I went to the Center for American History to do see if I could find the obituary for Carlos J. Moser who died on March 2, 1915.
I got confused and thought the date I was looking for was March 15th, so I never looked at March 2nd. However, I did finish out the rest of 1915. I found this interesting paragraph from October 28, 1915 on pg. 2:
MINING AND WAX BUSINESS FLOURISHING IN THIS COUNTY
"The big cable across the river used to bring ore from the Boquillas mines to the American side was completed last Friday and teams will begin today hauling the ore to the railroad for shipment. More than 1000 men are employed on the Mexican side and 500 on this side of the river in getting this rock to the railroad."
Weird, because I have citations from 1910 saying the cable was working five years earlier than this article.
So what's going on? Could the reporter have made a mistake? Could this citation be the source of the confusion about the years of operation?
Another hypothesis is that some mechanical failure caused the tramway to close down and it was now fully repaired. In any event, I need more information to piece together this story. When I nail down the story, I'll post the citation to the main website.
The numbers are interesting. At its height in the late 1800's, it was estimated that Boquillas had 3,000 inhabitants. 1000 men and their families could be 3000 total, meaning that in 1915 Boquillas was still going strong. The 500 men on the US side were probably freighters, as the cable terminal itself probably took only two men to run and a one customs officer to inspect.