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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: Blizzards and Lizards
M. H. Loeffler was a tailor and prominent Grand Junction Elk member who was known not only for his custom suits, but also for promoting and selling the Hynes Level Measure, which was the first instrument of its kind that could measure the angle of a person’s shoulders. Anyway, he was riding the not-mentioned-by-name Rio 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
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100 Years Ago Today: Rugged and Raw, Rocky Mountain National Park
What a wild experience it must have been to explore Rocky Mountain National Park in 1919. The park was practically brand new, having been established on January 26, 1915 as the ninth National Park in the United States. The National Park Service was not established until August 25, 1916, when it was created as a Continue reading
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100 Years Ago Today: Magic Rope Wards Off Rattlesnakes
Myth alert! It doesn’t matter what kind of rope you put around your campsite, bedroll, naptime knoll, or burrow, if a rattlesnake is headed toward a rope and it wants to cross it, the snake is probably going to slither right on over. Regardless of whether it’s made out of horsehair, cow hair, sisal, unicorn Continue reading
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100 Years Ago Today: Carnegie Libraries
Andrew Carnegie, best known as a steel magnate and a philanthropist, donated 90% of his earnings during his lifetime, which amounts to an unparalleled 350 million dollars. That’s the equivalent of billions of dollars today. Jeff Bezos, are you taking notes? Carnegie Libraries are pillars of Andrew Carnegie’s enduring philanthropic legacy. A Carnegie Library is Continue reading
About Me
Local history enthusiast curious about how Colorado’s present is informed by the people and places of its past
Pick and Sledge 