Those amazing Hales 

Their influence on Gilpin history

Linda Jones

06/05/2008 - Colorado has honored the Hales by naming several things for them: a mountain peak, a Denver street and an Army WW II ski training camp. Between them the father and son gathered honor after honor. Among other distinctions, a Hale was the first president of CU, a war hero, a Denver tramway system builder and an opera house builder. Their contributions continue to enrich our state.

  Horace Hale, the father, came to the Territory of Colorado, and its low humidity, for his health. (He also had a bit of “gold fever” in his blood, perhaps inherited from his father who had spent two years in California prospecting and mining.) After admission to the Michigan bar, Horace was forced to delay starting a law practice because of his chronic bronchitis. When his brother Albert visited from the new gold fields in the Rockies and suggested the healthful climate here, Horace returned with him to Central City, arriving in October of 1863. He began working in Henry Teller’s law office, which is now located across from the opera house, but he thought outdoor work would help his respiratory problems more so he began working in mining and freighting.

  Our splendid thin air did indeed restore the health of the former schoolteacher and he began teaching again, in Central City. Soon Horace was promoted to Principal and served until 1873, when he became Territorial Superintendent of Public Instruction. Three years later Colorado was admitted to the Union; Horace still occupied his Territorial Superintendent position, becoming the last territorial and the first state holder of this office. In January of 1877 he returned to Central City as principal and stayed ten years.

  Horace was an accomplished multi-tasker! After 1878 he simultaneously held the offices of Regent of the State University [later called the University of Colorado], Mayor of Central City, Superintendent of Schools for Gilpin County and Principal of the Central City School.

  The other Regents surprised Horace in 1887 by asking him to accept the Presidency of the University of Colorado. He accepted. The Central City School at that time had 415 pupils; at CU there were only 136 students! After four years at CU he resigned, leaving a distinguished legacy. It was Horace who organized the State Teachers Association and served as its President for two terms. In Central City he was President of the Mining Exchange, a Director of the Illinois Mine and an incorporator of the Central City Opera House. He served as President of the Charity Organization Society of Denver, Grand Chaplain of the Grand Lodge of the Knights of Honor and as an officer in many, many other organizations. Horace died in Denver from heart problems in 1901 and is buried in Fairmont Cemetery.

Irving Hale

  The only son of Horace and Martha Hale became a national hero in the Spanish-American War. Although he looked like the intellectual he was, Irving was an expert in firearms, torpedoes and war tactics.

  Horace had lived in Central City for two years before he sent for his wife and child, so Irving was nearly four years old when he arrived in The Richest Square Mile on Earth. He attended school in the stately stone schoolhouse, which now serves as the Gilpin History Museum, until he entered high school. That was the same year his father was appointed as Territorial Superintendent and the family moved to Denver, where Irving attended East Denver High School and graduated as its first honors student in 1877.

  Irving loved the outdoors and he moved back to Central City after graduation and spent a year hiking and trapping in the high Rockies. With the money he saved from trapping he bought a mule team and wagon and started a freight line between Central City and Grand Lake, over the Continental Divide. Irving made the runs alone. The country was rugged, wild and uninhabited. At night around his campfire, he read the books he packed in his wagon.

  His reading goal was to take the examination for entrance to West Point the next fall. He did, he passed and was admitted in 1880. His scholastic record at West Point was amazing and stood for decades – he scored 2074 out of a possible 2075 on his final exam. A popular story of the time was that he only missed a perfect score because he failed to dot an “I” and cross a “t”, leading to that old saying: Dot your “I”s and cross your “t”s?

  Irving was commissioned an officer in the Army and rapidly moved up in rank while studying torpedoes and civil and military engineering with the Army Corps of Engineers. With his skill at shooting he won a major competition and a gold medal in 1888.

  The Army transferred him back to West Point as an instructor. But Irving was that rare individual who excelled at both military and civilian jobs, and when he requested a leave of absence to return to Denver to lay out the first electric tramway line in the city, the Army granted it. Irving had a genius for such projects and he eventually resigned from the Army to accept a job with Edison General Electric Company.

  But when war was declared with Spain in 1898, Irving felt it his duty to re-enter the Army. His assignment was to head the Colorado National Guard and his unit, the First Colorado Infantry, U.S.V., was assigned to combat in the Philippines. There in Manila, in 1898, his group made history. Hale was dubbed the “Hero of Manila” and was promoted to a Brigadier General.

  At war’s end he returned to Edison General Electric and private life. He helped found the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) nationally. In Denver he was elected President of the Colorado Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, was chosen as President of the Philippine Veterans Association, received honorary degrees from both the University of Colorado and the Colorado School of Mines and belonged to numerous associations. The WW II ski training camp at Pando, near Leadville, was named for the Hero of Manila and Hale Parkway keeps his name alive in Denver.