Selections from “Of Mines & Beer!”
By Dave Thomas
In a long and very detailed letter dated December 29, 1858, to the Editor of the Omaha Times, A. O. McGrew wrote about his wagon train trip from Omaha to Denver City as well as the sumptuous libations he and many of the notables of Denver (among them Lowry, Stout, Curtis and General Larimer) enjoyed on Christmas Day, 1858. McGrew was known as “The Wheelbarrow Man” because he had pushed one more than 1,000 miles from Pennsylvania, halfway across the plains, then joined a wagon train for the rest of the journey to the “diggings” at the mouth of Cherry Creek earlier that year. Six months later, McGrew was elected as a Mountain City delegate to the State Constitutional Convention, along with the Russell Gulch delegate, William Green Russell.
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