Notwithstanding the enormous output of the mines of Colorado and the great amount of capital and number of persons interested in the mining operations of the state, the stock business continues to be one of the leading industries in these parts, and the men who are engaged in it are important contributors to the general weal in a number and variety of ways. One of these is W.O. Cartmel, of Mesa county, whose ranch is located seven miles northwest of Grand Junction, and is the seat of a thriving and profitable cattle business which he has built up from a small beginning. Mr. Cartmel was born at Wabash, Indiana, in 1852, and is the son of R.T. and Viola (Gibbs) Cartmel, the former a native of Kentucky and the latter of Ohio. In the childhood of their son William O. they settled in Vernon county, Missouri, and in the election of 1860 the father was the only man in that county who voted for Lincoln for President. He was a merchant during the greater part of his mature life, and died in Missouri in 1892, aged seventy-three years. His wife died in 1878, at the age of fifty-eight. William O. Cartmel passed his boyhood and early manhood in Missouri, receiving a good common-school education there, and remaining at home until after the death of his mother. In 1879, when he was twenty-seven years old, he came to Colorado and settled at Eaton, where he remained about two years on a cattle and sheep ranch. In 1882 he transferred his energies to Grand valley and there took up a pre-emption claim of one hundred and sixty acres, on which he is still living and of which he has made a fine, productive and attractive farm. In 1887 he was married to Miss Jennie Davis, a native of Pennsylvania. They have six children, Jean, Albert, Gertrude, Zena, John and William O., Jr. Mr. Cartmel is comfortable and prosperous, and in public affairs, as in his own business, is enterprising and progressive. He has been a potent factor in the development of his portion of the county and had an influential voice in reference to all local matters of importance. He is generally respected and has many warm friends.
Source: Bowen, A. W. Progressive Men of Western Colorado. Chicago: A. W. Bowen & Co., Publishers. 1905.