Walsenburg
He’s not dead yet, but he’s pretty close. A while back one of his arms fell right off. Frankly, town officials and his loved ones would bury him tomorrow if they had the time. But with an upcoming summer festival and other events, they say they’ll be lucky to get him into the ground sometime in September.
And so, today, he lies quietly with a stoic look on his face and he waits. In the town cemetery. Near a woodpile back by the dented metal maintenance shed.
He is Mr. Miner, a large man made
of pine and sweat, a statue chiseled from a giant tree some 23 years ago in this southern Colorado town.
For a few decades the wooden
coal miner with a lunch pail, helmet and a miner’s pick on his shoulder greeted the townsfolk and visitors
from a few locations in this one-time mining mecca.
But the rain, snow and the relentless prairie sun made Mr. Miner swell up and crack, leaving him looking like a subtle blend of a weathered barn and Teddy Roosevelt. (Or, from a certain angle, Eleanor Roosevelt.)
But then the people of this town did a strange thing. So beloved was the carving that the residents raised $12,000 and had old wooden Mr. Miner turned into shiny new bronze Mr. Miner.
And old Mr. Miner, now at the end of his days, awaits his final rest in the Masonic Cemetery.
What a long, grained trip it’s been.
He was created in 1983 by Walter Way, then-superintendent of schools in the Huerfano County school district, which includes the town of Walsenburg. Way, a woodcarver of note (one of his totem poles graces the front lawn of author Clive Cussler’s home in Telluride), had previously carved many statues, including a 16-foot-tall cigar-store Indian for cigar-making giant JR Tobacco.
“I wrote to the Guinness book of records about it and they said they didn’t want to start a category for cigar-store Indians,” Way, now 76, retired and living 125 miles north in the town of Elizabeth, said with a slight snort. “Some of their categories seem a lot sillier than cigar-store Indians.”
In Walsenburg he turned his attention to carving a coal miner. He had some extra time on his hands because he ushered the school district into four-day school weeks. This gave him Friday, Saturday and Sunday to whittle himself goofy.
The ponderosa pine log – 12 feet high by 4 feet wide – that would become Mr. Miner came from outside the town of Gardner, to the west. It was hauled to Way’s home by his school transportation director and chief bus driver, Jake Pino. Way then had one more favor to ask of his friend.
“He asked me to be the model for the statue,” said Pino, who will retire from the school district in July. “I was stocky. He said I’d be a perfect miner.”
Way dressed his friend Pino in boots, a rough-looking miner’s jacket, added the metal lunch pail, helmet and the pick, and took photos.
“It took about 15 minutes,” Pino said. “It seemed kind of funny, but he told me I had to look serious.”
The carving took about 150 hours, Way said. Early in 1984 it was lovingly placed in the town square, which is actually a triangle, along Main Street.
“He stood right there in the triangle and everybody just absolutely loved Mr. Miner,” said Margaret Gleisberg, head of the town’s library board.
But soon, despite being preserved by black walnut stain and many coats of polyurethane, Mr. Miner began to weather. County commissioners ordered him moved around 1988, and for a few years he stood outside a motel, the Western Inn, on the edge of town. By 1990, at the urging of residents, Mr. Miner was returned to the downtown area and stood on the lawn at the town’s 19th-century jailhouse, which had become the historical society’s museum.
Then the big guy just fell apart. And in 2001, a new wood statue of a miner appeared, carved by inmate Bob Winters at the nearby Huerfano County Correctional Center. (From prison spokeswoman Kim Brightman: “Inmate Winters was closely supervised the whole time that he was working with sharp objects.”)
There was talk of using the original Mr. Miner as firewood. But someone suggested making a mold and converting him into a bronze statue. The town raised the money with donations, ice-cream socials and a Christmas bazaar, and on May 21 of this year the new, sparkling bronze Mr. Miner was unveiled. Granite panels soon will be installed at the foot of the bronze work with the names of Huerfano County coal miners who died in the mines.
“He looks exactly like my statue,” said Way, who made the trip back to Walsenburg for the unveiling. “The townspeople always told me they loved that old miner. I guess they did.”
And now the old miner waits in the town cemetery.
“He’s not just a piece of wood,” library director Gleisberg said. “That statue meant so much to so many people. So when we can, in September, we’ll put him down, about 4 feet underground, and mark it with a plaque honoring the men who died in the mines.”
Way the woodcarver still carves at his Elizabeth home.
But nothing thrills him like having Mr. Miner buried.
“It’s almost like the people think of him as one of them,” Way said. “Almost like he’s a human being.”
Staff writer Rich Tosches writes each Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at rtosches@denverpost.com.
