This week in Aspen history

“A missile of destruction,” asserted a headline in the Aspen Daily Times on Sept. 30, 1885.

“About noon Monday, the miners living in a cabin at the foot of Aspen mountain, just opposite the Pride of Aspen mine, were startled by a noise as of something rushing at a fearful speed down the side of the mountain. They ran to the door to see what it was, when they beheld a huge boulder weighing nearly 1000 pounds coming down the mountain side at a terrible rate of speed. As it proceeded in its fearful course, it gathered velocity until it made great jumps of twenty feet, digging holes in the solid earth and shattering stones and rubbish in every direction. The men watched it as it tore down through the quaking asps, and wondered if it would stop before it got to the bottom. On it came gathering speed with every jump, until it reached the foot of the mountain. A small frame cabin stood in its path and it dashed against the side of the house, breaking a great hole in the wall as if an immense cannon ball had struck the frail building. It rushed through the house, and in its exit tore another gaping hole on the opposite side and rested like an exhausted monster on the ground a few feet away. A man named Fuller, who was sweeping out the cabin at the time, barely had time to get out of the path of destruction before the crash came. If the boulder had struck him there would not have been a whole bone left in his body. By some means it had broken loose from the outcroppings of the Pride of Aspen mine, more than 1,000 feet up the precipitous mountainside and had come down carrying destruction to everything in its way until it reached the valley beneath.”