Weekly Register Call (Central City), December 20, 1878

A Champion Walker

According to the Monument Mentor, the Divide boasts a champion walkist [sic] in the person of Pat Murphy, who lives a few miles east of Monument. On one occasion after the milking was over in the evening from the dairy ranch of R.J. Gwillim in Spring Valley, with a basket containing thirty pounds of butter on his shoulders [Murphy] walked into Denver, sold his butter, and returned in time to assist in milking on the following evening, the round trip comprising about one hundred miles. [Note: the distance from Spring Valley to Denver and back was probably about 80 miles.]

On another occasion he started from Pueblo about half past six in the morning and reached the ranch, a distance of about sixty miles, before six in the evening. He has offered to wager that he will walk to Colorado Springs from the ranch in two hours, but no one cares to take him up.