Osgood Castle/Cleveholm Manor/Redstone Castle

 Osgood Castle/Cleveholm Manor/Redstone Castle

Construction of a mansion on the Crystal River also began in 1899. The mansion was named Cleveholm Manor, using his nickname, Cleve, and holm meaning “alongside a river.” The Castle was built as a hunting retreat, and constructed of large stone blocks hand-cut and quarried from the nearby sandstone cliffs. No expense was spared as the finest craftsmen of the era built the towering mansion on a sloping hillside in the Crystal River valley.

Entering the Castle today is like entering another time. The main residence offers 23,000 sq. ft. of living space, with 66 rooms that range from an English-style Great Hall and a Russian-inspired formal dining room to a delicate Ladies’ Drawing Room decorated in the French style of the era. Oversized claw-foot bathtubs grace the bathrooms, and Persian carpets embellish the floors. An estimated 60% of the original furnishings remain at the Castle today.

John Cleveland Osgood

John Cleveland Osgood (March 6, 1851 – January 3, 1926) was a self-made man who founded the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company and Victor-American Fuel Company but has been referred to as a robber baron. He also created Redstone, Colorado.

THIS PLACE IS HAUNTED?

The historic manor is haunted.

"I can attest to that," said Sue McEvoy.

For the past nine years, McEvoy has been curator for the castle in the mountains above Carbondale.

She says guests have reported strange incidents. There's also a legend that spirits hover in a secret passageway that connects the nursery

to the servant's quarters. But what spooks McEvoy, who has lived on the property for six years, is the ghostly cigar smoke.

A turn-of-the-century robber baron, John Cleveland Osgood, completed the 42-room English Tudor manor in 1902 for the then-outlandish

sum of more than $2.5 million.

He reportedly wanted to impress fellow industrialists such as J.P. Morgan, Jay Gould, John D. Rockefeller and President Teddy Roosevelt.

Osgood, who made his fortune in coal and steel, died in 1927. But McEvoy thinks he's still floating around. She believes she has smelled his

cigar smoke.

"The door to his bedroom was closed, the windows were open, I could smell cigar smoke, but no one else was on the property," she said.

Harte smoked, drank and partied heavily. His life's pressures accelerated when he bought the historic property.

There's also no such thing as ghosts. But they reportedly haunt Redstone Castle anyway.

Maybe Osgood and Harte are having a smoke together right now.

Al Lewis' column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-820-1967 or alewis@denverpost.com.

Located on 150 acres only 45 minutes from Aspen, 30 minutes from Glenwood Springs and 15 minutes above Carbondale on Hwy. 133.
Castle access is only available thru scheduled tours.

Join us and step back in time...

Industrialist John Cleveland Osgood came to Colorado in 1882, and some say he hasn’t left.

Osgood and his second wife, Alma, are said to make the occasional trip from beyond the grave to the Redstone Castle, the enormous home

they occupied during the rise of Osgood’s Redstone coal mining operation.

Cleveholm Manor, the 42-room Tudor-style mansion that Osgood built as the fifth wealthiest man in the country, was completed in 1902. After

purchasing a mining claim in the Crystal River Valley for just $500, Osgood set up the entire town of Redstone as a community for the men

who would mine the land’s coal.

Hundreds of people still tour the castle each year, to hear the story of Osgood, his succession of three wives, the dissolution of his coal

empire and the continuing saga of the castle.

Someone with such a strong tie to a place may leave behind an impression: Castle caretaker Sue McEvoy says John Osgood loved cigars,

and she and many others have smelled cigar smoke during moments alone in the mansion.

Osgood’s first wife, romance writer Irene, died before the castle was completed. His second wife, Alma, was known as “Lady Bountiful” by

Redstone villagers because of her generosity. During the castle’s time as a lodge, some guests reported smelling perfume or the scent of

lilacs in winter when they stayed the night in Alma’s room.

When the mansion was put on the market in the 1980s, potential buyers brought in psychics to probe for evidence of paranormal activity.

McEvoy says the “experts” didn’t seem to find much, although there were reports of a “presence” in the Teddy Roosevelt Suite.

Even so, McEvoy says workers at the castle believe John Osgood and Alma come back to check on the mansion they lost.

“I have often had people on the tour who said their mother, aunt or grandmother worked for the owners in decades past,” McEvoy says.

“Once a woman told me about a housekeeper who saw someone in the mirror in Lady Bountiful’s room, and refused to ever come back.”

McEvoy tries not to think about the strange tales while walking through the darkened mansion, especially when the eyes of John Cleveland

Osgood’s portrait in the entry hall follow her up the stairs.

“I have a certain respect for this house,” she says.

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The Aspen Times, Saturday-Sunday, November 1-2, 2003

C Fewell  |  September 24, 2016 at 11:42 pm

I saw a female ghost at Redstone Castle approx. 12 years ago. It was the first and only time I’ve seen a ghost! I was on a business trip on the western slope the 7-10 days before Thanksgiving. It was cold and there was snow on the ground. After making several business stops around the area, Pagosa Springs, etc… I decided to spend the night at the Redstone Inn/Castle since I had an appointment w/ a small business in Redtone the following day. The Inn was practically deserted and I got a room on a floor all to myself, according to the receptionist. At the time, I thought, ‘Cool, I get the whole floor to myself!’ After dinner, I took a history book I had brought along and settled down next to the main fireplace and read for over 2 hours. I was really enjoying the ambiance of the Inn/Castle. That evening, I went to bed and fell sound asleep. At approximately 4am (guessing at the time), I awoke suddenly feeling there was a presence in my room. I looked ahead and saw a woman, dressed in a long skirt with a long sleeve shirt tucked in (1800’s period clothing) standing in the doorway between the room and bathroom. Her hair was in a bun. She was watching me. I sensed that she meant no harm and was benign; she just wanted me to know of her presence. Regardless, I was scared shitless! I pulled the covers over my head and remained frozen in fear until approx. 7am when the sun rose! ha, ha. It’s funny now but it wasn’t at the time. When I checked out, I told the front desk/check-out clerk of my experience. She said others have reported ghosts but not a woman.

lesli  |  June 15, 2018 at 10:02 pm

No question in my mind a woman ghost is there! I was in Redstone with my kids and mother in 1994. We stayed on (I think the third floor). In the middle of the night I felt a woman’s hair wipe across my face. It was odd because I was dead asleep and somehow knew it was a woman’s hair. I also somehow knew it was red hair. It was terrifying since no one else was awake – it was so bizarre that I was so sure that I knew what it was that awakened me. I’ve never forgotten it and always have known that a woman ghost lives in the Osgood castle in Redstone.

Becky Spiess  |  September 22, 2019 at 2:08 am

My husband and I spent a night in the Redstone Castle in May of 1997. In the middle of the night, about 3:00 am, I awoke from a nightmare and was lying awake processing when, suddenly, a newspaper that was sitting on the bottom of the bed flew across the room and landed on the floor on my husband’s side of the bed. Neither of us had kicked the newspaper. I had been lying perfectly still. I thought my husband was asleep, but he had also been lying awake and witnessed the flying newspaper. It terrified us. We waited restlessly for the sub to come up, then we got up and packed. We went downstairs and ate breakfast and spent some time in the library. We felt the eerie presence of someone there, so we left the castle quickly. The castle is historic and beautiful, but I’m not sure we will have the nerve to stay there again.

Brady H.  |  September 18, 2018 at 12:14 pm

This is about 2002 if I remember correctly. I smelled the smoke in the hallway adjoining the master bedrooms in the Castle and I was touched up one arm and down the other and had my hair tugged a bit ( I had a really long, braided pony tail at the time) in Lady B’s sitting room. The tour guide tried to blow it off in front of the other guests but at the end of the tour she told us some of her experiences. All of my pictures there turned out normally but Hotel Colorado is another story.

If anyone has a reason to Haunt a place it would be JC Osgood. If you read his biography: John Cleveland Osgood  you will see he was a very dynamic by adopting welfare capitalism he was working under the idea that a happy content worker is a more productive worker, but as he aged his way of thinking changed. By 1913 it came to a boiling point. 

A collier strike at other Colorado mines left CF&I financially weakened, and Osgood successfully defended a takeover bid by John W. Gates of Chicago. However, billionaire John D. Rockefeller and heirs of Jay Gould eventually won a stock war in 1903.

Osgood had lost control of CF&I, but he still owned the town of Redstone and Cleveholm. The new CF&I management was unsupportive of social programs, and Osgood was forced to abandon his experiment, devoting no time to the endeavor, and no subsequent social programs were ever attempted. To combat unionization, he used violence to intimidate union organizers and members, imported unskilled immigrants, hired ethnic or racial groups that disliked each other, became influential in local and state governments, and colluded with other mine operators.

There was a general mine strike throughout Colorado from 1913-14. By this time, John D. Rockefeller Jr. controlled CF&I, but for the most part, he was an absentee owner.

The three largest mining companies involved, Colorado Fuel and Iron, Victor American, and Rocky Mountain Fuel, had a joint committee for establishing policy concerning the strike, but Osgood was the dominant voice. Osgood organized a publicity campaign to discredit the workers and union. He pressured Colorado Governor Elias M. Ammons to deploy the National Guard to the mines. Following the strike, he used his influence to persuade the judiciary to prosecute strikers. The reforms proposed by Rockefeller were delayed at Osgood's insistence. Rockefeller speculated that Osgood was trying to embarrass Rockefeller into selling his ownership of CF&I back to Osgood.

Ruins of the Ludlow Colony near Trinidad, Colorado, following an attack by the Colorado National Guard. Forms part of the George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress.

The Ludlow Massacre was a mass killing perpetrated by anti-striker militia during the Colorado Coalfield War. Soldiers from the Colorado National Guard and private guards employed by Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) attacked a tent colony of roughly 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Approximately 21 people, including miners' wives and children, were killed. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., a part-owner of CF&I who had recently appeared before a United States congressional hearing on the strikes, was widely blamed for having orchestrated the massacre.

The Ludlow tent colony prior to the massacre. The caption reads: "Ludlow, a canvas community of 900 souls, was riddled with machine guns shooting 400 bullets a minute. Then the tents were burned. The site is private property leased by the miners' union, which has supported the colony seven months."

The massacre was the seminal event of the 1913–1914 Colorado Coalfield War, which began with a general United Mine Workers of America strike against poor labor conditions in CF&I's southern Colorado coal mines. The strike was organized by miners working for the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company and Victor-American Fuel Company. Ludlow was the deadliest single incident during the Colorado Coalfield War and spurred a ten-day period of heightened violence throughout Colorado. In retaliation for the massacre at Ludlow, bands of armed miners attacked dozens of anti-union establishments, destroying property and engaging in several skirmishes with the Colorado National Guard along a 225-mile (362 km) front from Trinidad to Louisville. From the strike's beginning in September 1913 to intervention by federal soldiers under President Woodrow Wilson's orders on April 29, 1914, an estimated 69 to 199 people were killed during the strike. Historian Thomas G. Andrews has called it the "deadliest strike in the history of the United States."

The Ludlow Massacre was a watershed moment in American labor relations. Socialist historian Howard Zinn described it as "the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history". Congress responded to public outrage by directing the House Committee on Mines and Mining to investigate the events. Its report, published in 1915, was influential in promoting child labor laws and an eight-hour work day. The Ludlow townsite and the adjacent location of the tent colony, 18 miles (29 km) northwest of Trinidad, Colorado, is now a ghost town. The massacre site is owned by the United Mine Workers of America, which erected a granite monument in memory of those who died that day. The Ludlow tent colony site was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 16, 2009, and dedicated on June 28, 2009. Subsequent investigations immediately following the massacre and from modern archeological efforts largely support some of the strikers' accounts of the event.

Sketch of the massacre from 1914, by Morris Hall Pancoast. Woman gasps for air while tents burn and Colorado state militiamen fire their rifles.

Underground shelter in which women and children died during a fire set by the Colorado National Guard.

photo of John C. Osgood, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Victor-American Fuel Company

Osgood married three times, but fathered no children. He and Lucille, his third wife, returned to Redstone in 1925 when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Osgood died at Cleveholm in 1926 and his ashes were scattered throughout the Crystal River valley.

(personal opinion of the blogger: "If I had that massacre on my conscious I would be afraid to move on." )

No wonder the waft of cigar smoke circulates through the air. If it is Mr. Osgood he doesn't seem to be malevolent. He is just wondering around the beautiful home he created clearing his mind perhaps.