People

: Earl "Gene" Eugene Foster; He was born in Telluride and grew up on a homestead in the Paradox Valley area of Montrose County. He and his sister Ella often stayed with their grandparents Sarah and James Bristol while they were growing up, as their parents worked on a nearby ranch. He began working in and around the mines at the age of nine and learned to temper steel. In the 1910's, his family moved to a boarding house for miners in Bull Canyon that was owned by W.L. Cummings. There, his father John "Peg-leg" Foster and mother Laura Foster ran the boarding house. Upon his parents' divorce, Laura married John Keski, a Finnish immigrant and miner. Keski killed family friend Henry "Indian Henry" Huff in 1918, and was sent to Federal prison. Upon John Keski's release from jail, the family moved to join him in Utah, then returned shortly after to Colorado. Gene’s two years of high school in Lake City later proved invaluable in his ability to get a job at the Ames electrical plant near Telluride. There, he met his future wife Clara Milton when she came up to cook for the men at the plant while her father was there repairing damage caused by a winter storm in 1927. Earl was 19 years old at the time. They lived in quarters and then a house provided by the company for 45 years, which was the length of his employment there.