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The mountain town of Ouray has been
blessed by God with one of the most beautiful settings ever created. One cannot
help but realize the indebtedness he owes to his Maker as he stands in the midst
of the Ouray valley. With sincerest appreciation to the Creator, the people of
Ouray and all those who helped build St. Daniel wanted to capture a small spark
of the natural surroundings and mould it into a temple for the worship of
God.
With this motive in mind, the stone, wood and metal has been
collected to represent the community in which the building resides. The
decorative colored rocks rise from their natural habitant, climbing high into
the slender tower, resembling the many pinnacled spires which God, Himself, has
left for man’s admiration. The metal work studding the façade would tell you
this church is in a metal mining town and the upright logs describe the forest
growth upon the hills.
On the opening page of the first
volume of the Ouray Baptism Register, are written the names of the places
included in the parish boundaries: Ouray, Silverton, Ironton, Red Mountain,
Ridgeway, Dallas, Telluride, Montrose and Delta. Not only is one impressed with
the immense distance spanned by all these locations, but it becomes all the more
remarkable when one realizes that this area contains the most rugged part of the
San Juan Mountain range, with its 14,000 foot peaks, Million Dollar Highway, and
precarious mountain passes, routinely climbed by early clergy without the
benefit of road or jeep.
Ouray was a mission parish from 1877 until
1886, serviced by clergy from Silverton, Grand Junction and initially, Holy Name
of Mary, in Del Norte. Then in 1884, Bishop Joseph Machebeuf, the Bishop of
Denver, purchased property, which had formerly been a Presbyterian Church, and
Catholics in Ouray finally had their own church building: They christened it,
St. Patrick Church. In 1886, St. Patrick’s was appointed a resident priest.
As time passed and the parish grew, it
became apparent that a larger church was needed. In 1954, Fr. Joseph Halloran
approached the Catholic Church Extension Society about building a new church
that would increase seating from 90 to 250. The Extension Society agreed to the
project and within five months, construction on a new 40 by 80-foot structure
was completed. The new church was named, St. Daniel the Prophet.
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