Perhaps this man has come along in the person of Frank E. Kistler who has purchased the Osgood Estate and is busily engaged restoring the property and making it into an all-year resort. He has added 36 rooms to the already 40-room inn, built a glass enclosed swimming pool, and constructed a children’s playground. He is selling home sites, erecting homes, building a ski course, golf course, tennis courts, and minor auxiliary recreational facilities.
Four miles below Redstone the Crystal River runs through a district that contains several hot mineral springs that have medicinal value comparable to any in the United States.
Soon the canyon widens, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, into fertile meadows especially adapted to raising strawberries, raspberries, cherries, and apples. A little farther on there are large ranches bordering it. These raise potatoes, oats, alfalfa, and hay; they all depend on the never failing Crystal River for irrigation. It also runs through several stock (sheep and cattle) ranches before it reaches the Roaring Fork River below Carbondale, then, on to join the Colorado River below Glenwood Springs, thence to the Pacific Ocean.
[Illustration: MT. SOPRIS—a majestic lone sentinel guarding the lower Crystal River Valley, as seen from the highway below Carbondale. —_Photo courtesy_ John B. Schutte, Glenwood Spgs., Colo.]
Theodore (Sgt.) Jackson of Paonia, Colo., owns a cabin in Schofield and keeps sixteen horses there during the summer for conducting tourist trips to many remote points in the mountains.
The Cristenson Brothers graze 1,500 sheep every summer in the mountain meadows high above Crystal City. They say this is the most ideal spot for sheep grazing they have ever seen.
Ward C. Canaday, at one time president of Willys-Overland Motors, owns several mining claims above Crystal and some buildings and lots in the village. He expects that someday they will warrant his holding them the past 20 years.
The Collins, Tidwells, and Fowlers are holding on to all their mining claims and town property in Crystal City. They say if they never realize all their investment, they will at least always have a wonderful place to spend their vacations.