The lush green meadows of the Volks' Ragged Mountain ranch are
surrounded by the majestic mountains of Colorado. Streams bring
snowmelt from the higher elevations, providing a plentiful
source of water for irrigating pastures and consumption by man
and livestock. Overhead, the blue sky is dotted with puffy white
clouds. Sounds idyllic, doesn't it? But a hundred years ago,
when George Volk Sr. brought his wife Marija to the homestead
he'd filed on in April 1911, she must have despaired at the
distance from her former home in Crested Butte. Marija, an
immigrant from Slovenia, had been helping out her aunts at their
boarding house in Crested Butte when she met George Sr. at a
Croatian hall dance. George Sr. was also an immigrant who had
arrived in Crested Butte via Allentown, Pa., where he worked in
the steel factory and studied English at night school. Every
summer, George Sr. would make the trek from Crested Butte to his
160-acre ranch below the Raggeds to clear land, build a cabin
and put up fence. In the fal