50 YEARS AGO

September 23, 1971 – In only five hours a French-made Alouette turbo jet helicopter recently airlifted into place, in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado, components for the highest unmanned weather station in the United States and probably the world. The Sept. 15 airlift was a Bureau of Reclamation program to install a cloud seeding and avalanche research and prediction monitoring station at 12,880 feet, 2,000 feet above Muleshoe Curve on U.S. Highway 550, in the R...