President Grant appointed J. M. Hanks as the first postmaster. For several weeks after the appointment, he could find no building suitable for a postoffice and carried the mail in his pockets and handed it out on the streets when he saw any of the addressees. Mail services were few and far between in the winter of 1875 and ’76. Twice, Big Alec Fleming brought in on his back a load of mail from Del Norte, wearing snow shoes or skis nearly every foot of the way. Our first school was started this year. When the town was laid out, a lot on the corner of Snowden Avenue and Eleventh Street had been set aside for school purposes. The school served as a church or for any public gathering, and was a low, log building. In 1887 the school record states they had six visitors and 144 cases of tardiness. In 1879, the census showed forty pupils between the ages of six and twenty-one, and by 1890, the total school attendance was 153. The start of the Durango-Silverton road was made in 1875. A crude mountain road reached from the present site of Rockwood for about sixteen miles to the top of Coal Bank Hill. Here the road ceased and the Old Ute Trail was used by pack animals for the remaining fourteen miles into Silverton. The old trail was used until about 1877 or ’78 when a prospector, with the help of others, built a toll road up the Animas Canyon. The road started north of Rockwood, crossed the site of what is now Lake Electra, then made a drop of 2,000 feet in a distance of one and a half miles to the bottom of the canyon. Here it crossed Cascade Creek at its junction with the Animas and continued up the river to Silverton, making many crossings along the way. A toll gate was located at the entrance to the canyon near the Champion Mine. There was also a toll gate at Baker’s Bridge below Rockwood, and the fee was $3.00. Many parts of the old road can still be seen from the train. [Illustration: State Highway Approaching Silverton from Durango to the South. Approximate Site of the Old Toll Gate] Otto Mears, known as the Pathfinder of the San Juan, laid out a system of toll roads through the San Juans, branching in all directions from Silverton—up the river to Eureka and Animas Forks, over the Ophir Range, down the San Miguel River to the Dallas, across to Telluride and again across to Rico and Rockwood, and from Silverton to Ouray—four hundred miles, mostly toll. Like networks these roads were, and are, of untold benefits. In 1875 Mears was paid the grand sum of $600.00 for building a road up the Animas River from Silverton to Howardsville, Eureka, Animas Forks, and Mineral Point, apportioned as follows: Silverton to Howardsville, $150.00; Howardsville to Eureka, $150.00; and from Eureka to Mineral Point, $300.00.