen Park Drive, Evergreen, CO 80439; or to the Central City Opera House Association, 400 South Colorado Blvd., Suite 530, Denver, CO 80426.
Published in Denver Post on May 28, 2009
June 9, 1915-May 24, 2009
William C. "Bill" Russell, Jr., was born in Denver on June 9, 1915. Bill was the heir of two great lines of Westerners. His maternal great-grandfather, John Hittson, was one of the pre-eminent Texas cattle kings, who relocated his operations to Colorado in the 1870s. Bill's grandfather, W.H.H. Cranmer, worked as a foreman for Hittson and eventually married Hittson's daughter, Martha Jane. W.H.H. took his growing family to Denver, where he developed (with his cattle raising partner Finas P. Ernest) one of Denver's first modern commercial structures, the Ernest & Cranmer building; the family lived in a Frank Edbroke-designed house at 925 East 17th Avenue.
The Cranmers prized education and emphasized world travel; the children went on to make distinguished contributions in Colorado and elsewhere in mining, business, government and the arts.
Jane Leontine Cranmer was the second of the Cranmer children, and the first born in Colorado. A remarked-upon beauty in her day a bust of her sculpted by Josef Korbel in Paris won an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. She married a young mining engineer named William Carroll Russell in Denver on July 16, 1913. "Jennie Leontine became the wife of William C. Russell, a mining man, and has one son, William C, Jr." -- Source: History of Colorado, 1919, Volume IV
Will Russell's family favored not cattle raising, but mining; the family moved west from Buffalo during the California gold rush. Russell was born in 1873, in Kernville, California; his mother died when he was just four, and his father when he was 17. His grandfather was at one time sheriff in Plumas County, California, and head of the Nevada militia; his father briefly ran a stagecoach line serving the Comstock, and an uncle was Charles Lyman Strong, superintendent of the fabulous Gould & Curry silver works in Virginia City, Nevada. Russell graduated from the University of California in 1898, and immediately set out for the new gold camp in the Klondike; failing to find his fortune, he prospected in Nome, mined briefly in California before hanging out a shingle as a mining engineer in Tonopah, Nevada. He made his name setting a world-record time for tunnel digging with an adit at the Rawley mine in Bonanza, Saguache County, Colorado, before moving to serve as superintendent for the legendary Caribou mine in western Boulder County.
Bill's first memories were of growing up in Cardinal, where the family lived while his father managed the Caribou operations. His father continued his peripatetic lifestyle, so to receive an education Bill was shipped out to a number of military and boarding schools all over the west, finally completing his formal schooling at Denver East High School. By the time of his graduation, the Great Depression had settled in upon the country; mining was in decline, and the Cranmer family fortune had been largely dissipated.
Bill's parents moved to a small house at 730 Josephine in Denver. After a few odd jobs in Denver (including one that involved delivering liquor to the state capitol on a motorcycle!), Bill moved to the Gilpin County mining camp of Nevadaville on June 15, 1937. Depression-era mining was not exactly thriving, but it was one of the few industries hiring at all; Bill did some work for "Doc" Muchow at the ever-expanding Glory Hole complex, but spent more time working in construction and demolition projects around the area, and with some of the smaller mine operators.
Bill recalled that he lived one month on a $10 bill, eating mostly "potatoes and pancakes." Bill indulged a literary bent by writing a short column of "Nevadaville Notes" for the short-lived Gilpin Miner; the column had to be short, as there were only about 10 people living in the town at the time! History had always held a special fascination for Bill he was pictured in the Denver Post back in 1929, over the caption "Youth Collects Antiques" and he gathered hundreds of old newspapers, documents and other memorabilia from his remodeling and demolition work in the town. But the tiny town proved too limiting for Bill's aspirations, and he moved to the comparatively thriving metropolis of Central City on January 1st, 1944.
It was around this time he was working in Russell Gulch, trying to free a power shovel that had become stuck that he saw a young woman named Catherine "Kay" Tracy, walking her dog up Spring Street in Central City. Bill recalls that the first time he saw her he "thought it would be a good idea I meet up with her." Kay had recently arrived from her home state of New York, after a stint working in Chicago; after a brief stay in Nederland, she moved to Central City to work first in the assessor's office, then for County Treasurer Hugh Lawry. Bill was smitten, after a brief courtship, the couple married at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Denver on September 8th, 1945.
Bill had been living in an apartment over Ramstetter's grocery on Main Street, but he had earlier purchased (for $1000) the two-story business block at 109 Eureka Street, where he operated an antique store; he had purchased the stock of Mrs. Belle Tobin that June. While Bill kept the lower level as his antique store, he added a third story and turned the upper floors into a comfortable, spacious apartment. Upgrading the property was a years-long project; Bill employed several local craftsmen who would later become well known, like Pascal Quackenbush. The furnishings were an eclectic mix of antiques from Bill's family, and pieces he purchased from the old-timers and the frequent sales in the area.
Bill became more and more involved in Central City business and politics. Gold mining had ground to a halt during World War II (most large mines were ordered closed in October, 1942), and Bill diversified into other interests. Though fascinated with the town's past, he was also convinced of its bright future, and backed his confidence with a number of speculative investments. Bill first ran for office in 1946; he won election as one of the City's Aldermen, and would continue in that post through 1962. In 1950 he opened the Central Gold Mine & Museum, which was later housed in the old (1868) Mason Seavey building on Spring Street. Bill also offered mine tours, of his own Diamond Lil mine. He acquired the collection of Mona Robb, when she gave up her own museum on Main Street, and over the years advertised regularly in the Register-Call, "Wanted for Cash:" Old original photographs, stereopticon slides, glass plates, and other negatives of GILPIN COUNTY SCENESTownsCentral City, Blackhawk, Nevadaville, Russell Gulch, etc., roads, mines, interiors, all before 1932. HIGHEST CASH PRICES PAID, WANTED FOR DISPLAY AT THE CENTRAL GOLD MINE & MINING MUSEUM, CENTRAL CITY, COLORADO, EST. 1950.
The history of Central City would become Bill's passion for the next half-century; he amassed an unparalleled collection of local treasures. But though fascinated by the area's rich past, he bitterly opposed outsiders who tended to portray Central City as a nearly deserted ghost town. He had a particularly rocky relationship with the Central City Opera House Association. Though Bill loved the productions and the players he and Kay often entertained theatrical visitors in their home he resented the widely held view that the opera "saved" the dying city. As an alderman, too, he was concerned about the tendency of the Association to remove their properties, including scores of private homes, now used for cast housing, from the tax rolls.
Bill personally owned a number of Central City properties himself, and through his long-time association with the Central City Development Corporation, ended up with still more, including most of the parking lots in the City. Besides his business and government roles, he was involved in much community work, with the local mine rescue group and the volunteer fire department. Bill's mother moved to Central in 1956, buying the stately home once owned by pioneer pharmacist John Best at 207 Eureka Street; she donated the Lawrence Street building that became the home for the fire department.
Bill's association with the summer theater festival casts (real operas were rarely produced in those days) led to his having a small part in a spoof of Thomas Hornsby Feril's And Perhaps Happiness. From that small beginning developed a successful second career. Bill acted in a number of stage performances at the old Bonfils Theater on East Colfax Street in Denver sometimes staying at the apartment of history doyenne Caroline Bancroft while working and did some television commercial work. Bill also was comfortable enough to indulge his avocations as writer and historian, working with Frank R. Hollenback to produce a slender volume entitled Pikes Peak by Rail, the story of the famous cog railroad.
Bill contributed a number of historic photographs from his growing collection, and also an account of the similar Mt. Washington cog railway in New Hampshire's White Mountains. By 1962, the still-young Bill Russell was well-known enough in Central to run for Mayor, succeeding his friend and business partner George Ramstetter. He won handily, and would continue to serve as Mayor for nearly 30 years. He donated time, equipment and expertise to dealing with many of the struggling town's infrastructure problems; many public buildings, especially the schools, had long suffered from lack of maintenance, and the water and sewer systems were disasters waiting to happen.
Bill worked with other entities when possible with the City of Black Hawk on the sewer issue, and with the school district (he was treasurer for a number of years) to solve the school building quandarybut he always put Central City interests first; he was not reluctant to use the court system to further his (and the City's) positions. Most importantly, on May 1, 1970, Bill purchased the town's historic newspaper, the Weekly Register-Call. The paper provided a regular outlet for his sometime vitriolic political opinions.
After his mother's death, he and Kay moved into the stately home at 207 Eureka Street, and it became the political and cultural center of Central City life for the next quarter-century. After getting a taste of motion picture acting in 1975, when The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox was filmed in Central City, Bill pursued other movie roles. The next year he had a small part in a televised movie, The Disappearance of Aimee, with Faye Dunaway and the legendary Bette Davis. Other roles followed throughout the 1970s Centennial, Butch and Sundance: the Early Years, and others. But he made his greatest mark in 1981's Continental Divide, playing a crusty mountain guide who takes Chicago newspaperman John Belushi to the isolated hideaway of reclusive naturalist Blair Brown. Though there's no evidence the Central City voters ever resented Bill's dabbling in acting indeed, Central City continued to serve as a movie set through 1986, when Dream West was filmed there -the political winds were nevertheless shifting.
That November, local businessman Bruce Schmalz defeated Bill in another run for mayor. Though Bill was out of elected office, he continued to be engaged particularly through the pages of the Register-Call with local affairs. And there was much to be concerned about; though the passage of limited stakes gaming in 1990 would ultimately bring Bill considerable wealth, it also brought a cast of new and to Bill's mind, unsavory characters into the town's political mix. Though Bill's often-strident opinions had earned him enemies, he was finally more recognized for his accomplishments in his later years.
A city park was named for him around the time he left office for the last time. He celebrated his 90th birthday with a celebration his friends organized at the new Gilpin County Community Center; a building with amenities far beyond anything even the boosterish Bill could have imagined for Central City even twenty years before. When the Opera celebrated the 75th anniversary of the company in 2007, Bill was present at several of the celebratory events, feted as the only man present who attended the Association's initial presentation of Camille in 1932.
But Bill suffered a grievous blow later that same year, when Kay became critically ill; she passed away on New Year's Day, 2008, with Bill at her side. Though Bill's mind was still sharp, his own body was beginning to wear down. By mid-2009, he rarely left the house on Eureka Street.
Bill was taken to Lutheran Hospital in Wheat Ridge on Tuesday, May 19th; he had been on supplemental oxygen for several months, and was having increasing trouble breathing. Once down there and stabilized, though, his sharp mind and spirits returned. He wanted to return home, though he was advised of the consequences. Bill Russell returned to his home at 207 Eureka Street on Saturday afternoon, May 23rd. With the help of good friends, he was taken upstairs to his familiar bedroom; he died there peacefully on the morning of Sunday, May 24th, 2009 in the home and town he had loved for so long.
He will be buried in the Cranmer family plot in Fairmount Cemetery next to his beloved wife, Kay, on Saturday, May 30th, in a private ceremony. A celebration of Bill's life will held at 11 a.m. that morning in the Fairmount Memorial Chapel. Memorial donations in Bills honor may be made to Mt. Evans Hospice, 3081 Bergen Park Drive, Evergreen, CO 80439; or to the Central City Opera House Association, 400 South Colorado Blvd., Suite 530, Denver, CO 80426.
Published in Denver Post on May 28, 2009
Russell, William C., Jr.
June 9, 1915-May 24, 2009
William C. "Bill" Russell, Jr., was born in Denver on June 9, 1915. Bill was the heir of two great lines of Westerners. His maternal great-grandfather, John Hittson, was one of the pre-eminent Texas cattle kings, who relocated his operations to Colorado in the 1870s. Bill's grandfather, W.H.H. Cranmer, worked as a foreman for Hittson and eventually married Hittson's daughter, Martha Jane. W.H.H. took his growing family to Denver, where he developed (with his cattle raising partner Finas P. Ernest) one of Denver's first modern commercial structures, the Ernest & Cranmer building; the family lived in a Frank Edbroke-designed house at 925 East 17th Avenue.
The Cranmers prized education and emphasized world travel; the children went on to make distinguished contributions in Colorado and elsewhere in mining, business, government and the arts.
Jane Leontine Cranmer was the second of the Cranmer children, and the first born in Colorado. A remarked-upon beauty in her day a bust of her sculpted by Josef Korbel in Paris won an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. She married a young mining engineer named William Carroll Russell in Denver on July 16, 1913. "Jennie Leontine became the wife of William C. Russell, a mining man, and has one son, William C, Jr." -- Source: History of Colorado, 1919, Volume IV
Will Russell's family favored not cattle raising, but mining; the family moved west from Buffalo during the California gold rush. Russell was born in 1873, in Kernville, California; his mother died when he was just four, and his father when he was 17. His grandfather was at one time sheriff in Plumas County, California, and head of the Nevada militia; his father briefly ran a stagecoach line serving the Comstock, and an uncle was Charles Lyman Strong, superintendent of the fabulous Gould & Curry silver works in Virginia City, Nevada. Russell graduated from the University of California in 1898, and immediately set out for the new gold camp in the Klondike; failing to find his fortune, he prospected in Nome, mined briefly in California before hanging out a shingle as a mining engineer in Tonopah, Nevada. He made his name setting a world-record time for tunnel digging with an adit at the Rawley mine in Bonanza, Saguache County, Colorado, before moving to serve as superintendent for the legendary Caribou mine in western Boulder County.
Bill's first memories were of growing up in Cardinal, where the family lived while his father managed the Caribou operations. His father continued his peripatetic lifestyle, so to receive an education Bill was shipped out to a number of military and boarding schools all over the west, finally completing his formal schooling at Denver East High School. By the time of his graduation, the Great Depression had settled in upon the country; mining was in decline, and the Cranmer family fortune had been largely dissipated.
Bill's parents moved to a small house at 730 Josephine in Denver. After a few odd jobs in Denver (including one that involved delivering liquor to the state capitol on a motorcycle!), Bill moved to the Gilpin County mining camp of Nevadaville on June 15, 1937. Depression-era mining was not exactly thriving, but it was one of the few industries hiring at all; Bill did some work for "Doc" Muchow at the ever-expanding Glory Hole complex, but spent more time working in construction and demolition projects around the area, and with some of the smaller mine operators.
Bill recalled that he lived one month on a $10 bill, eating mostly "potatoes and pancakes." Bill indulged a literary bent by writing a short column of "Nevadaville Notes" for the short-lived Gilpin Miner; the column had to be short, as there were only about 10 people living in the town at the time! History had always held a special fascination for Bill he was pictured in the Denver Post back in 1929, over the caption "Youth Collects Antiques" and he gathered hundreds of old newspapers, documents and other memorabilia from his remodeling and demolition work in the town. But the tiny town proved too limiting for Bill's aspirations, and he moved to the comparatively thriving metropolis of Central City on January 1st, 1944.
It was around this time he was working in Russell Gulch, trying to free a power shovel that had become stuck that he saw a young woman named Catherine "Kay" Tracy, walking her dog up Spring Street in Central City. Bill recalls that the first time he saw her he "thought it would be a good idea I meet up with her." Kay had recently arrived from her home state of New York, after a stint working in Chicago; after a brief stay in Nederland, she moved to Central City to work first in the assessor's office, then for County Treasurer Hugh Lawry. Bill was smitten, after a brief courtship, the couple married at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Denver on September 8th, 1945.
Bill had been living in an apartment over Ramstetter's grocery on Main Street, but he had earlier purchased (for $1000) the two-story business block at 109 Eureka Street, where he operated an antique store; he had purchased the stock of Mrs. Belle Tobin that June. While Bill kept the lower level as his antique store, he added a third story and turned the upper floors into a comfortable, spacious apartment. Upgrading the property was a years-long project; Bill employed several local craftsmen who would later become well known, like Pascal Quackenbush. The furnishings were an eclectic mix of antiques from Bill's family, and pieces he purchased from the old-timers and the frequent sales in the area.
Bill became more and more involved in Central City business and politics. Gold mining had ground to a halt during World War II (most large mines were ordered closed in October, 1942), and Bill diversified into other interests. Though fascinated with the town's past, he was also convinced of its bright future, and backed his confidence with a number of speculative investments. Bill first ran for office in 1946; he won election as one of the City's Aldermen, and would continue in that post through 1962. In 1950 he opened the Central Gold Mine & Museum, which was later housed in the old (1868) Mason Seavey building on Spring Street. Bill also offered mine tours, of his own Diamond Lil mine. He acquired the collection of Mona Robb, when she gave up her own museum on Main Street, and over the years advertised regularly in the Register-Call, "Wanted for Cash:" Old original photographs, stereopticon slides, glass plates, and other negatives of GILPIN COUNTY SCENESTownsCentral City, Blackhawk, Nevadaville, Russell Gulch, etc., roads, mines, interiors, all before 1932. HIGHEST CASH PRICES PAID, WANTED FOR DISPLAY AT THE CENTRAL GOLD MINE & MINING MUSEUM, CENTRAL CITY, COLORADO, EST. 1950.
The history of Central City would become Bill's passion for the next half-century; he amassed an unparalleled collection of local treasures. But though fascinated by the area's rich past, he bitterly opposed outsiders who tended to portray Central City as a nearly deserted ghost town. He had a particularly rocky relationship with the Central City Opera House Association. Though Bill loved the productions and the players he and Kay often entertained theatrical visitors in their home he resented the widely held view that the opera "saved" the dying city. As an alderman, too, he was concerned about the tendency of the Association to remove their properties, including scores of private homes, now used for cast housing, from the tax rolls.
Bill personally owned a number of Central City properties himself, and through his long-time association with the Central City Development Corporation, ended up with still more, including most of the parking lots in the City. Besides his business and government roles, he was involved in much community work, with the local mine rescue group and the volunteer fire department. Bill's mother moved to Central in 1956, buying the stately home once owned by pioneer pharmacist John Best at 207 Eureka Street; she donated the Lawrence Street building that became the home for the fire department.
Bill's association with the summer theater festival casts (real operas were rarely produced in those days) led to his having a small part in a spoof of Thomas Hornsby Feril's And Perhaps Happiness. From that small beginning developed a successful second career. Bill acted in a number of stage performances at the old Bonfils Theater on East Colfax Street in Denver sometimes staying at the apartment of history doyenne Caroline Bancroft while working and did some television commercial work. Bill also was comfortable enough to indulge his avocations as writer and historian, working with Frank R. Hollenback to produce a slender volume entitled Pikes Peak by Rail, the story of the famous cog railroad.
Bill contributed a number of historic photographs from his growing collection, and also an account of the similar Mt. Washington cog railway in New Hampshire's White Mountains. By 1962, the still-young Bill Russell was well-known enough in Central to run for Mayor, succeeding his friend and business partner George Ramstetter. He won handily, and would continue to serve as Mayor for nearly 30 years. He donated time, equipment and expertise to dealing with many of the struggling town's infrastructure problems; many public buildings, especially the schools, had long suffered from lack of maintenance, and the water and sewer systems were disasters waiting to happen.
Bill worked with other entities when possible with the City of Black Hawk on the sewer issue, and with the school district (he was treasurer for a number of years) to solve the school building quandarybut he always put Central City interests first; he was not reluctant to use the court system to further his (and the City's) positions. Most importantly, on May 1, 1970, Bill purchased the town's historic newspaper, the Weekly Register-Call. The paper provided a regular outlet for his sometime vitriolic political opinions.
After his mother's death, he and Kay moved into the stately home at 207 Eureka Street, and it became the political and cultural center of Central City life for the next quarter-century. After getting a taste of motion picture acting in 1975, when The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox was filmed in Central City, Bill pursued other movie roles. The next year he had a small part in a televised movie, The Disappearance of Aimee, with Faye Dunaway and the legendary Bette Davis. Other roles followed throughout the 1970s Centennial, Butch and Sundance: the Early Years, and others. But he made his greatest mark in 1981's Continental Divide, playing a crusty mountain guide who takes Chicago newspaperman John Belushi to the isolated hideaway of reclusive naturalist Blair Brown. Though there's no evidence the Central City voters ever resented Bill's dabbling in acting indeed, Central City continued to serve as a movie set through 1986, when Dream West was filmed there -the political winds were nevertheless shifting.
That November, local businessman Bruce Schmalz defeated Bill in another run for mayor. Though Bill was out of elected office, he continued to be engaged particularly through the pages of the Register-Call with local affairs. And there was much to be concerned about; though the passage of limited stakes gaming in 1990 would ultimately bring Bill considerable wealth, it also brought a cast of new and to Bill's mind, unsavory characters into the town's political mix. Though Bill's often-strident opinions had earned him enemies, he was finally more recognized for his accomplishments in his later years.
A city park was named for him around the time he left office for the last time. He celebrated his 90th birthday with a celebration his friends organized at the new Gilpin County Community Center; a building with amenities far beyond anything even the boosterish Bill could have imagined for Central City even twenty years before. When the Opera celebrated the 75th anniversary of the company in 2007, Bill was present at several of the celebratory events, feted as the only man present who attended the Association's initial presentation of Camille in 1932.
But Bill suffered a grievous blow later that same year, when Kay became critically ill; she passed away on New Year's Day, 2008, with Bill at her side. Though Bill's mind was still sharp, his own body was beginning to wear down. By mid-2009, he rarely left the house on Eureka Street.
Bill was taken to Lutheran Hospital in Wheat Ridge on Tuesday, May 19th; he had been on supplemental oxygen for several months, and was having increasing trouble breathing. Once down there and stabilized, though, his sharp mind and spirits returned. He wanted to return home, though he was advised of the consequences. Bill Russell returned to his home at 207 Eureka Street on Saturday afternoon, May 23rd. With the help of good friends, he was taken upstairs to his familiar bedroom; he died there peacefully on the morning of Sunday, May 24th, 2009 in the home and town he had loved for so long.
He will be buried in the Cranmer family plot in Fairmount Cemetery next to his beloved wife, Kay, on Saturday, May 30th, in a private ceremony. A celebration of Bill's life will held at 11 a.m. that morning in the Fairmount Memorial Chapel. Memorial donations in Bills honor may be made to Mt. Evans Hospice, 3081 Bergen Park Drive, Evergreen, CO 80439; or to the Central City Opera House Association, 400 South Colorado Blvd., Suite 530, Denver, CO 80426.
Published in Denver Post on May 28, 2009
June 9, 1915-May 24, 2009
William C. "Bill" Russell, Jr., was born in Denver on June 9, 1915. Bill was the heir of two great lines of Westerners. His maternal great-grandfather, John Hittson, was one of the pre-eminent Texas cattle kings, who relocated his operations to Colorado in the 1870s. Bill's grandfather, W.H.H. Cranmer, worked as a foreman for Hittson and eventually married Hittson's daughter, Martha Jane. W.H.H. took his growing family to Denver, where he developed (with his cattle raising partner Finas P. Ernest) one of Denver's first modern commercial structures, the Ernest & Cranmer building; the family lived in a Frank Edbroke-designed house at 925 East 17th Avenue.
The Cranmers prized education and emphasized world travel; the children went on to make distinguished contributions in Colorado and elsewhere in mining, business, government and the arts.
Jane Leontine Cranmer was the second of the Cranmer children, and the first born in Colorado. A remarked-upon beauty in her day a bust of her sculpted by Josef Korbel in Paris won an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. She married a young mining engineer named William Carroll Russell in Denver on July 16, 1913. "Jennie Leontine became the wife of William C. Russell, a mining man, and has one son, William C, Jr." -- Source: History of Colorado, 1919, Volume IV
Will Russell's family favored not cattle raising, but mining; the family moved west from Buffalo during the California gold rush. Russell was born in 1873, in Kernville, California; his mother died when he was just four, and his father when he was 17. His grandfather was at one time sheriff in Plumas County, California, and head of the Nevada militia; his father briefly ran a stagecoach line serving the Comstock, and an uncle was Charles Lyman Strong, superintendent of the fabulous Gould & Curry silver works in Virginia City, Nevada. Russell graduated from the University of California in 1898, and immediately set out for the new gold camp in the Klondike; failing to find his fortune, he prospected in Nome, mined briefly in California before hanging out a shingle as a mining engineer in Tonopah, Nevada. He made his name setting a world-record time for tunnel digging with an adit at the Rawley mine in Bonanza, Saguache County, Colorado, before moving to serve as superintendent for the legendary Caribou mine in western Boulder County.
Bill's first memories were of growing up in Cardinal, where the family lived while his father managed the Caribou operations. His father continued his peripatetic lifestyle, so to receive an education Bill was shipped out to a number of military and boarding schools all over the west, finally completing his formal schooling at Denver East High School. By the time of his graduation, the Great Depression had settled in upon the country; mining was in decline, and the Cranmer family fortune had been largely dissipated.
Bill's parents moved to a small house at 730 Josephine in Denver. After a few odd jobs in Denver (including one that involved delivering liquor to the state capitol on a motorcycle!), Bill moved to the Gilpin County mining camp of Nevadaville on June 15, 1937. Depression-era mining was not exactly thriving, but it was one of the few industries hiring at all; Bill did some work for "Doc" Muchow at the ever-expanding Glory Hole complex, but spent more time working in construction and demolition projects around the area, and with some of the smaller mine operators.
Bill recalled that he lived one month on a $10 bill, eating mostly "potatoes and pancakes." Bill indulged a literary bent by writing a short column of "Nevadaville Notes" for the short-lived Gilpin Miner; the column had to be short, as there were only about 10 people living in the town at the time! History had always held a special fascination for Bill he was pictured in the Denver Post back in 1929, over the caption "Youth Collects Antiques" and he gathered hundreds of old newspapers, documents and other memorabilia from his remodeling and demolition work in the town. But the tiny town proved too limiting for Bill's aspirations, and he moved to the comparatively thriving metropolis of Central City on January 1st, 1944.
It was around this time he was working in Russell Gulch, trying to free a power shovel that had become stuck that he saw a young woman named Catherine "Kay" Tracy, walking her dog up Spring Street in Central City. Bill recalls that the first time he saw her he "thought it would be a good idea I meet up with her." Kay had recently arrived from her home state of New York, after a stint working in Chicago; after a brief stay in Nederland, she moved to Central City to work first in the assessor's office, then for County Treasurer Hugh Lawry. Bill was smitten, after a brief courtship, the couple married at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Denver on September 8th, 1945.
Bill had been living in an apartment over Ramstetter's grocery on Main Street, but he had earlier purchased (for $1000) the two-story business block at 109 Eureka Street, where he operated an antique store; he had purchased the stock of Mrs. Belle Tobin that June. While Bill kept the lower level as his antique store, he added a third story and turned the upper floors into a comfortable, spacious apartment. Upgrading the property was a years-long project; Bill employed several local craftsmen who would later become well known, like Pascal Quackenbush. The furnishings were an eclectic mix of antiques from Bill's family, and pieces he purchased from the old-timers and the frequent sales in the area.
Bill became more and more involved in Central City business and politics. Gold mining had ground to a halt during World War II (most large mines were ordered closed in October, 1942), and Bill diversified into other interests. Though fascinated with the town's past, he was also convinced of its bright future, and backed his confidence with a number of speculative investments. Bill first ran for office in 1946; he won election as one of the City's Aldermen, and would continue in that post through 1962. In 1950 he opened the Central Gold Mine & Museum, which was later housed in the old (1868) Mason Seavey building on Spring Street. Bill also offered mine tours, of his own Diamond Lil mine. He acquired the collection of Mona Robb, when she gave up her own museum on Main Street, and over the years advertised regularly in the Register-Call, "Wanted for Cash:" Old original photographs, stereopticon slides, glass plates, and other negatives of GILPIN COUNTY SCENESTownsCentral City, Blackhawk, Nevadaville, Russell Gulch, etc., roads, mines, interiors, all before 1932. HIGHEST CASH PRICES PAID, WANTED FOR DISPLAY AT THE CENTRAL GOLD MINE & MINING MUSEUM, CENTRAL CITY, COLORADO, EST. 1950.
The history of Central City would become Bill's passion for the next half-century; he amassed an unparalleled collection of local treasures. But though fascinated by the area's rich past, he bitterly opposed outsiders who tended to portray Central City as a nearly deserted ghost town. He had a particularly rocky relationship with the Central City Opera House Association. Though Bill loved the productions and the players he and Kay often entertained theatrical visitors in their home he resented the widely held view that the opera "saved" the dying city. As an alderman, too, he was concerned about the tendency of the Association to remove their properties, including scores of private homes, now used for cast housing, from the tax rolls.
Bill personally owned a number of Central City properties himself, and through his long-time association with the Central City Development Corporation, ended up with still more, including most of the parking lots in the City. Besides his business and government roles, he was involved in much community work, with the local mine rescue group and the volunteer fire department. Bill's mother moved to Central in 1956, buying the stately home once owned by pioneer pharmacist John Best at 207 Eureka Street; she donated the Lawrence Street building that became the home for the fire department.
Bill's association with the summer theater festival casts (real operas were rarely produced in those days) led to his having a small part in a spoof of Thomas Hornsby Feril's And Perhaps Happiness. From that small beginning developed a successful second career. Bill acted in a number of stage performances at the old Bonfils Theater on East Colfax Street in Denver sometimes staying at the apartment of history doyenne Caroline Bancroft while working and did some television commercial work. Bill also was comfortable enough to indulge his avocations as writer and historian, working with Frank R. Hollenback to produce a slender volume entitled Pikes Peak by Rail, the story of the famous cog railroad.
Bill contributed a number of historic photographs from his growing collection, and also an account of the similar Mt. Washington cog railway in New Hampshire's White Mountains. By 1962, the still-young Bill Russell was well-known enough in Central to run for Mayor, succeeding his friend and business partner George Ramstetter. He won handily, and would continue to serve as Mayor for nearly 30 years. He donated time, equipment and expertise to dealing with many of the struggling town's infrastructure problems; many public buildings, especially the schools, had long suffered from lack of maintenance, and the water and sewer systems were disasters waiting to happen.
Bill worked with other entities when possible with the City of Black Hawk on the sewer issue, and with the school district (he was treasurer for a number of years) to solve the school building quandarybut he always put Central City interests first; he was not reluctant to use the court system to further his (and the City's) positions. Most importantly, on May 1, 1970, Bill purchased the town's historic newspaper, the Weekly Register-Call. The paper provided a regular outlet for his sometime vitriolic political opinions.
After his mother's death, he and Kay moved into the stately home at 207 Eureka Street, and it became the political and cultural center of Central City life for the next quarter-century. After getting a taste of motion picture acting in 1975, when The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox was filmed in Central City, Bill pursued other movie roles. The next year he had a small part in a televised movie, The Disappearance of Aimee, with Faye Dunaway and the legendary Bette Davis. Other roles followed throughout the 1970s Centennial, Butch and Sundance: the Early Years, and others. But he made his greatest mark in 1981's Continental Divide, playing a crusty mountain guide who takes Chicago newspaperman John Belushi to the isolated hideaway of reclusive naturalist Blair Brown. Though there's no evidence the Central City voters ever resented Bill's dabbling in acting indeed, Central City continued to serve as a movie set through 1986, when Dream West was filmed there -the political winds were nevertheless shifting.
That November, local businessman Bruce Schmalz defeated Bill in another run for mayor. Though Bill was out of elected office, he continued to be engaged particularly through the pages of the Register-Call with local affairs. And there was much to be concerned about; though the passage of limited stakes gaming in 1990 would ultimately bring Bill considerable wealth, it also brought a cast of new and to Bill's mind, unsavory characters into the town's political mix. Though Bill's often-strident opinions had earned him enemies, he was finally more recognized for his accomplishments in his later years.
A city park was named for him around the time he left office for the last time. He celebrated his 90th birthday with a celebration his friends organized at the new Gilpin County Community Center; a building with amenities far beyond anything even the boosterish Bill could have imagined for Central City even twenty years before. When the Opera celebrated the 75th anniversary of the company in 2007, Bill was present at several of the celebratory events, feted as the only man present who attended the Association's initial presentation of Camille in 1932.
But Bill suffered a grievous blow later that same year, when Kay became critically ill; she passed away on New Year's Day, 2008, with Bill at her side. Though Bill's mind was still sharp, his own body was beginning to wear down. By mid-2009, he rarely left the house on Eureka Street.
Bill was taken to Lutheran Hospital in Wheat Ridge on Tuesday, May 19th; he had been on supplemental oxygen for several months, and was having increasing trouble breathing. Once down there and stabilized, though, his sharp mind and spirits returned. He wanted to return home, though he was advised of the consequences. Bill Russell returned to his home at 207 Eureka Street on Saturday afternoon, May 23rd. With the help of good friends, he was taken upstairs to his familiar bedroom; he died there peacefully on the morning of Sunday, May 24th, 2009 in the home and town he had loved for so long.
He will be buried in the Cranmer family plot in Fairmount Cemetery next to his beloved wife, Kay, on Saturday, May 30th, in a private ceremony. A celebration of Bill's life will held at 11 a.m. that morning in the Fairmount Memorial Chapel. Memorial donations in Bills honor may be made to Mt. Evans Hospice, 3081 Bergen Park Drive, Evergreen, CO 80439; or to the Central City Opera House Association, 400 South Colorado Blvd., Suite 530, Denver, CO 80426.
Published in Denver Post on May 28, 2009
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