colorado history
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Mt. Tom Plane Crash of 1952
On April 8th, 1952, a B-25 bomber crashed into Mount Tom, a 9,741 foot peak 10 miles west of Golden, Colorado. The plane crashed at a speed of 200 mph, instantly killing all 11 people inside. Low hanging clouds and dense fog clung to the mountains that day. Search parties from the Lowry Air Force… Continue reading
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100 Years Ago Today: Airedales Are Kings Among Dogs
Today, dogs perform dozens of specialized services for people, such as the work of Autism Assistance Dogs, Veteran Service Dogs, Brace/Mobility Support Dogs, Avalanche Rescue Dogs, Psychiatric Service Dog, and many more. But back in 1919, the idea that dogs could be trained to perform such highly skillful tasks, beyond their known abilities as retrievers… Continue reading
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100 Years Ago Today: Women Vying for Fire Lookout Jobs
The first woman ever hired as a Fire Lookout by the U.S. Forest Service was Hallie Morse Daggett, who was the Lookout at Eddy’s Gulch Lookout Station atop Klamath Peak in Klamath National Forest in Northern California, starting in 1913, when the Lookout log cabin seen below was first built. She stayed on board there… Continue reading
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100 Years Ago Today: When Skiing Meant Ski Jumping
Before the advent of the Telemark turn or the Stem Christie turn, the Nordic-imported term, skiing, meant either ski jumping or cross country ski travel, rather than the shussing down steep slopes that we think of skiing today. The earliest ski areas in Colorado were all originally built for ski jumping, like Inspiration Point in… Continue reading
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100 Years Ago Today: Murder-Suicide at Tolland Station
More tragedy on the old Moffat Road this week. On January 29th it was a boiler explosion on the hoodoo Engine No. 100 near Dixie Lake that killed two coworkers. Today it’s a murder suicide at the Tolland railroad station of the Denver Northwest & Pacific that left two friends dead. In 1919, Tolland was… Continue reading
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100 Years Ago Today: Golden Buys Its First Fire Truck
In 1880, the Golden Fire Department rose from the proverbial ashes of three different, independent fire fighting companies: Excelsior Hose, Everett Hook and Ladder Company, and Loveland Hose Company. Coming together to form some kind of fire fighting Voltron, each company was able to contribute a different piece of equipment that it had acquired during… Continue reading
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100 Years Ago Today: Hugo Frey’s Odyssey
Meg Dunn, who writes at the excellent history website, Northern Colorado History, has an in-depth article on Hugo Frey here, so I’ll just cover some highlights of his life, but definitely check out her writing, especially her five-part series on the rise of the KKK in Colorado in the 1920s. Hugo Evon Frey’s story takes… Continue reading
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100 Years Ago Today: Wealthy Rancher Murdered, Buried Under Manure
John Breuss went missing from his Silt, Colorado ranch home on November 18, 1918. By late December of that year, Sheriff Charles W. Fravert of Garfield County, on suspicion that Breuss was dead, offered a $250 reward for the recovery of Breuss’ body, and another $250 for any information leading to the arrest of the… Continue reading
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100 Years Ago Today: Syphilis, Gonorrhea, and VDs, Oh My!
Dr. Alice L. Goetz (née Littlejohn) was a lecturer on the subject of sexually transmitted infections, then known as venereal diseases, from the late 1910s into the 1920s. She joined the Bureau of Social Hygiene in 1920, which operated under the State Board of Health as a part of the broader American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA).… Continue reading
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100 Years Ago Today: Norlin Elected President of CU Boulder
Dr. George Norlin’s legacy as President of University of Colorado is primarily two-fold: 1. He expanded the campus to allow for the student body to grow from 1,500 to 5,000 by bringing on board architect Charles Z. Klauder to design 15 buildings over the course of 20 years. 2. He resisted the Ku Klux Klan… Continue reading
About Me
Local history enthusiast curious about how Colorado’s present is informed by the people and places of its past