ST. MARY (1885)

"I have to cross the highest range of mountains to visit our poor Catholics, who are almost buried alive in the depths of the mines," Father Machebeuf wrote after his first visit to Breckenridge in 1861. Father Machebeuf himself was in danger of being buried alive in blizzards on his solitary horse and buggy treks to Summit County over 11,481-foot-high Boreas Pass.

In 1874, probably to his relief, Bishop Machebeuf assigned Summit, Lake, and Chaffee counties to one of his ablest young priests, Henry Robinson. Father Robinson also tended other mountain mining towns and when the discovery of million-dollar silver mines gave birth to Leadville in the late 1870s, he concentrated on building Annunciation Church in that instant city.

Although outshone by Leadville, Breckenridge had over 1,000 residents in 1880. Bishop Machebeuf and Thomas M. Cahill visited the growing county seat in 1881 and acquired a church site at the southeast corner of High Street and Washington Avenue. Within twelve days, Father Cahill had completed a frame shell. Bishop Machebeuf christened it St. Mary's, as he named so many pioneer Catholic parishes in honor of his beloved patroness.

In 1882, Father Cahill left the demanding mountainous parish for gentler, greener Ireland. Bishop Machebeuf replaced him with an energetic Swiss priest, James E. Chapius. Father Chapius completed the interior of St. Mary's and also helped to establish mission churches: Our Lady of the Snows at Robinson; St. Benedict's at Como; St. Edward's at Montezuma; St. Joseph's at Fairplay; and St. Patrick's at Alma.

In 1886, Father Chapius added a Breckenridge hospital to his rapidly growing Summit and Park county facilities. Three Benedictine nuns arrived to help staff the small Summit County Hospital built jointly by the Miners Protective Association and the county. In gratitude for the sisters' work, the small frame building at the northwest corner of Harris Street and Washington Avenue was renamed St. Joseph's Hospital. After several more Benedictine nuns arrived, the order opened St. Gertrude Academy and Convent at the northeast corner of French Street and Lincoln Avenue in 1887.

Father Chapius's ambitious plans for Summit County were doomed by declining mineral production and population. The Benedictines, to whom Bishop Machebeuf gave the parish in 1886, sent Rhabanus Gutmann, OSB, to Breckenridge. The new pastor was shocked to find a crude church with makeshift plank pews and a soap box tabernacle. He called it "a disgrace to the name of St. Mary."

The community as well as the church horrified Father Rhabanus, who reported that "all the roustabouts, rascals, loose women, adulterers, etc., etc., find their way to Breckenridge." At least St. Mary's escaped the fate of the Methodist church. The minister there, Florida Passamore, not only preached against "Demon Rum" but personally inspected saloons to enforce the midnight and Sunday closing laws. This probably explains why, on the night of August 17, 1891, his church bell and belfry were dynamited to smithereens. The good reverend was hanged in effigy.

St. Mary's, located on the outskirts of a boom town expecting to become a city, soon found itself at the end of a long uphill walk outside a shrinking community. In 1890, the little frame church was dragged downhill to its present location. The Benedictines, who had spent much of their time in their own hospital recovering from Summit County's weather, retreated from the high country parish in 1892. Bishop Matz replaced them with a series of priests who lasted only a year or so at most. One of them, J. C. McCourt, was the brother of the beautiful Elizabeth McCourt, better known as Baby Doe, the second wife of H.A.W. Tabor. Father McCourt ran away from blizzard-blasted, debt-ridden St. Mary's only to be ordered back by Bishop Matz.

Not until the 1910 arrival of Aloysius Hilbig did St. Mary parish find stability. Father Hilbig's letters to Bishop Matz shed light on a real mining town hero--one of those persistent people who struggled to keep towns alive after the mining hordes departed, leaving a shambles behind them.

Father Hilbig subsisted on "my own money . . . on account of the parish being so poor. . . . During the last few years I have lost over half of the people in my missions." Only by bumming free passes from the Colorado & Southern Railway was Father Hilbig able to take Mass and the sacraments to the five missions and fifteen station stops among the dying mining camps of Summit and Park counties. Of St. Patrick's in Alma, a typical doomed parish, Father Hilbig wrote to Bishop Matz on February 15, 1915:

A few days ago the little chapel at Alma burned down when the big hotel next door caught fire. There was not an inch of space between these two buildings and no water close by it. . . . The chapel was in bad condition, being about 35 years old and not worthwhile to be repaired. . . . I did not say Mass in it on account of it being too dangerous. The roof leaked all over, the floor was caved in on one side, and one side towards the front was badly crashed in.

Father Hilbig left St. Mary's at the end of 1918. Breckenridge became just another Sunday mission stop for the priests of Annunciation parish in Leadville. After 1930, when the population of all of Summit County fell to 987, the pot-bellied stove in St. Mary's was fired up only once a month for fifteen families clinging to their faith.

That faith was rewarded during the 1960s and 1970s. Construction of interstate 70 with its Eisenhower and Johnson tunnels, of the Dillon Reservoir, and of three major ski areas resurrected the once dying county. During the 1970s, Summit emerged as the fastest growing county in Colorado, soaring to a 1980 population of 8,848. Foreseeing the boom, Archbishop Vehr sent John J. Slattery up to Breckenridge in 1966 to reopen St. Mary's as a full-time parish. The decrepit, leaky-roofed, cobweb-filled church was rehabilitated, and the old ceiling stenciling restored as a precious example of "primitive Italian baroque" folk art. Father Slattery was followed by Leo Kennedy, Donald Frawley, and Edward J. Poehlmann, who arrived in 1973. As newcomers flooded into the tiny frame church, Father Poehlmann dashed back and forth from the organ to the altar, where he led parishioners in hymns.

John G. Kauffman joined Father Poehlmann as assistant pastor in 1978. In his spare time, Father John prospected for gold, a traditional Summit County art he mastered and taught to others in classes and in his Handbook for Placer Mining. Writer Mary Ellen Gilliland used Father Slattery's research and reminiscences and, with the help of many parish old timers, produced a history, Century of Faith, for St. Mary's centennial in 1981.

Once a skeleton church called "a disgrace to the name of St. Mary," this resilient high country parish began an expansion program. A mission parish, Our Lady of Peace, was opened in Dillon in 1975. The priests at St. Mary's also began offering Sunday Masses at two Summit County ski areas--in the lodge at Keystone Lodge and in the Copper Mountain Chapel. St. Joseph Church in Fairplay remained a mission of St. Mary's until the 1984 establishment of the Diocese of Colorado Springs in which St. Joseph's became a mission of Buena Vista.

In the early 1980s, the priests of St. Mary's donned hard hats and worked side-by-side with parishioners to construct a spacious modern church. Like Father Cahill a century earlier, they begged, borrowed, and bought materials to complete an ambitious project. Their $500,000 frame structure was completed in 1985 with a high cathedral ceiling and a stained glass window, depicting St. Mary, behind the altar. In the distance loom the shimmering peaks of the Ten Mile Range, sporting ski slopes and lavish new resorts, shopping areas and condominiums that now eclipse old mining ruins. Since 1986, St. Mary's and its Summit County satellite missions at Dillon, Keystone, and Copper Mountain have been the bailiwick of Father Thomas Mosher.