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# COLORADO NOTES.
The corner stone of the handsome new Masonic temple at Victor was laid on the 15th.
Rev. J. B. Francolon, pastor of the parish of Manitou, has resigned his charge and left the city. He will be succeeded by Rev. John Kenny, late chaplain of Montcalm sanitarium.
The companies which had policies out on the life of Frank E. Tyler, the Kansas City man who was burned to death near Alpine, Colo., last summer, have given up the attempt to prove that the case was another Fraker swindle and will pay up.
Over one hundred residences are now under course of construction at Rocky Ford and arrangements have been made for the erection of new business blocks. The American Sugar Beet Company is pushing work on the sugar factory, 100 additional men having been put to work during the week.
The Mutual Life of New York has paid its $50,000 policy, held by the Metropolitan National bank as security for a debt, to the receiver of the bank, and the smaller policies will be paid in a day or two. Detectives have been working on the case for months, but have not been able to substantiate the fraud theory.
After considerable litigation between the Colorado & Southern Railroad Company and the city of Pueblo, the former, in consideration of the city vacating certain ground for its benefit, has made an appropriation of $5,000 to the city, to be used in the construction of the First street viaduct across the Fountain river and the Colorado & Southern tracks. Work will be resumed on the new viaduct.
What appears to have been a dastardly attempt to burn the J. J. Maher Mercantile Company's building and Masonic hall, at Ouray, was made last Tuesday night, by placing a sack saturated with kerosene in some boxes under the rear stairway and setting fire to it. About sixty ladies of the order of Rebekah were holding a banquet in the lodge room, and they discovered the fire in time to avert a catastrophe. The constable of the precinct was arrested on suspicion at midnight.
The National Beet Sugar Company, now erecting a half million dollar sugar factory, fifty miles east of Pueblo on the Missouri Pacific railroad, have 300 ment at work and expect to complete the factory by October 1st. This company proposes to raise its own beets, and has prepared about 4,000 acres of ground for this year's crop. Two trainloads of experienced beet growers will leave April 1st for Sugar City. With their arrival will be gin the planting of the first beet sugar crop in Otero county.
Colorado College has lately been offered $50,000 toward the endowment of a science building, provided $60,000 for building purposes be secured by April 1st. The unexpectedness of the offer and the shortness of the time will necessitate great and unceasing efforts on the part of the college to meet the conditions. General Palmer has given $25,000, Mr. Howbert $2,500, and other gifts bring the total up to nearly $35,000. So there remains $25,000 to be raised in two weeks.
A series of suits has been commenced in the United States courts covering the taking of timber, coal and other materials from government land. The first of the suits was filed on February 14th, when the government accused the Denver Tramway Company of cutting ties on government-land without permission. This suit includes not only the Tramway company and its officers, but also the Denver, Leadville & Gunnison railroad. The suit is a civil one for the value of the timber taken. The damages are placed at $10,489. Last Friday a second sult was filed for damages against Allen M. and E. T. Ghost, it being charged that they had taken $4,810 worth of coal from government land.
The franchise of the Ouray and Red Mountain toll road, the connecting link on the Ouray route of the circle trip so many people from all parts of the world have traveled, will expire next month. The people of Ouray county expect the company, at the head of which is Otto Mears, to give up possession at that time, although a new corporation is said to have been organized for the purpose of assuming control. A recent decision in a Clear Creek county case held that no individual or corporation could take charge of a toll road after the life of a first franchise had expired. The Ouray road has been traveled for twenty years by passengers taking the stage at Silverton, and has been a bonanza for the owners.
The Denver Republican says: Grand Junction will be colonized by Mormons. An influx of families from the city of the saints is now certain. Forty families have already made arrangements to take up in the Colorado beet sugar town. Many other families of the same faith are said to have decided to follow the forty now on the way to Grand Junction, and that Grand Junction will soon be so largely populated by Mormons that they may be able to control its politics is now thought to be highly probable. The Grand Junction sugar-beet factory is preparing to do a much larger business this year than last. Grand Junction citizens who were in Denver yesterday express the fear that too large an influx of Mormons would take the political control of affairs out of the hands of those who have lived in Grand Junction for years. An effort will be made to guard against this.
