The mountain submarine on display. Photo courtesy of Linda Jones
By Linda Jones
Few, if any, trucks have ever attracted so many admirers. Charlie was given a name early in his life, proof he was an extraordinary specimen and an omen of the adventurous life to follow. Charlie and the legendary Mountain Sub were reunited after 67 years on May 29.
Charlie was “born” in 1929 in a Coleman truck factory and acquired by the Public Service Company of Colorado. PSC used him to install power lines over argentine pass, 13,000 feet elevation, because he was equipped with a large winch. Jack Mackenzie, a Nederland miner, bought Charlie in the mid-1930s when he formed MacKenzie Transfer. Gomer Sterling worked for MacKenzie and later purchased the business; Sterling owned Charlie when the accompanying photo was taken.
Charlie pulls the mountain submarine from Missouri Lake in 1944.
This photo was shown around the world in the 1940s because the idea that a submarine had been built in Central City, at 8,500 feet elevation and 1,200 miles from an ocean, was such an oddity. On its maiden voyage in 1898 in Missouri Lake, a few miles from Central City, the builder, Rufus Owens, planned to go down in his Nautilus himself, but friends persuaded him to instead fill the sub with rocks for ballast. Owens did just that. The men who recently moved the rocks to the sub’s new location swear there are probably 4,000 pounds of rocks. The mountain craft submerged quickly and refused to surface. For nearly a half-century the Nautilus remained at the bottom of Missouri Lake.
During World War II interest in submarines was high and a local entrepreneur decided to raise the mountain sub and display it in his Central City museum. On the day of the raising, the Central City Schools, the county courthouse and several businesses closed for the great event. The Central City High School band stood in formation on the shore, playing Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean, as Charlie went to work to pull the submarine out, in 1944.
Once the submarine was raised, Charlie returned to the ranks of forgotten trucks. The next threads of the story began to form an incredible chain of events in 1995, a chain that twined around a man named Ken Kafka.
The summer of 1995, a friend needed to get rid of an old Coleman truck scattered around his back yard, so he asked Ken to take it because Ken collected antique trucks. The friend had acquired the truck from a sand and gravel company in Ft. Collins about 10 years prior. The gravel pit was near the Poudre River and in 1983, when the river flooded, the truck fell into the water. A series of coincidences began when Ken met Charlie – the old truck.
When Ken first saw the truck, it was actually truck pieces: a frame and axles here, the cab there, the transmission and transfer case there. Ken had no idea what the truck should look like but helped his friend clean up his yard by agreeing to take the pieces, thinking he could sell them for scrap.
After hauling the pieces to his place, Ken went to an antique truck dealership in Loveland that was advertising a Coleman truck for sale, just to see what they looked like. The dealer had a 1929 Coleman, with a “very high price” on it. Ken learned this particular truck was a four-wheel drive, which appealed to him. He mounted the rotten tires back onto it, set the cab in place and mounted an old engine onto the frame.
But then Fate went into high gear. One thing led to another and each person to another person to fill in the gaps of Charlie’s life. Ken learned his truck was serial #2226, had been made in 1929 and was a 2 1/2 ton model that should have a Buda engine. He located a man that named the exact Buda engine his truck should have and pointed out that this particular Buda model was nearly impossible to find.
Time passed. One day a man stopped by to see Ken’s railroad memorabilia and spotted the Coleman. He remembered the truck his dad had driven delivering mining machinery for Gomer Sterling and told Ken the story of the raising of the sub. Later he brought around a couple of other old-timers with memories of Charlie. Ken learned that in his Ft. Collins sojourn, Charlie helped build Horsetooth Dam and that at one time Charlie sported a front-end loader and the hoisting drum on the winch operated cables over the top of the cab.
By a series of coincidences Ken found a large 6-cylinder engine that had come from a Coleman truck and eureka – it was the exact Buda model. The carburetor was the most elusive part left to locate, but after going through shelves of old carburetors at a local junkyard, Ken saw one that had fallen behind the shelves and sure enough, it was the exact one needed. Using the old cab as a pattern, he had some parts machined and he and a friend built a new cab. They installed more than 400 rivets.
Fate again intervened in 2002 when a Christmas gift to Ken turned out to be Ken Jessen’s book Bizarre Colorado. One of the bizarre stories Jessen related was the raising of the mountain sub.
After finishing the restoration of the Coleman in 2003, Ken took it to shows around the Front Range and met the son of another man involved in retrieving the sub in 1944. This man, Joe Weaver, Jr. still has the wooden toy replica of Charlie he made when he was a boy. Ken appreciates all the friends he’s made through Charlie and learning the truck’s unusual history.
Gilpin History Museum
228 E. First High St. • Central City
The museum is located in the 1870 two-story stone schoolhouse
and displays a wealth of artifacts from the Victorian era in Gilpin County.
303-582-5283 • www.gilpinhistory.org
