History of Telluride

Telluride's labor unrest occurred against the backdrop of a state-wide struggle between miners and mine owners. Bulkeley Wells was one of the mine operators expressing considerable hostility to the union. The leader of the Telluride Miners' Union was Vincent St. John. There developed considerable intrigue and national interest over the disappearance — Wells declared it was a "murder" — of mine guard William J. Barney. The accusations, animosity, gunplay, and expulsions which followed were one part of an ongoing struggle throughout Colorado's mining communities which came to be called the Colorado Labor Wars.

In 1891, Telluride's L.L. Nunn joined forces with George Westinghouse to build the Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant, an alternating current power plant, near Telluride. (Nunn's home can be found at the corner of Aspen and Columbia Streets; next door is the home he purchased for the "pinheads" to study hydro-electric engineering.) The hydro-powered electrical generation plant supplied power to the Gold King Mine 3.5 miles away. This was the first successful demonstration of long distance transmission of industrial-grade alternating current power and included the use of an AC induction motor, a patented design by Nikola Tesla which Westinghouse had licensed. This was an early successful hydroelectric AC power plant, predating the Westinghouse hydroelectric AC plant at Niagara Falls by 4 years. Nunn and his brother Paul built power plants in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Mexico, and the Ontario Power plant at Niagara Falls on the Canadian side. Nunn developed a keen interest in education as part of his electrical power companies, and in conjunction with Cornell University built the Telluride House at Cornell in 1909 to educate promising students in electrical engineering. Later, Nunn