The figures

June Jackson was the last of six children - inquisitive, energetic, a tomboy and usually underfoot. To keep an eye on his youngest, Andy Jackson often took her along - to the small grocery where he worked as a meat cutter, to pick up supplies for the church picnic or to lodge meetings at the Slovenian Hall. Andy even took June with him to St. Anthony's Hospital to visit a seriously ill friend from the Old Country.
In those days, children weren't allowed to see patients and so June waited on a bench in the hall while her father climbed the stairway to the second floor. While waiting, June saw the "figures." "They were a man and a woman, dressed in old-fashioned clothing, the woman carrying a lantern as they quietly descended the stairs. And they were completely transparent." Her father came down not long after he had gone up, explaining to June that his friend had already died, and June told her father about the remarkable people she had just seen.
As she grew older, June would learn the legends about the "figures," who were known in Slovenian folklore to foretell a death or a tragedy. Eight decades later, June's great grandchildren coax her to tell them her "ghost" story and the "figures" come alive again.

June Jackson 

Ghost of ASARCO

Each day, thousands of commuters pass ASARCO's Globe Smelter site with hardly a second glance at the Globeville landmark. Built in 1886, the plant operated first as a smelter that separated valuable metals from raw ore, then as a producer of specialty metals. The company closed in 2006, and plans for remediation and development of 77-acre complex are now moving forward. The many buildings and structures now being dismantled provide a glimpse of a 120-year-old company with an interior life of its own.
High, wire-topped fences surround the site and it's difficult to see all the buildings, but Steve Stevens, Safety and Personnel Manager from 1967 to 1988 recalls many of them."The tall building housed the Godfrey Roaster that roasted low-grade products from Amarillo and from Leadville, and East Helena, Montana. And there was the unloading building, the bag house, the calcine building, the tank house, and the solution department. They also had the retort department where they purified the metal, and the cadmium sulphide department where they made the paint pigment for cadmium yellow. There was the thallium department, the indium department, the litharge department, the casting department, the premelt room, the change house, the respirator room, the laundry room and the locker room.
"The two-story home near the 51st Street entrance to the plant was the superintendent's house from the old days when he lived on the property. The house contained an old safe with 'Globe Smelting and Refining' written on it. There are also ledgers with the names of employees - Slovenians, Croatians, Poles, Germans, Russians and some Hispanics - from a time when there were three shifts running seven days a week. 
"In the old days, we used to have a garden right on the property and we grew vegetables. And we had a baseball team and played for the championship in 1948 at Overland Park, beating Central Bank one to nothing."
Long gone is the housing provided by the company: the 125-room Globe Hotel for single men and the 10 or 12 houses along Sheedy Row, with accommodations for families. And there was the Globe Mercantile where men could cash their paychecks and purchase everything from food to bicycles.
"A lot of guys were very grateful for jobs at the Globe because they were able to raise a family and buy a house." 
It is hoped that the clean up of the site will also offer jobs and the opportunity for families to settle in Globeville. 

Top photo, Godfrey Roaster building

Second photo, cell house 1926

Third photo, warehouses A, B, and C in October 2010

Bottom photo, warehouses A, B, and C in January 2012

The Haunted House of Globeville

A lot of decorations and haunted houses will appear in yards around Globeville during the month of October, but none of them will be as interesting as Globeville's real "haunted house."
The story begins with the discovery of gold in Colorado in 1858 and John B. Hindry, who  made a fortune supplying lumber and cattle to others who came seeking mineral riches. In 1870, the wealthy Hindry purchased 110 acres of land north of Denver along the South Platte River to build a country home away from the grime and noise of frontier Denver, with plans to create an exclusive subdivision. He constructed his two-story Victorian mansion in 1873, a masterpiece crowned with an ornate cupola and an entrance watched over by two massive iron lions. The interior was decorated with black walnut paneling and Italian marble. A two-story brick stable for trotting horses and a greenhouse stood behind the house. A miniature playhouse for the Hindry children, William, Nettie, Horace, and Charles, was built in the style of the mansion.

By the turn of the century, Hindry’s fortunes had turned. He suffered the death of his son Charles in 1878 and of his wife in 1881; his other children had married and left to begin lives of their own. John Hindry was alone in his mansion.

His dream home soon become a nightmare. Not long after his mansion was completed, the Boston and Colorado Smelter began operating (1879), followed by the Grant (1882) and Globe Smelters (1889). The construction of railroads, foundries, and meat-packing plants made the area more suited to heavy industry than to exclusive homes. The fumes from the smelters killed the trees, and ate through the carpets and curtains in the mansion, and the stench from the meat-packing plants ruined any hopes for a subdivision. When Hindry's lawsuit against the Globe Smelter was unsuccessful, he became increasingly bitter.

Rumors circulated that the lonely old man had a hoard of money hidden in the house, and thieves began to prowl the property. After being robbed several times, Hindry set up a trap with a shotgun that would fire straight out the window when the sash was raised. It didn’t take long to get results.

On the morning of September 18, 1901, Hindry set his trap as usual, and went to Golden on business. When he returned home at 6 pm, he found a man dead in his front yard.*

Eventually the trap became Hindry’s undoing. One night he entered the room when he thought he’d heard a prowler, tripped over the trigger cord and was wounded by his own gun. Although he recovered, he abandoned his former dream home to move to California in 1906. 

As the neglected and abandoned property deteriorated, stories of ghostly apparitions began to circulate. Some said they saw Hindry’s ghost, while others claim the figure was that of the man who had been shot there. The former mansion became known as Globeville's “haunted house.”
In 1921 Leo Bomareto bought the house at a tax auction for $6000 and leased it to the city for an isolation hospital for tuberculosis patients for five years, beginning in 1923. In the 1940s, the Bomareto family moved in, fixed up the house and converted the former stable in the backyard to a meat-packing plant. During the 1950s the family sold Christmas trees from a lot set up in the backyard. In July 1962, an unexplained explosion threw Frank Bomareto out of bed and the resulting fire destroyed the house. 

Today nothing remains of the Hindry Mansion but memories.

*Automatic Gun Kills Thief” Rocky Mountain News, September 19, 1901



Top photo, Hindry mansion in its prime, Colorado Historical Society
Middle photo, deteriorating "haunted house" Colorado Historical Society
Bottom photo, the site today is occupied by Bomareto's Market, Mary Lou Egan