A Feast Along the Alferd Packer Trail
From Provo, Utah, to Denver, Colorado.
Categories: Renegade Roads
By: Johnny D. Boggs 03/01/2008
By all accounts, the Man-eater, inmate No. 1389, was a model prisoner during his stay at Cañon City. Appeals and pardons were constantly denied until Denver Post reporter Polly Pry began pushing for Packer’s release. On January 7, 1901, outgoing Gov. Charles S. Thomas paroled Packer with the stipulation that he remain in Colorado for the rest of his life. Packer left Cañon City with a new suit, a one-way railroad ticket to Denver and $400. He was a big fan of the Denver Post. (I’m partial to it myself—when my books get nice reviews.)
Denver Postings
Packer spent a few months in Denver, then lived in Littleton, then Sheridan and finally Deer Creek Canyon, where game warden Charles Cash found him ill in July 1906 and took him to Cash’s mother-in-law’s cabin. The Cashes and Mama-in-Law cared for the ailing Packer, who suffered a series of epileptic seizures.
Packer continued to claim he had killed Bell in self-defense. A week before his death, he asked Gov. Henry Buchtel for an unconditional pardon. Buchtel didn’t give Packer a break.
At 6:50 p.m., April 23, 1907, Colorado’s Cannibal died. He’s buried in the Littleton Cemetery. The headstone reads:
Alfred Packer
CO. F.
16 U.S. INF.
But a guy like Packer can’t die. He’s been memorialized in a few books, at least one novel, documentaries, even cookbooks and a musical. Not to mention scientific investigations that maybe (or maybe not) proved Packer wasn’t a murderer, just a hungry survivor.
The trip should end after paying respects in Littleton and taking a jaunt through Denver but, I don’t know, all this investigating has my stomach grumbling, and I hear that the El Canibal burrito at the Alferd Packer Grill up in Boulder is simply to die for.
Johnny D. Boggs wonders just what the hell they were serving at that terrible restaurant in Nebraska that an alleged pal recommended.
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