HOLY FAMILY (1905)

The White River Ute Agency, where the Indians revolted and killed agent Nathan C. Meeker in 1879, evolved into the town of Meeker. Several Catholic families were among the early settlers, and Edward J. Downey, a circuit-riding pioneer priest, said the first Mass in 1884, at the Delaney Ranch at White River City and, later on, in the old adobe Rio Blanco County courthouse.

Meeker remained a small ranching and farming (alfalfa, grain, and hay) town until the early 1900s, when oil discoveries, most notably the rich Rangely Field, pushed the population over the 1,000 mark by the 1920s. Although Holy Family parish was created by Bishop Matz in 1905, construction of a church did not begin until 1911, during the pastorship of Christopher Walsh. Denver architects Aaron M. Gove and Thomas F. Walsh, who were then finishing the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Denver, were paid $125 to design Holy Family Church. Dedicated on July 6, 1913, this $15,000, red brick Romanesque edifice still sports its original Gothic entry and colored glass windows, with a rose window under the square, enclosed belfry.

Fathers Bernard Fajanelle (1919-1923), Emile J. Verschraeghen (1923-1929), Francis J. Brady (1930-1933), Paul Slattery (1935-1944), Paul Reed (1944-1949), and Edward J. Fraczkowski (1949-1958) were among the more memorable pastors. Among the prominent parishioners was Josephine Holland, superintendent of Rio Blanco county schools and president of the Holy Family Altar and Rosary Society. She and other members of the society regularly urged the bishop in Denver to send a resident priest to their parish, then a mission attended by the pastors of St. Mary's in Rifle.

Holy Family was removed from Rifle's mission list in 1959 to become a mission of St. Ignatius Church in Rangely. Leo M. Blach, the new pastor of the two towns, began offering some weekday services as well as Sunday Masses. In what was becoming a busier parish, Father Blach successfully asked Archbishop Vehr for installation of a symbol of status and modernity--indoor plumbing.

John P. Schuneman served as pastor from 1978 to 1983 and worked with parishioners to build a parish hall, which included a kitchen, dining room, and two-bedroom apartment for clergymen. Thanks to the oil shale boom, Meeker's population climbed to 2,356 in 1980. When crude oil prices crashed from over $40 a barrel to under $10 in 1982, the oil boom burst. Rio Blanco County suffered a mass exodus, but Holy Family has clung to its resident priests.

Bert Chilson, who became the second resident pastor in 1983, found Meeker and Rangely, which are separated by sixty miles of townless highway, a challenge. "People are so spread out," Father Chilson reported. "And with lambing and ranching and tending the animals they can't get away to parish functions or to Mass all the time. When they can't come in, you have to go out."

Lawrence T. Solan, pastor since 1986, spent alternate weeks in the two parishes so that "parishioners always know where to find me and both parishes get equal attention."