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<br />Site and Isolated Find Descriptions <br />Tltis section provides a general description of historic sites SDT122 and SDT1053, <br />prehistoric site SDT1050, and isolated finds SDT1051 and SDT1052. Cultural resources <br />locational data is provided in Appendix B. Photo plates are included that show the town of <br />Bowie and the King Mine in the early 1920's (Plates 1-4). Detailed information for the sites <br />is provided in Appendix C: CPO Site and isolated Find Forms (these appendices are <br />restricted from public publication). <br />Site SDT122 is the town site of Bowie. It is located on a terrace on the north side of <br />the Nortlt Fork of the Gunnison River at an average elevation of 5980 feet. The townsite <br />was originally recorded in 1977 as part of a survey for the expansion of Highway 133. The <br />form included only employee housing erected by the Juanita Coal and Coke Company in an <br />area that measured approximately 300 meters E-W by 250 meters N-S. Since that original <br />recording most of the houses have been removed. All that remains is the mine office, the <br />mine garage, the Bowie house garage, and the lower residential garage (Figure 2). Mttch of <br />the following description is lakcn from the original recording but written in the past tense. <br />The town was originally to be mm~ed Reading (after a siding along the railroad), and <br />then Juanita (after the Juanita Coal and Coke Company, owner of the King Mine) when they <br />• applied for cstablisltment of a post office. Both were rejected by the Postal Service because <br />of conflicts of name duplication. Finally it was called Bowie, after Alexander Bowie, the <br />general manager of the King Mine who arrived in 1906. <br />Bowie was a company town built between 1903 and 1915 to supply housing for mine <br />workers at the adjacent King Mine. The [own was located on a low hillside, about I/4 mile <br />southwest of the mine entrance. Of the town of Bowie, the original site form includes only <br />the residences, schools, and mine office/garage complex. The worker residences were <br />arranged in four rows descending the hill on the north side of the North Fork of the <br />Gunnison River (Figure 2). One row was located south of Highway 133 and consisted often <br />L-shaped frame homes that probably served as bachelor residences. Four larger homes were <br />located on the west end ol~this row. Aconcrete-walled garage for six vehicles still stands at <br />the east end of the south row of houses. North of Flighvvay 133 were three tiers of houses. <br />The bottom two rows consisted of five, one-story, square, frame homes with hipped-roofs <br />and concrete foundations. These square homes were divided in half in the frame portion <br />with two doors facing the north or uphill side. The lower (concrete) level had one door <br />facing downhill. Outhouses and wells lay down the hill from the residences. The top tier of <br />four frame homes were also L-shaped (with the short extension pointed north), and may have <br />been the more prestigious company homes. They also were built of frame construction on <br />basement concrete foundations. <br /> <br />13 <br />