Roy Ernest Crites

Roy Ernest Crites was born in Missouri in 1903. He was the son of Oscar Luther and Cora E. Crites. This Crites family was from what became West Virginia and is not directly related to the Harrison S. Crites family from Pennsylvania. Roy spent his childhood in Missouri. By 1920, his family had moved to Otero County, Colorado. At some point, Roy had his jaw broken.

This caused him to “talk funny” for the rest of his life.

In 1926, Roy Crites married Ethel Edna Zimmerman in Pueblo. She was also born in Missouri in 1906. Their son, Robert Earl was born in 1928 in Pueblo. From 1931 until 1933 Roy operated the newly opened San Isabel Lodge. A second son, Ronald Leroy was born in 1939.

Back in Pueblo, Roy was working as a truck driver in 1940. In 1942, the family was living in Rye and Roy was working for Wes McKaughan as a driver.

Allan Hart ‘Red’ Withers writes, “Roy Crites lived north of Rye. I think he rented from Frank Graham.

They always held the rodeos on Table Mountain which was part of Crites Ranch. The arena was made up of cars and wagons. After calf roping they had bronc riding. I don’t know his name but one bronc rider went between the cars and his horse bucked off the cliff into Muddy Canyon on the north. The pickup men were too slow in heading him off. Neither the horse nor rider was killed.

They were skinned up a bit.

That’s what I’d call a scary ride.”

“When Platt Rogers surveyed the new road from Rye to San Isabel, Roy drove a team of mules and a walking plow to mark out the road. I thought that was really remarkable,” Red Withers continued. “That would have killed a team of horses to do that. But mules are a lot smarter than horses. The main thing about a mule is that a mule looks out for number one, the mule. Roy Crites was the best mule skinner in the territory. Roy also used a team, a Fresno, and a plow to build the first swimming pool at Cuerno Verde. The pool was about thirty or forty feet long and about twenty feet wide. It was about four feet deep in the shallow end and ten feet deep in the deep end.”

In January of 1960, Roy E.

Crites married Jessie Ella Allee Tribble. She was born in 1910 in Oklahoma and married Charles Alexander Tribble in 1928. The couple ended up in Arizona where Roy died in 1995; Jessie in 2009.

A ‘Mule Skinner’ is an individual who specializes in keeping mules moving, not always easy. The skinner also typically feeds and cares for the mules.