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George The Dragon

Upon the death of my father in 1976, I became the owner of a mythical dragon we call "George". Now don't get me wrong, this is not a childs imaginary dragon, this dragon was forged from many shapes of black iron, he stands eleven (11') feet tall, he has a five (5") foot wing span, his head and torso project out from the steel pole he is wrapped around about, approximately five (5) feet and we estimate he weighs between 500-600 lbs. Our dragon is truly an example of the finest work of an Artisan Blacksmith, at the least, 100 years ago.

After we moved George from the front of my family's home to be mounted on what is now our business' office building, my wife and I began a search to try to find where George came from and who crafted him. My parents purchased George as part of a municipal water company and the water delivery system that was completed in about 1910, for a small residential subdivision in the foothills some 25 miles west of Denver, Colorado at 6820 feet elevation. George was installed at the lowest elevation in the gravity flow water system, hanging suspended from a massive rock outcropping, where from his tail spewed a stream of water into a pool below made of rose quartz, at the entrance to the subdivision. The man who did all of this was George Jarvis Bancroft. Hence, my reason for naming our dragon "George", knowing also of St. George, the dragon slayer this name seemed all the more appropriate.

Our research and interest lead us to the Redstone Valley of the Crystal River in western Colorado, where another pioneer found a source of coal to make coke for his steel mill in Pueblo, Colorado. Nearby his coal mines and beehive coke ovens at some 7020 feet elevation, John Cleveholm Osgood built a town called Redstone for his miners and their families to live in and a castle between 1898 and 1906 called "Cleveholm Manor" or the "Redstone Castle" for his new bride and he to live in a grand style. The Redstone Castle stands today intact as a National Historic Site, with its red sandstone foundation walls, white upper wooden walls, original Tiffany Co. furnishings and courtyard, containing what we believe is George's sister.

A hugh white marble block was brought from the nearby Marble Co. Mine (where the stone for many of our Washington D.C. monuments came from www.yulemarble.com), hollowed-out and placed in the courtyard as a watering trough, below the black dragon suspended by chains from above, that covered a water pipe and spews water into the trough. This dragon is smaller than George, contains more sheet metal in its body, but many parts look as though they could be exchanged between the two and match the other. Sheldon Good & Co., the realtors who completed the recent sale of the Castle this spring, said that it has always been assumed that the courtyard dragon was furnished by Tiffany Co., but our research into this has not been productive.

The tail of George is definitely typical of those on Welsh dragons and many Welsh miners were brought in to build the railroads, operate the coalmines and the coke ovens, Mr. Osgood's Redstone operation required. Many other examples of wrought iron door coverings, gates and portions of the miles of fencing that were built for the castle are still existing, so it is possible both the dragons were built at Redstone, or nearby Carbondale, but by whom? All the business records of both John Osgood and George Bancroft were destroyed after their deaths, so there is no paper trail. We know George Bancroft worked for the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co. of Osgood as a mining/civil engineer or surveyor and their families may have known each socially. Combine this personal history with the similarities of time of emergence, design and styles of implementation, installations above stone retaining basins and the spewing of water from the dragons, are all to similar to be entirely a coincidence.

Somewhere after George was crafted, someone (most likely Bancroft) added to the tubular projections above George's head a pipe fitting and from it suspended a very ornate lantern shaped lighting fixture made of finely detailed bronze castings. The lighting fixture has a base meant to mount on a ceiling and until we relocated it to my family home, it was not electrified and had porcelainized white metal panels in place of glass for its four side panels. The lighting fixture is similar to the Tiffany fixtures in the Redstone Castle.

We are hoping to discover the genealogy of George the Dragon, his sister and the lantern. Can you help us in our search? The dragons may not have been crafted in Redstone, Carbondale, or even Colorado and they may be over 100 years old, but who ever their creator was, he was a master in the craft of creating shapes from bars, rods, tubes and shapes of black iron and the lantern maker was no amateur either!

Our names are Gene and Joan Lines and we can be reached at Georgeourdragon@aol.com.

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