The antique pump organ sits in the choir loft of this tiny adobe church in Tiffany, Colorado.
It’s a reed organ about the size of a writing desk, built nearly a hundred years ago by Estey Organ of Brattleboro, Vermont.
On a good day, the foot pedals still pump air through the bellows, and some of the stops still send air through the reeds.
“I’m amazed it still makes sound,” said Carol Thurman, a pianist and organ player who lives in Hesperus, Colorado. “It has seen a lot of history.”
Every Sunday Thurman plays church organ in Durango, but for the past four years, she’s also handled organ duties at the Tiffany church for the annual mass in June.
It’s the only day of the year the church is open, and the only day the old organ gets any attention.
“Only five of the stops seem to be working right now,” Thurman said of the instrument. “One of the keys is stuck. But it still makes a lot of sound.”
On a weekday in May, with red-winged blackbirds whistling in the cottonwood tree outside the church, Thurman ran through a few hymns.
“Pumping with your feet is a little distracting from trying to play your music,” she said. “It’s more of a full-body workout. It’s a lot like riding a bike, I think.”
You probably won’t stumble on the Iglesia de San Antonio. To find it, you have to exit the highway south of Ignacio, Colorado, onto a grid of dirt roads that crisscross through farmlands just a few miles from the state border with New Mexico.
Somewhere in there is the historic settlement of Tiffany, Colorado.
“I don’t know how big Tiffany ever got to be, but it was a stop on the railroad for a while,” Thurman said. “Now you wouldn’t know there was a town there, really.”
Hispanic residents built the Catholic church in 1928. These days, the adobe is crumbling, paint is flaking off the wooden bell tower, and steel cables hold the walls together. But the interior is painted and clean, and every June, the Iglesia de San Antonio opens its doors for the annual mass.
“This is a very special place,” Thurman said. “You just feel all the people that have been here, through the years. The people that built this church with their own hands, and worshipped here. And yes, it has cracks, it needs repairs, it’s held together by cables. But it stands.”
In 2019, Colorado Preservation Incorporated listed the Tiffany Church as one of the state most endangered historic sites, and several community members are fundraising for a restoration effort.
In the meantime, for as long as the organ works, and for as long as Carol Thurman is able to play it, she’ll be there each year for the annual mass.
“It many ways, the organ is like the human voice,” Thurman said. “It breathes like we do. How it makes sound is a lot like our voices. It sings, and so it is kind of like a living thing.”
Every year when Thurman climbs the rickety stairs into the choir loft, it’s like seeing an old friend.
“I know it’s not alive, but it is a very special instrument,” she said. “And it’s waiting all year to be played.”
Support for this story comes from the Southwest Colorado Local Organizing Committee, working to commemorate Colorado’s 150th anniversary of statehood.
Support for TERRITORIES comes from the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority.