Heritage Train carries Ute culture

Train

wawHchuwiini (8)

June 17, 2011

photos Jeremy Wade Shockley/SU DRUM

Heritage Train still steaming from page 1

Al Harper, owner of the railroad, and many tribal elders passed the time on the train swapping stories about the good old days. Southern Ute elder Dixie Naranjo was raised just 10 miles north of Ignacio. She remembers a tipi near Trimble Hot Springs where she and her family used to stop and bless themselves at a sacred spring. Her sister, Darlene Frost, told about how she used to pack her lunch in a lard tin, and how her father warned her against building a home in the mountains because it would one day go up in fire.