Steamboat Springs — A treasure trove of oral history capturing pioneer life in Routt County, which was originally collected in Three Wire Winter magazine in the 1970s and ’80s, has been given new life through a collaboration between the Tread of Pioneers Museum and Bud Werner Memorial Library.

The audio interviews are now poised to reach a potentially global audience of academicians and amateur genealogists through a robust and highly searchable website.


Three Wire Winter magazine was launched by two high school teachers, Bill McKelvie and Tanna Brock, both now retired, who inspired their students at Steamboat Springs High School to conduct the interviews and take the photographs.

Together, they interviewed pioneer ranch women and 10th Mountain Division soldiers who came home from World War II to build ski areas and coach Olympians. They interviewed the great intellectual rancher Farrington Carpenter and Hazie Werner, who learned midwifery at a tender age before growing up to raise her own family of Olympic skiers.


Steamboat Pilot and Today reporter Tom Ross recently sat down with Brock and McKelvie to hear them retell some of their favorite stories of the people, now long gone, who helped shape the future of the Yampa Valley.

A cover story on the project will publish in Sunday’s Steamboat Pilot.