Craig Daily Press

Courtesy photo

Rosetta Webb is in the right of this photo of a pioneer picnic that was held in the City Park about 1913.

Craig — Many of Craig’s residents enjoy the benefits of our public library and City Park, but few know how either of these facilities came to be, or that they both may be credited to one determined lady with a lot of community spirit.

Rosetta Webb was born in Clayton County, Iowa, on Sept. 25, 1857. She came to the eastern slope of Colorado as a teenager and soon married a young man of the area. After her marriage, Rosetta was not content to just stay at home, and became the assistant postmaster of Longmont.

She also was active in the Democratic Party, and in this capacity she met many prominent people who would remain her friends and acquaintances for the rest of her busy life.

After she left the postal service, she served for three years as a matron at the Colorado Penitentiary. She found time to be a mother as well as a career woman — a skill that would serve her well as the years unrolled.

In 1898, her husband was assigned to work on an irrigation project north of Craig. He left his family on the eastern slope to take the job, not knowing that it would be the last time he would see them. He died of unknown causes soon after his arrival.

Most women would avoid a strange town where their husband had died alone, but Rosetta wasn’t most women. She soon moved to Craig and went into the hotel business. The Webb Hotel on the corner of what is now Yampa Avenue and Victory Way, quickly gained a reputation for clean rooms, comfortable beds and good food. Many meetings held in her dining room would be pivotal in the development of the growing community. She kept up the hotel for 17 years before trying her hand at other endeavors.

She dabbled in real estate sales through the years but should be best remembered for two of her many projects undertaken to build the rough frontier town into a complete city. When her daughter died in 1926, Rosetta could easily have packed up and left, but instead she continued to throw her energies into building the town’s social structure.

She organized the Sunshine Club for young Craig girls in 1919. She helped them to do charitable work throughout the community and exhibited an outstanding role model that would still shine today.

Webb loved books and education. She felt that Craig needed a library and took it upon herself to bring in books from the Traveling Library Association. She began with five books, freighted in at considerable expense and slowly added to the collection in her hotel’s reading room — all available without charge to anyone who wanted to read them.

She persistently encouraged the people of Craig to form a Library Association and finally saw that entity incorporated on July 25, 1912. She asked for the privilege of donating the first volume to the newly established “official” library. Her gift was a copy of “Pilgrim’s Progress.” She served as the official librarian for several years, tending the growing library collection.

In 1913, a friend of Mrs. Webb donated 500 volumes to the library. That donation and the continued additions received from W.H. Rose and other Craig citizens brought the collection to a size that no longer fit in the hotel’s reading room. Several temporary buildings were used before the Library Association moved its collection into a former Catholic church building that had been moved to a site in the 600 block of Yampa Avenue just north of Sixth Street in 1926.

In 1921, Webb surprised Craig residents by marrying her childhood sweetheart, Edwin McKinney. They had hoped to marry as young people, but her move to Colorado had dashed that hope.

He never forgot her and after they were both widowed, he asked her to marry him. She was strong-willed enough to say that she wasn’t about to leave Craig, so he sold his holdings in Iowa and arrived in Craig determined to marry her. A week later, she became his bride and they lived happily together until his death in 1934.

Rosetta felt that in addition to a good library, the town needed a public park where people could come together to celebrate big and small occasions and relax. She was instrumental in the formation of City Park. Even after she moved back to Longmont to live with her nephew, she returned to Craig on occasion to promote the park.

Rosetta Webb-McKinney died in Jan. 3, 1940, after a long life of public service. We still can enjoy her contributions today as we celebrate Craig’s centennial.

Shannan Koucherik may be reached at honeyrockdogs@msn.com. Written for the Museum of Northwest Colorado and the Daily Press.