Frank Delaney
| Publication year | 1994 |
| Pages | 1489 |
| Citation | Vol. 23 No. 7 Pg. 1489 |
1994, July, Pg. 1489. FRANK DELANEY
Frank Delaney was truly a native son of Colorado's West Slope. Delaney was born in 1889, just ten years after the Meeker Massacre.(fn1) He spent his childhood years on his family's ranch on the lower White River between the present communities of Meeker and Rangely, an area that was still frequented by the Ute Indians. This rural, ranching orientation stayed with Frank throughout his sixty-plus years of active practice and was responsible in part for his emphasis on water and public lands law.
Frank graduated from Meeker High School in 1909 and from the University of Colorado Law School in 1912. Frank had on occasion described the grueling two days of travel from his home near Meeker to Boulder. The first segment of the journey was an eight-hour stage ride(fn2) from Meeker to Rifle, Colorado, where he boarded the Colorado Midland Railroad. Frank made the remainder of the journey by train, first on the Colorado Midland to Colorado Springs, then on the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad to Denver and, finally, on an inter-urban railway from Denver to Boulder. Prophetically perhaps, the Colorado Midland route took Frank through the Carlton Tunnel, which was later used as part of a transmountain water diversion project.(fn3) Frank devoted his life to opposing transmountain diversions from the Colorado River Basin.
Frank's first job on graduation from law school was with William H. Bryant, Denver's City Attorney. From that position, Frank moved to Phoenix to practice briefly in the office of Charles B. Ward. In 1914, he returned to his home town of Meeker to work for Jim Gentry, the district attorney of the Ninth Judicial District. Gentry died in office in 1915, and Frank was appointed to serve the balance of the term. Frank successfully stood for election as district attorney for the first time in 1916 and was reelected to that office for each term until he retired in 1941.
When Frank was first elected district attorney, the Ninth Judicial District consisted of the counties of Pitkin, Garfield, Rio Blanco, Routt and Moffatt---the northwestern corner of Colorado. The district counted among its features Brown's Park and the Robbers Roost, and encompassed an area of approximately 14,241 square miles.(fn4)
The sheep and cattle wars were a real fact of life in northwestern Colorado when the young district attorney took office. Sheep were allowed to graze on the White River Plateau Timberland Reserve in northwestern Colorado.(fn5) However, reaching the reserve entailed herding the sheep in excess of 100 miles from the Colorado-Utah line through lands controlled by cattlemen. The situation invited confrontation, as was illustrated by the July 1920 incident during which a sheepherder and 686 head of sheep were killed along the Utah-Colorado line.(fn6)
Frank was called in to investigate the murder of the sheepherder, but...
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