Father Dyer: The Snowshoe Preacher of the High Passes

In the eighteen sixties, the miners scattered through these gulches were rough, isolated, and far from any church. Into that world came a wiry Methodist preacher named John Lewis Dyer, and he became a legend. Dyer reached the Breckenridge mining camps in the early eighteen sixties and set out to bring the gospel to men living in canvas tents and log shanties across the frozen high country.

The problem was the snow. Colorado winters buried the trails for months. So Dyer learned from Norwegian immigrants how to make and ride long wooden skis, which everyone then called snowshoes.

Some accounts put them at ten feet, some at twelve. On these he glided over the passes, often setting out at two in the morning when the snow crust was hard enough to hold his weight. To earn a little money, he took a contract carrying the mail on skis over Mosquito Pass, a route above thirteen thousand feet that ranks among the highest ever regularly crossed in North America.

He would preach at one end, ski the mail over the mountain, and preach again at the other. Late in life he wrote his memoir, The Snow-Shoe Itinerant. Today he is honored as one of the founders of Colorado, with his likeness set in stained glass in the dome of the State Capitol in Denver.