People

: Bill Masters; "When San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters first started on the job, as undersheriff in 1979, he was responsible for patrolling 800 square miles of the sparsely populated West End and sometimes wouldn’t see another car for hours. There also wasn’t a county jail at that time, meaning every person arrested was transported to Montrose, a process that could eat up hours. “It took a long time to arrest somebody, so often you just didn’t,” Masters said. “You tried to resolve things on the street. We drove people to the county line and told them never to come back. It’s probably better that we have [a jail] now.” The San Miguel County that Masters presided over in those Wild West days is very different today. He has steered the county’s law enforcement through more than three decades of changes and hopes to continue for at least four more years. On Monday, Masters announced he is running for a 10th term. Masters says law enforcement is the perfect career for him. “It’s become such a part of me, I’m not sure how I envision myself otherwise,” he said. “‘Like’ isn’t really the right word. It’s a great challenge and it just seems to be something that suits me well and I can do it well.” But it wasn’t always that way. Although Masters studied criminal justice in college, he fell into law enforcement by happenstance. In the late ‘70s Masters was running lifts and cutting trails for the Telluride Ski Resort and living in Sawpit when a rockslide crushed his car. Forced to hitchhike to town, he caught a ride from the Telluride Marshal Jim Hall to Society Turn. Hall offered Masters a job with the department on the spot. The first year was difficult, he said. Instead of heading to the state police academy, Masters was put out on patrol right away with minimal training. After a year of trial by fire, the town council sent him to the academy. While he was there, the marshal quit and moved to Grand Junction. Masters was appointed to take his place. “Just by accident I ended up working as a marshal,” Masters said. “I was just a kid. I looked like I was about 14. The miners were a tough lot and giving the marshal a hard time was one of their greatest joys.” A few years later, Masters switched over to the county sheriff’s department, and the rest is history. He became county sheriff when he was just 27 years old, replacing Fred Ellerd, and never looked back. Masters now oversees a department of 33 employees. Although there is little violent crime in sleepy San Miguel County, the region still has its issues. With roughly 40 businesses with liquor licenses in the Telluride area alone, the region has its fair share of alcohol-related problems, Masters said. He has recently pushed local lawmakers on the need for a detoxification facility in Telluride. Masters also uses social media like Twitter to communicate with county residents and videos to right wrongs. Two videos he posted to YouTube — one of an asphalt spill and one of a shooting range turned garbage dump — lead to a public outcry and resulted in their cleanup. Master’s crime-fighting philosophy is to be levelheaded and pragmatic. He penned a 2001 book, “Drug War Addiction,” about the damaging results of the war on drugs and his belief that drug prohibition should be repealed. But his philosophy is about to be tested as the experiment of marijuana legalization is just beginning. “I hope people are responsible enough that we don’t have to go back into a prohibition era, but that remains to be seen,” Masters said. “It’s an interesting experiment and it may not go well. We have to see how that plays out.” Masters, originally from the Los Angeles area, is still going strong at 62 years old. Like many Telluride locals, he falls into the super-fit category, cranking out more than 20 pull-ups at the annual Noel Night contest at Jagged Edge. “They limit it to 20, but I could keep going if I had to,” he said. Masters knows of no challengers who have thrown their hat into the ring for the sheriff race — and there’s a good chance Masters, who is running as a Democrat, will remain uncontested. The last time a candidate attempted to unseat the longtime sheriff was in 1998. But he is committed to the campaign and will plan forums and answer questions closer to the November election. If an opponent emerges, he will set up a committee and begin raising money, he said. “I really appreciate the great support from this community,” Masters said. “I’ve usually won in landslide elections … and I hope I can do that again.”--from https://www.telluridenews.com/news/article_eb3fd15c-f548-53fb-af24-5d09a4cab000.html

: Bill Matney

: Bill McCarty; A member, along with his brother Tom and son Fred, of the McCarty Gang. He was killed by Ray Simpson, a hardware store owner in Delta, Colorado, after he and the gang tried to rob the Farmer's and Merchant's Bank on September 7, 1893.