Okay, so, I want you to close your eyes for a
second and just try to picture the scene. All
right, I am picturing it. It is the dead of winter
in the Colorado Rockies. We are talking mid -19th
century here, pitch black, midnight, and the
wind is just absolutely screaming. Because you
are standing at 13 ,000 feet above sea level.
Exactly. Just to set the stakes immediately here,
that is the death zone for casual hikers even
in July. Right, right. In winter. Yeah. At night.
Without... modern Gore -Tex or rescue beacons,
that is essentially a death sentence. It really
is. And in the middle of this screaming blizzard,
there is a man, and he isn't some young strapping
mountaineer. He isn't an explorer like Lewis
or Clark. He is in his 50s, maybe even pushing
60. He is all alone. And here is the kicker.
He is strapped to these massive 10 -foot -long
wooden planks. Which, I should point out, look
absolutely nothing like modern skis. They're
basically just raw lumber. Right. And he is carrying
this heavy sack of U .S. mail, a Bible, and just
to make it really high stakes, a bag of gold
dust. And as we are about to find out, he is
a Methodist preacher. That is the paradox we
are doing a deep dive into today. We are looking
at the life of John Lewis Dyer. Often known as
Father Dyer. the man who started out as an uneducated
lead miner, became a preacher, and somehow ended
up as one of the 16 founders of the state of
Colorado. Which is an incredible trajectory.
And this is my absolute favorite part of the
research we pulled, an inductee into the National
Ski Hall of Fame. Well, it sounds like a tall
tale, doesn't it? It feels very much like a Paul
Bunyan or John Henry kind of myth. Totally does.
But when you dig into the historical archives
and specifically into his own autobiography,
The Snowshoe Itinerant, you realize this isn't
a myth at all. It is a very real, very documented
case study in survival. And that is the exact
angle I want to take for our deep dive today.
Because looking at all the sources, Dyer's story
isn't just about a tough guy surviving the snow.
No, it is about adaptation. Exactly. It is about
a guy who took this incredibly weird basket of
skills led mining preaching and Norwegian skiing
technology, and combine them to solve a problem
that literally nobody else could solve. That
is the key phrase for me right there, frontier
adaptation. I mean, if you were rigid in the
19th century American West, if you tried to live
exactly like you did back East, you died. You
just didn't make it. Right. Dyer was the opposite
of rigid. He was fluid. He used whatever was
available to him. So let's rewind the tape a
bit. Before he is the snowshoe itinerant, before
the legend, who was he? Because he didn't just
come out of the womb with 10 -foot skis on. He
certainly did not. And he didn't come out with
a silver spoon either. Not at all. He was born
in 1812 in Ohio, and he grew up in Illinois.
And the sources are very emphatic about his lack
of formal education. He wasn't a scholar. No,
he wasn't sitting in a library reading Latin
theology. He was a laborer. He was working with
his hands from day one. Exactly. And this detail
is crucial. By 1833, he marries Harriet Foster,
and they move to Wisconsin. But they don't move
there to farm the land. No, they move there so
he can work in the lead mines. Okay. We really
need to pause on the phrase lead mining in the
1830s, because I feel like that sounds bad to
modern ears, but the reality was probably horrific.
It was grueling beyond belief. I mean, you have
to imagine being underground. breathing in rock
dust and actual lead particulates all day. Just
destroying your lungs. Hauling heavy ore by hand.
It is dark, it is damp, and it is incredibly
dangerous. It is physically shattering work.
So why does this matter so much for his later
life as a preacher? Because those seem like two
completely different worlds. Because it hardened
him. And I don't just mean his muscles, although
it certainly gave him incredible physical stamina.
Right. It gave him a cultural fluency with rough
men. Later on, when he walks into a frontier
mining camp in the Rockies, he isn't some prissy
cleric from the city who has never seen a callus.
He is miners hands. He knows what it's like to
be exhausted, dirty, and desperate for a drink.
That turns out to be his superpower. He could
speak their language because he had literally
lived their life. Precisely. But the shift from
a lead miner to a preacher... That usually comes
from a moment of crisis. Yes. And for Dyer, looking
at the timeline, it was tragic. It was heartbreaking.
His wife, Harriet, died very young. She was only
35. Which is just awful. And then in a blow that
just feels uniquely cruel, their infant daughter
died soon after. So he is left with five kids,
he is grieving, and he is basically alone in
the world. That is the catalyst. In the wake
of that devastation, he pivots. He decides to
join the Methodist ministry. But again, context
is everything here. He doesn't get assigned to
a nice warm church with a steeple in Boston.
No, he becomes a circuit rider. I have always
loved that term, circuit rider. It sounds like
an action movie. But for those listening who
might not know the history, what exactly was
the job description there? It was essentially
the gig economy of religion. The frontier was
moving west way faster than actual institutions
could be built. Towns were just popping up overnight.
Right. But there were no churches, no schools,
no courthouses. So the circuit riders were mobile
infrastructure. They rode a giant loop, a circuit
covering hundreds of miles. So they were constantly
on the move. Constantly. They would ride into
a settlement, marry the couples who were waiting.
baptize the babies, bury the dead, preach a sermon,
sleep on a dirt floor somewhere, and then ride
on to the next town the very next morning. And
Dyer's circuit wasn't exactly a tropical vacation
spot. We are talking Wisconsin and Minnesota.
The upper Midwest in deep winter. And this is
the moment, this is the insight that changes
everything for him, where luck meets preparation.
Yes, the Minnesota connection. While he is serving
a circuit in Minnesota dealing with impassable
roads and deep snow drifts, he encounters Norwegian
immigrants. The Norwegians. The undisputed masters
of winter. Exactly. And they introduce him to
something he had never seen before. Now, in the
historical documents, they often call them snowshoes.
Right. The terminology is a bit tricky there.
Let's be clear for the listener. These are not
the tennis racket things you strap to your boots
to walk on top of the snow. In the 1850s, snowshoe
was kind of a catch -all term, but he was actually
looking at skis. He was looking at gliders, long
wooden planks, and specifically the Norwegian
style that Dyer adopted involved skis that were
nine to ten feet long. Ten feet? I mean, I ski
on 170s, which are like five and a half feet.
Ten feet is a lumberyard strapped to your boots.
It is massive. and heavy. You didn't have fancy
release bindings. You just strapped your boots
in with leather thongs. And didn't they use just
one pole? Interestingly, yes. You usually carried
a single long pole, not two. It was used for
balance, pushing, and braking. So he learns this
totally obscure skill in Minnesota just to get
from parish to parish. It seems like a minor
detail at the time. Just a localized travel hack,
a way to get the job done. Right. But he files
it away in his mental toolkit. Fast forward to
1859. Dyer is closing in on 50 years old. In
the mid -19th century, that is astonishingly
old to be starting a brand new, dangerous adventure.
Most guys his age are dead, or at least sitting
on a porch whittling. But he gets Pike's peak
fever. He wanted to see the mountains. It is
that simple human curiosity we talk about so
often on this deep dive. He writes that he had
a lifelong desire to see the snowy peaks. So
he heads to Colorado. And when he gets there,
he isn't landing in Denver as we know it today.
He heads straight for the chaos. Lake County,
Summit County, Park County. The really high country.
The rough country. These were mining camps. Tents,
mud, whiskey, violence, and a lot of desperation.
There was no law, really. and certainly no churches.
This is where that lead mining background we
talked about earlier really pays off. I was reading
the sources about his preaching style, and it
is fascinating. He didn't wait for a building
to be constructed. No, he was incredibly pragmatic.
He preached on street corners. He preached in
tents. But the most famous detail, and the one
that really cements his legend, is that he preached
in saloons. Just imagine that scene for a second.
You have got a room full of minors, probably
armed, definitely drunk, gambling away their
week's earnings at a card table. And in walks
Father Dyer. And the bartender stops pouring,
the card games pause, and Dyer preaches. Which
begs the question, why didn't they kick him out?
Or shoot him? Right. Because he respected them.
He didn't come in wagging a finger, condemning
them for drinking or gambling. He understood
why they drank. Because he had been there. He
knew the bitter cold, the ache in the joints
from swinging a pickaxe all day, the profound
loneliness. He had empathy. He met them where
they were, literally and metaphorically. There
is a really specific detail in the notes about
the offering plate that I think captures this
environment perfectly. The gold dust. Yeah, these
guys didn't have cash. There were no banks out
there. Right. So after the sermon, they would
pass the hat. And the miners would open their
little leather pouches, their pokes, and pinch
out gold dust. And Dyer mentions in his book
that he had to get really good at reading the
dust. He had to know the quality and the value
just by looking at the grain and the color of
it. He is literally funding the church with the
raw resources of the frontier. But even with
the gold dust, the ministry wasn't paying the
bills, was it? Not nearly enough to feed a family
or sustain himself. The circuit was incredibly
poor. So Dyer needed a side hustle. The hustle
never sleeps, even in 1860. Exactly. And this
brings us to the most legendary part of his resume.
He takes a contract with the U .S. mail. Specifically,
the route between the mining camps of Alma and
Leadville. Now, for anyone listening who has
been to Colorado looking at a map, Alma to Leadville
doesn't look that far. They are right next door
to each other. As the crow flies, sure. But there
is a massive wall of rock in the way, the Mosquito
Range. And take the mail across, Dyer had to
cross Mosquito Pass. Elevation 13 ,188 feet.
It is one of the highest passes in North America.
The wind up there can strip the paint off a car.
In winter, the snow drifts can be 20 feet deep.
The geography acts like a funnel for blizzards.
And he takes the job at age 64. He was in his
late 50s and early 60s during the peak of this,
yes. He agrees to carry the mail sack, which
weighed about 25 to 30 pounds, plus gold shipments
for the miners who trusted him, plus his Bible.
This is where the Minnesota travel hack stops
being a neat trick and becomes a vital survival
system. He breaks out the 10 -foot Norwegian
skis. He makes them himself out of spruce, usually,
and he develops a strategy that is honestly terrifying
to even think about. The night travel. Yes. He
realized that during the day, the high -altitude
sun softens the snow. Even with 10 -foot skis,
you would sink into the slush. Which is exhausting.
Exhausting, wet, and incredibly dangerous because
wet snow slides. It causes avalanches. So he
just flips his schedule. He becomes a creature
of the night. He travels at night. completely
alone. That is just chilling. Literally and figuratively.
The temperature drops drastically and the snow
freezes into this hard icy crust. The skis can
glide right over the top of it. It's much faster.
But you are skiing Mosquito Pass in the dark
with a 30 -pound pack on primitive wooden planks.
If he falls? If he breaks a leg, he freezes to
death. If he slides off the trail, he falls into
a ravine. There is no GPS, no rescue helicopter,
no cell signal. He is completely, utterly on
his own. Did he ever write about the fear? I
mean, surely he was terrified sometimes. He talks
about the white death. He talks about the roaring
of the wind sounding like actual demons. Oh.
There is one story where he gets caught in a
blizzard so thick he cannot see his own hand
in front of his face. He has to keep moving to
stay warm, but he has no idea where he is going.
What did he do? He just kept shuffling. Faith
and instinct. He writes about trusting that God
and his legs. would get him to the other side.
And the wildlife. He mentions encountering wild
animals, too. Mountain lions were a very real
threat up there, but he just kept moving. It
is incredible stamina. I mean, we talk about
Ironman athletes today. This guy was doing an
Ironman every week just to deliver letters and
sermons. And getting paid an absolute pittance
for it. But that suffering earned him something
far more valuable than money. It earned him the
title father. I really wanted to ask about that.
He is a Methodist. Methodists don't use the title
Father. That is a Catholic or Anglican terminology.
Exactly. Methodists are usually reverend or pastor.
The fact that the miners who are from all over
the world, many of them Catholic, many of them
nothing at all, called him Father Dyer is huge.
It wasn't a theological title at all. No, it
was a tribal one. He was the patriarch of the
camp. He's the guy who brought you news from
home, who carried your gold safely, who held
your hand when you were dying of pneumonia. and
who risked his own life to do it. That totally
transcends any denomination. He belonged to them
and they belonged to him. He didn't just survive
the camps though. We have to talk about the church
in Breckenridge because he actually started building
civilization. It is a great example of his DIY
attitude. He buys a lot on French Street in Breckenridge.
He doesn't hire a contractor, he builds the chapel
himself. Hand -hewn logs. Mostly, yes. And we
had the specific details from the sources. It
was 50 by 25 feet with 16 foot ceilings. That
is a solid permanent structure. He holds the
first service there in August of 1880. He is
68 years old at this point. Most people are really
slowing down by then. And that service... is
historically significant. It marks the first
service held in a proper religious building on
the western slope of Colorado. He was planting
a flag. He was planting the flag of permanence
in a transient world. He was saying, we aren't
just camping here anymore. We are living here.
You would think at 68, after building a church
and skiing over mountain passes, he would settle
down. But the timeline here is wild. He gets
married again. He does. To a widow named Lucinda
Rankin in 1870. And they stay incredibly active.
In his 70s, they moved to Denver. And this is
where his legacy shifts from a local mountain
legend to a true state icon. The State Senate
gets involved. In 1885, The Colorado Senate appoints
John Lewis Dyer as its very first chaplain. Just
think about that arc for a second. He starts
in the toxicity of the lead mines, preaches in
saloons filled with smoke and whiskey, skis through
blizzards completely alone, and ends up praying
over the Senate floor. It is a complete integration
of the rough frontier experience into the official
polished history of the state. He wasn't just
a guy who lived there. He was one of the actual
architects of the culture. And that is literal,
right? He is considered a founder. One of the
16 founders of the state of Colorado. That is
the official list. Incredible. If you go to the
state capital in Denver today, look up at the
dome. There are stained glass portraits of the
founders. Dyer is up there. Immortalized in glass.
And immortalized in geography, too. There is
a Father Dyer Peak in the Ten Mile Range. There
is a ghost town called Dyersville. There is a
Father Dyer campground near Turquoise Lake. His
name is written onto the land itself. But the
accolade that really makes me smile, and I think
the one that fits our deep dive theme of surprising
facts, the absolute best, is what happened in
1977. The Hall of Fame. The Colorado Ski and
Snowboarding Museum Hall of Fame. It is brilliant.
You walk into that Hall of Fame and you see Olympic
downhill racers, X Games gold medalists, industry
titans, the guys who invented modern bindings,
and a 19th century Methodist preacher standing
right alongside them. Does he deserve to be there
though, honestly? 100%. Look, he wasn't doing
tricks in a half -pipe, but he demonstrated the
sheer utility of skis in the Rockies before anyone
else. He proved you could conquer the winter
terrain. He showed that the snow wasn't a barrier?
It was a highway, as long as you had the right
tools and the guts to use them. There is even
a race named after him now. The Father Dyer Postal
Race. It is a ski mountaineering race in North
America. Yeah. Which is fitting because it is
grueling. If you were going to honor Dyer, it
has to hurt a little bit. It has to be high,
cold, and difficult. Exactly. Sadly, Father Dyer
did eventually pass away in 1901 at the age of
89, which frankly is a remarkably ripe old age
for a guy who spent his entire life doing wildly
dangerous things. It is a testament to his toughness.
So let's zoom out for a second. We have covered
the mines, the tragedy, the skis, the mail route,
the legacy. When you step back and look at the
whole picture of John Lewis Dyer from all these
sources, what is the core takeaway for you? For
me, it comes back to that idea of applied knowledge.
Dyer's life was a collection of seemingly random
disconnected experiences. Lead mining. A profound
personal tragedy. A random encounter with Norwegians
in Minnesota. There are pieces that just don't
seem to fit together at all, like a jigsaw puzzle
from three completely different boxes. Right.
But when he faced the ultimate challenge mosquito
pass, the need to connect with rough miners,
the need to survive the brutal winters, he didn't
try to force a standard textbook solution. He
reached into his past. He reached into his past
and pulled out the specific tools he needed.
He combined the toughness of the minor with the
tech of the Norwegians and the deep faith of
the preacher. He didn't compartmentalize his
life. He didn't say, well, skiing is just something
I did in Minnesota. It doesn't apply out here
in Colorado. Exactly. He used all of it. And
I think that is why he survived when so many
others just packed it in and went back east.
He was adaptable. He let his past inform his
present survival. It really challenges the way
we think about our own useless skills, doesn't
it? It really does. Because we all have those
random things we learned years ago. We all have
a weird job we had for six months, a hobby we
dropped, a random fact we picked up, a language
we studied for one semester in college. And we
tend to think of them as wasted time. But Dyer
proves that nothing is wasted if you can just
find the right application for it. So here's
the thought I want to leave you with today. John
Lewis Dyer took a skill he learned from immigrants
in Minnesota skiing and he used it to conquer
the Rocky Mountains when absolutely nothing else
worked. He had the solution strapped to his feet
before he even knew what the problem was going
to be. The 10 -foot ski. The 10 -foot ski. So
what is your 10 -foot ski? What unique background
experience or random skill or seemingly useless
bit of knowledge do you possess right now that
might actually be the key to overcoming the massive
mountain standing in front of you? You might
be far more prepared than you think. You just
have to be willing to put the skis on. That is
a great place to end. That's it for this deep
dive into the snowshoe itinerant. Thanks for
listening and we will see you on the next one.