Virginia Dale, Colorado

Colorado

The prettiest place name on Highway 287 was chosen by one of the most feared men on the Overland Trail.

historicalpeopleroadside

Virginia Dale sounds like a poem. It was named by a man called Jack Slade, who probably named it for his wife Virginia, whose maiden name may have been Dale. Slade set up the stage station here in eighteen sixty-two. He had come from Julesburg, where a man named Jules Beni shot him five times. Slade lived, hunted Beni down, and killed him. He kept Beni's ears as trophies. Before that, at Julesburg, Slade had breakfast with a young Samuel Clemens. Clemens never forgot him. He wrote about the meeting years later in Roughing It, under the name Mark Twain. Slade ran a good stage line as long as he stayed sober, and the stories about him say he rarely did. There was a saloon in LaPorte he shot up for serving whiskey to his drivers. In November of eighteen sixty-two he was fired after a drunken shooting spree at Fort Halleck. He and Virginia left for Montana.

This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
Slade probably named the post after his wife Virginia, whose maiden name might have been "Dale".

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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