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Vail Daily reporter John LaConte poses at the Vail Daily office with his new book, \u201cNotorious Hunter: Sir St. George Gore.\u201d This is LaConte’s first book. Tricia Swenson\/tswenson@vaildaily.com<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tVail Daily reporter John LaConte poses at the Vail Daily office with his new book, \u201cNotorious Hunter: Sir St. George Gore.\u201d This is LaConte’s first book.
Tricia Swenson\/tswenson@vaildaily.com<\/p>\n
John LaConte says his job as a reporter is to investigate claims. That is what led him to write a book about the infamous Sir St. George Gore, better known around the Vail Valley by the misnomer \u201cLord Gore.\u201d Landmarks such as the Gore Range, Gore Pass, Gore Lake, Gore Canyon, Gore Creek and Gore Creek Drive were named after the mysterious Anglo-Irish hunter who came to North America in the 1850s.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d always been a Gore nerd, and even had a book called \u2018The Amazing Adventures of Lord Gore: A True Saga from the Old West\u2019 published in 1977 by Jack Roberts, an artist whose paintings were in the old Lord Gore Restaurant in Vail,\u201d LaConte said. \u201cThe next book I found written about Gore was \u2018Baronet in an Earth Lodge,\u2019 by Barry C. Johnson of The English Westerners Society. It was written 20 years later and cleared up a lot of the misconceptions from the first book, but it was never widely published, so the first attempt to clear a lot of that up went unnoticed. It still seemed like the legend of Gore had just completely spiraled out of control and had been accepted as fact.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were many unanswered questions that LaConte wanted to investigate. He credits the digitization of old newspapers, books, journals and other writings in helping him develop a timeline of Gore\u2019s travels. Using newspaper articles and personal journals written by those who met Gore, LaConte started to piece together the man behind the name that is so associated with the Vail Valley. The result is LaConte\u2019s debut book, \u201cNotorious Hunter: Sir St. George Gore.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re in a golden era of research opportunities now with digitization,\u201d LaConte said. \u201cThe simple fact that newspapers have been digitized, you can now strike from history a lot of false claims.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the summer of 2023, LaConte, his wife and two kids camped near Gore Pass. LaConte knew about a monument to Sir St. George Gore and found it had been vandalized when they came upon it. The mystery surrounding the name that LaConte had heard of since he was a kid visiting his grandmother, who lived in Vail, struck a chord. He wanted to utilize his investigative journalism skills to explore the answers.<\/p>\n
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He told his editor at the Vail Daily, Nate Peterson, about his idea, and Peterson encouraged him to write a book and seek advice from Kathy Heicher, a local author and historian with the Eagle Valley Historical Society. She put him in touch with History Press, a division of Arcadia Press that publishes works about history and culture from communities across the nation.<\/p>\n
Hunting and traveling in style<\/p>\n
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Vail Daily reporter John LaConte teamed up with local artist Andrew Odlin and photographer Scott Cramer to create his new book, which was published by History Press and came out on Tuesday.Tricia Swenson\/tswenson@vaildaily.com<\/p>\n
Sir St. George Gore came from a family of wealthy baronets in Ireland, but much of the Gore family moved to England. They became absentee landlords in Ireland during the Great Famine. Gore, who fancied sport, made many trips to and set up residence in Scotland.<\/p>\n
LaConte uncovered many writings of Gore\u2019s fishing and hunting exhibitions. Gore had the best equipment of the day, including a punt gun, which was twice the size of a man and could kill 50 ducks with a single shot. It was also reported that he was one of the first to use a \u201cparticular Irish fishing rod on the Ness\u201d that became the preferred piece of equipment for anglers there.<\/p>\n
Trust what you read. Stay informed with us.<\/p>\n
Sign up for daily or weekly newsletters at V<\/a>ailDaily.com\/newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n Although Gore\u2019s presence was recorded in Colorado, his travels took him from Europe across the Atlantic and into North America via Montreal, Quebec, Canada. There were also records of him going to St. Louis and New Madrid, Missouri; Sycamore, Illinois; the Shawnee Mission area near modern-day Kansas City; Jacksonville, Florida; Fort Kearney, Nebraska; The Black Hills of Wyoming and South Dakota, and various areas in North Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas and even Mexico. <\/p>\n The numbers vary, but once Gore came to North America, some accounts say he traveled in a fine carriage, had numerous wagons for all of his equipment and teams of oxen to pull those wagons, food and supplies, plenty of hunting dogs, horses, cattle, guns, ammunition, fishing tackle and top shelf liquor and wine that he would drink out of silver cups. His tent was a large linen structure with a brass bed frame that could be taken apart for transport, animal hide and fur rugs and a large telescope on a tripod. He also had many servants who were described as having powdered hair and knee breeches. If he needed a boat to travel up or down a river, he would either buy one or have his team build one.<\/p>\n Other accounts have been written about the number of animals he may have killed, but LaConte points out that at that time, the U.S. military was enticing people to kill buffalo and other animals.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was policy, it wasn\u2019t just cruelty,\u201d LaConte said.<\/p>\n Colorado\u2019s first recreational tourist<\/p>\n It was well known that Gore did everything to excess. He had big ideas and money to back them up and a desire to hunt wherever he wanted. When one such desired hunting location was hampered by the lack of a road over a mountain pass, Gore simply commanded that a road be built to get him and his party over it. That first primitive road was called Gore Pass. Jim Bridger, an accomplished, reliable and trusted guide and legendary mountain man who accompanied Gore on many of his excursions, coined the term.<\/p>\n \u201cBridger understood that outdoor recreation was already creating a new market here in the West,\u201d LaConte said. \u201cThere was only a couple of ways you could really make money. There wasn\u2019t really much logging, mining or energy development yet. Bridger realized that outdoor recreation could actually become an economic driver for the region. In all his travels with Gore, he knew their party had created a roving hub of economic activity with vendors selling things and Gore buying things along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n LaConte believes that Bridger knew how important it was that Gore had built the first road over the Continental Divide in western Colorado. Gore Pass is at 9,524 feet above sea level and located along the northern edge of the Gore Range, between Kremmling and Yampa and on the border of Routt and Grand Counties.<\/p>\n \u201cIt instantly made Gore a legend because the most important thing you could do to become a legend of the Old West at that time would have been to build a road,\u201d LaConte said, who also reminds us in the book that Vail Pass was named after the builder of the road, as well, state highway engineer Charlie Vail.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though it\u2019s 170 years old, this story sort of teaches us a lot about today. Gore was a wealthy tourist seeking outdoor recreation.\u201d LaConte said. \u201cIt reminds me of the old adage of \u2018the more things change, the more they stay the same.’\u201d <\/p>\n LaConte draws similarities between Gore\u2019s hunting exhibition and the souped-up adventure vans that can travel deep into the wilderness with all the luxuries of solar panels and cooking equipment, a satellite phone, Starlink and other deluxe features. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like we are still just as excessive today in many ways,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n All over the map<\/p>\n Whether you are a general history buff, love to learn about Vail or like to hear about characters from the Old West, LaConte\u2019s book is an interesting read. He stretches your imagination while thinking about Gore and his passion for sport and how he went about it. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s crazy how he\u2019s tangentially connected to so many historical events of the time,\u201d LaConte said. \u201cHe\u2019s mentioned in a journal associated with the Sioux Wars, he\u2019s mentioned in newspaper articles documenting the discovery of gold in the Black Hills and other places, and he spent time with people who would become known for their role in the Civil War.\u201d <\/p>\n Beyond answering lots of questions about Gore, his past, his travels across North America and his spending, LaConte hopes the book conjures up a little reflection.<\/p>\n \u201cI do think that there\u2019s a lot that we can learn about ourselves, where we are and where we\u2019re headed, based on our past,\u201d LaConte said. \u201cAnd I think that this story has been lost and is important for us in order to understand ourselves here in Vail and, of course, across the whole Rocky Mountain West.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNotorious Hunter: Sir St. George Gore\u201d will be available for purchase locally at the Colorado Snowsports Museum in Vail and the Bookworm in Edwards. To celebrate its launch, LaConte will host two book signing events this week. The Colorado Snowsports Museum on the top level of the Vail Village parking garage welcomes the author on Thursday from 5:30-7 p.m. and the Sitzmark Lodge invites LaConte to the lobby on Saturday from 3-5 p.m. The Sitzmark Lodge is located on the aptly named Gore Creek Drive in Vail Village along Gore Creek.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vail Daily reporter John LaConte poses at the Vail Daily office with his new book, \u201cNotorious Hunter: Sir…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[412,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-65277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Gore-VDN-100925-2-1024x683.jpg\")
Vail sits at the bottom of the Gore Range and along Gore Creek. John LaConte, Vail Daily reporter and author of \u201cNotorious Hunter: Sir St. George Gore,\u201d worked with photographer Scott Cramer to show images of the many places that are named after Gore. Scott Cramer\/Courtesy photo<\/p>\n