Chief Ouray Named After Town

Red Mountain Dig Smashes Long Held Version

(Ironton Park) Archives exhumed from the old jail here suggest that the town of Ouray is older than previously believed and that Ute Chief Ouray was named after the mining settlement and not the other way around. According to the data Ouray was settled in 1830 by Neapolitan fur trappers from Santa Fe.

“The discovery throws our historical perspective out the window,” said D. Mickey Ratshoe Bennie, a local museum piece. “Now all the books will have to be rewritten. This really jerks my chain! Fortunately we have an idle, motivated populace that has already rolled up its sleeves and jumped into the fray.

Although the town had no charter and few dwellings in 1830, it was called Ouray, an Italian word for a preferred method of boiling pasta at higher altitudes. Three years later, when future chief, Ouray, was born in Taos, his mother looked up…saw pasta cooking over an open fire and named the lad. At the time she did not know he would become a celebrity or that the aforementioned confusion would occur.