Picture a rugged one-ton Ford Model TT rolling across the plains in 1925. Its wooden sides shouting painted promises of “cool mountain air,” “no mosquitoes,” and “a place for a summer home.” It wasn’t just hauling cargo; it was carrying a dream. Behind the wheel sat George A. Mayes of Cuchara Camps, a man who turned his quest for health into a mission to share the mountain life he’d found. This was more than a truck. It was Cuchara’s first marketing campaign on wheels, rumbling from Colorado into Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas with a message of beauty, rest, and belonging. What began as one man’s drive for personal renewal became the vehicle that would introduce the Cuchara Valley to the wider world.
Wheels of Persuasion
Mayes took his truck beyond the valley, turning it into a traveling advertisement that carried the promise to Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and elsewhere.(1) By doing so, he carried the message of Cuchara’s clean mountain air, resort cabins and summer homes directly to prospective visitors and buyers, rather than waiting for them to discover the place.
George Mayes’s box truck wasn’t just transportation. It was his message on wheels, painted with bold slogans and mountain dreams. Painted across its sides were slogans that captured imaginations: “A Cool Delightful Climate,” “A Place for a Summer Home,” “Good Water, Sewer System, Lights, and Public Parks,” “No Hayfever, No Asthma, No Malaria, No Mosquitos at Cuchara Camps,” and “Spend Your Outing Amid Flowers and Perpetual Snow.” The slogans promised everything short of eternal youth, though after a few Cuchara mornings, Mayes might have claimed that too.From trout fishing and cabins for rent to the lure of Blue Lakes and perpetual cool air, Mayes turned his truck into a moving invitation. It was an early twentieth-century marketing marvel that sold not just land, but a lifestyle in the heart of the Rockies. When people see old photos of Mayes’s truck, they often wonder why a “billboard” needed windows and curtains. The answer is classic George Mayes: it wasn’t just a billboard, it was also his camper. He built the box to pull double duty: advertisements on the outside, accommodations on the inside. Only George could turn a marketing campaign into a mobile cabin, promoting Cuchara by day and avoiding hotel bills by night.
Mayes advertising truck evolved over time and pictures are rare. I eventually tracked down a rare photograph of one of the truck’s earliest incarnations back when George Mayes boldly painted “The Comet” across the front billboard.(2) The name is wonderfully ironic: a Ford Model TT could barely top 20 miles per hour, yet in the early automobile era “comet” was a favorite nickname for anything meant to feel fast, bright, or full of purpose. In Colorado and throughout the American West, the word carried a frontier flair, evoking something spectacular streaking across the landscape.(3) By christening his rolling advertisement "The Comet", Mayes wasn’t claiming speed, he was implying boldness, imagination, and momentum. Instead of depending on word of mouth from nearby ranch or mining towns, Mayes’s kind of grassroots outreach was almost unheard of in rural Colorado during the 1920s. It was ahead of the times and what helped put Cuchara on the map. But behind the slogans and fresh paint was something deeper than salesmanship, it was the outgrowth of a personal story that would soon reshape the valley itself.
Personal Retreat to Planned Resort
What began as one man’s search for healing soon ignited a movement. Around 1908, George Mayes came to the valley seeking relief for his health, but what he found was inspiration. Within just a couple of years, his personal retreat evolved into a vision for community. By about 1910, he was building cabins and promoting what became Cuchara Camps, transforming his quest for recovery into a legacy that would shape the valley for generations.(4) In the early 1900s, Cuchara wasn’t yet a resort community in the modern sense. It was rugged, remote, and seasonal. But by the mid-1920s, Mayes was marketing it as a destination: summer cabins, healthful retreat, property prospects. The truck embodies that shift from hosting a few guests to actively cultivating a “summer home” culture.
As one digital timeline notes: “Mayes turned a truck into an advertising billboard he used to promote the Cuchara Camps.”(5) What began as a vision of community soon produced tangible results by drawing people, investment, and new infrastructure into the Cuchara Valley.
An Affordable Dream in the Rockies
One of the most distinctive aspects of Cuchara’s story was that Mayes democratized the mountain resort experience. His vision wasn’t luxury, it was accessible beauty for working families who longed for an affordable mountain escape. He offered blue-collar people a chance to breathe fresh alpine air, rest from the grind, and experience the beauty of Colorado without the price tag or pretension of elite resorts. Ironically, the same quality that made Ford’s Model TT so popular among working men, its rugged affordability, also helped Mayes bring affordable vacations within their reach. Because his truck was inexpensive to buy and maintain, he could travel the region promoting Cuchara Camps himself, driving through small towns and county fairs instead of paying for costly advertisements in urban papers. His rolling billboard was painted with plainspoken promises like “A Cool Delightful Climate” and “No Hayfever, No Mosquitos”. It had a kind of homespun credibility that glossy resort brochures lacked. People trusted the message because it came from someone who looked and lived like them.
That authenticity paid off. As his truck carried the dream of Cuchara Camps to everyday families across Colorado, Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma, it drew carpenters, clerks, and teachers rather than millionaires. Because his advertising costs were low, his cabin lots stayed within reach of ordinary households. The movement fed on itself: affordable promotion led to affordable land, which led to modest, owner-built cabins and a resort culture that felt more like a neighborhood than a luxury retreat.
By 1910 is documented: by then, “several summer cabins had been built and Cuchara became a community, at least in the summer.”(6)
The Truck That Time Remembered
Today, much of that early growth can only be traced through fragments of old photos, records, and a few surviving artifacts. Among them, one stands out above all: the truck itself. It’s a curious twist of history that George Mayes himself has nearly vanished from the photographic record, yet his truck endures. Though images of the man are rare, tangible proof of his advertising vehicle survives with undeniable clarity. In a way, it’s poetic: the very machine he used to spread the word about Cuchara Camps has outlived his own likeness. History often loses what we wish it would keep, but somehow, by a stroke of serendipity, the truck that carried his dream through the plains remains. Mayes truck is an iron witness to the legacy of a man we can scarcely picture, but whose vision still drives Cuchara’s story forward.After over a century of speculation, the paper trail has finally caught up with the legend. Thanks to the sharp eyes and persistence of Angie Glover, a century-old treasure emerged from the archives. She found a genuine bill of sale that brings the story full circle.(7) The document now confirms that George A. Mayes of Cuchara Camps bought a brand-new Ford Model TT one-ton truck, not a hand-me-down or converted car, from the La Veta Automotive Company on May 11, 1925. La Veta Automotive, also known as Roush’s Garage, once stood at the northeast corner of Main Street and East Ryus. The structure was demolished in the early 1980s, and the site is now occupied by the City of La Veta’s Ray Ryan Maintenance Shop at 113 S. Main Street, La Veta, Colorado 81055. (8)
The bill of sale, signed by A. J. Roush, President, and notarized the same day in Huerfano County, lists the engine number 11,650,788, which Model TT production tables place squarely in May 1925.(9) The document was filed with the County Recorder’s Office (recorder #88881) on May 20, 1925. In other words, the famous Cuchara advertising truck may have rolled out of Ford’s system that very month, sold fresh off the line by “Roush’s Ford”, the small-town dealership that served La Veta throughout the 1920s. All evidence points to its origins at Ford’s Denver Branch Plant at 900 S. Broadway, the regional hub that supplied dealers across Colorado. Based on the engine number of the 1925 Ford Model TT that Mayes bought, we know it had very low gears to make up for the Model T’s small engine and the heavy loads the truck was built to carry. In practical terms, that meant it couldn’t go much faster than about 25 miles per hour.(10)
The fact that a physical vehicle, with a documented sale (May 11, 1925) and known engine/serial number, is tied to Mayes and his resort gives historians and the community credibility and a story anchor.(11) Consequently, the truck becomes more than a vehicle, it becomes a heritage artifact, reinforcing Cuchara’s identity as a mountain getaway, and early 20th-century community.
Legacy on Four Wheels
The discovery of the Mayes bill of sale doesn’t just validate a document, it restores a piece of Cuchara’s soul. Nearly a century later, that same truck still tells the story it once carried across the prairie. It reminds us that Cuchara’s rise from quiet meadow to mountain community didn’t begin with brochures or developers. It began with vision, paint, and a set of wheels.
Mayes’s Model TT embodies more than enterprise; it represents the moment Cuchara began to believe in its own future. With its serial number and bill of sale now preserved in county records, legend becomes history, and a story once told in fading memories now rests on solid ground.
The truck no longer rumbles down dusty roads, but its message endures: the mountains are still calling, and the dream that drove Cuchara’s beginning still rolls quietly through its pines.(12)
Bonus Content and Videos
BONUS 1: Check out the blog on how an exact replica of Mayes truck was built in miniature at this link, Journal 64: Re-Creating the Cuchara Camps Truck
BONUS 2: Check out this short video highlighting the proceess of the miniature replical build with a period ragtime song bed about George Mayes and his Ford Modeln TT truck.
BONUS 3: Check Out the Final Pictures of Cuchara Camps Model T Truck Miniature Recreation.
BONUS 4: Check out this short video on a working Model T test drive.
← Return to Table of Contents
Footnotes
Parenthetical numbers in the text (e.g., 5) correspond to the sequentially numbered citations listed below.
2. Cuchara Colorado Camps ‘The Comet’ Adv. Truck c 1910s RPPC Photo Postcard COPY,” eBay, last updated April 25, 2025, accessed November 27, 2025, h
ttps://www.ebay.com/itm/326550530862.
3. Horgan, Paul. Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History, vol. 2 (New York: Rinehart, 1954), 698.
7. Special thanks to Angie Glover of the Huerfano County Clerk and Recorder’s Office, whose careful archival research and enthusiasm for local history led to the discovery of the original 1925 bill of sale for George A. Mayes’s Ford Model TT truck. Her dedication to preserving Huerfano County’s historical record made this important verification possible.
8. La Veta La Veta Automotive Company, also known as Roush’s Garage or Roush’s Ford, operated in downtown La Veta, Colorado, east of the Denver & Rio Grande railroad depot and south of the railroad tracks during the 1910–1930 period. Contemporary sources indicate that the garage stood south of the tracks at the north end of Main Street. An April 1918 news note reports that owner Allen Roush was “moving his auto company into the La Veta Garage next to the railroad tracks,” clearly placing the business at the depot site (https://www.kmitch.com/Huerfano/news1915.html). Likewise, a 1927 item mentions the La Veta Automotive Co. leasing land “across the street in Railroad Park to expand the business,” confirming the garage’s location beside the railway park and station (https://www.kmitch.com/Huerfano/news1925.html). The original building was torn down in the early 1980s and replaced by a La Veta city facility called “The Ray Ryan Maintenance Shop” at 113 S. Main Street, La Veta, Colorado 81055. The garage’s proximity to the railroad is well documented in period publications, placing it literally at La Veta’s transportation hub in that era (https://www.kmitch.com/Huerfano/news1915.html and https://www.kmitch.com/Huerfano/news1925.html). This location has also been confirmed by longtime local Ron Jameson, whose grandfather, Albert Jameson, worked there (Ron Jameson, text message to the author, November 28, 2025). Mickey Schmidt further confirmed the location through an interview with his father-in-law, a 93-year-old car enthusiast who was raised in La Veta and remembers a Ford dealership with two gas pumps at that site (Mickey Schmidt, email message to the author, December 3, 2025).
9. Bill of Sale for New Motor Vehicle, One Ford Model TT Truck, Engine No. 11,650,788. May 11, 1925. La Veta Automotive Company to George A. Mayes. Recorded in Huerfano County, Colorado. Notarized by Fred Unfug. Private collection of Gene Roncone.
10. 1925 Ford Model T T (or 1926 Ford Model TT) – Original Patina – Completely Roadworthy – and NO RESERVE!,» YouTube video, 5:12, posted by F & E Collector Classic Auto Auctions, February 14, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAJaTePG2Z4
11. At this time, the engine number on Ford Model TT trucks also served as the vehicle’s identification number. The engine number on the truck purchased by George Mayes—11,650,788—reveals several details:
• Vehicle specifications: It was equipped with Ford’s standard Model T inline four-cylinder engine (176–177 cu. in., approximately 2.9 L), producing about 20 horsepower and paired with the familiar two-speed planetary transmission and one ton capacity.
• History of ownership: The bill of sale records the engine number, along with the seller, buyer, price, dealership location, model, and both the sale and county recording dates, making it a rare and verifiable piece of local automotive history.
12. Author’s note: In preparing this article, the author used AI-assisted tools for research support, proofreading, fact-checking, and stylistic refinement. The narrative, analysis, and historical interpretations are the author’s own, and responsibility for accuracy rests solely with the author. The blog’s research methodology statement is available at:
No comments:
Post a Comment