It is early morning today, the 19th of June, and there is a calm about the Town. Birds are chirping, we hear no animals barking just a peaceful setting with that San Juan blue sky as our pretty ceiling.
While we did some traveling this past week we noticed that some towns are using the magnesium chloride on their streets as Rico does each early summer. It does a fine job of keeping the dust to a minimum in Town.
Right now, at this very moment, we are using the soaker hose to try to keep our sod lawn alive. Some years ago, the ongoing reclamation project replaced many lawns in Town to clean up the contaminated soil from the mining industry. The reclamation is still going full steam ahead. Anderson Engineering out of Salt Lake City is number one on this project and the project manager is Chris Sanchez. At this moment, Anderson is moving into new office quarters in the first floor of the Masonic Lodge. Wilken Construction of Cortez was the contractor who built the office spaces for Anderson Engineering. Corey Anderson and other officials are present this week to help supervise the move. It looks like this reclamation project to solve the possible contamination of our water and the contamination north of Town that exists will take a few years even as hard as the science and engineering people work to give us clean water and clean soil. We appreciate this company and what they are doing for us.
Susie and John Honeycutt, owners of the Rhode Inn located next to the Post Office, are in Town putting the Inn in good order, neat and tidy. They plan to open the Inn for long-term room rentals. If interested, please call them at 882-2144.
The Rico Historical Society has achieved another lofty goal. Mike Curran and his co-worker, Mike Lesem, with the able assistance of Todd Jones and his front-end loader, placed the original cast iron water spout in its proper place on the Rio Grande Southern water tank located at the bottom of Depot Hill. The water tank has been totally restored to its original condition and a new wrought iron fence has replaced the original chain-link safety fence. According to Frank Polzin, whose family has had a neat little cabin here in Rico for generations, kids were swinging on the water spout in the late 60s because it was hanging by a single chain or some such situation, and that is when he took action and began the saga of saving the spout for history. That was 45 years ago and at last the story has a happy ending.
Marlene Hazen has lived in Rico for two decades. An active member of the community, she participates in organizations such as the Rico Womens Club and Rico Historical Society.