Colorado Things of the Past, Oct.25, 2022

 

Thing of the past ...

Milwaukee Brewing Co.
Creator: Collier, Joseph
Date: [1890-1900?] 
The Milwaukee Brewery Company was established in 1859 by James Endlich at 10th and Larimer Streets in Denver, Colorado. In 1860, the brewery was sold to John Good, who enlarged it and renamed it after the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. In 1901, the brewery merged with the Union Brewing Company to form the Tivoli-Union Brewery. The plant shown here continued to operate until 1969, producing Denver Beer. Several horse-drawn wagons are on the dirt street in front of the building.
Colorado Restless Native note: After a forty-three-year absence, Tivoli Beer began flowing again in 2012. To further develop the revived brand, the brewery’s owners embarked upon a $3.5 million renovation of the old building (with the help of ($975,000 in State Historic Preservation Tax Credits) to serve as their brewery and tap house. The non-historic additions of the 1980s were removed, and the historic interior features were restored. New brewing equipment occupies the space where Tivoli’s original mash tuns and copper kettles once stood, according to the brewery's information. 
Denver Public Library Special Collections

  

Thing of the past ...

Glen Eyrie
Date: ca. 1903
Photographer: unknown
The tower at Glen Eyrie under construction. Scaffolding is visible inside and at building at left. A worker is visible on the roof on the left side of the building. Rocky cliffs are visible behind the building.
Location: Colorado Springs (Colo.)
Carl Mathews Collection, Pikes Peak Library District

Thing of the past ...
Ramona Hotel
Date: 1899-1901
Photographer: Stevens, F. P.
Ramona Hotel in Cascade, Colorado, showing open porches on side and large stairway at left. Pine trees are in foreground and treed hillside is behind. "Stevens Photo Colo. Springs, Colo." written on lower left of print.
Carl Mathews Collection, Pike Peak Library District

Thing of the past ...
The Lake at Green Mountain Falls
Creator: Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942 
Green Mountain Falls resort in El Paso and Teller Counties, Colorado; shows a gazebo in the lake, boats, a boat house, the hotel, and an approaching Colorado Midland Railroad train.
W.H. Jackson Photograph and Publishing Co.
History Colorado

Thing of the past ...
Artus Van Briggle working in 1887 at Holmes Ranch, east of Colorado Springs. Boy in background is William C. Holmes and his dog "Curley." Photo from Pikes Peak Library District.

Small town like coffee with cream

 'A place between two stands of trees'

 

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

 

It is like strong coffee with cream in it, on a Sunday morning. Both bitter and smooth, in the same mouthful.

I am trying to figure out small town America. You would think, after all this time, I would understand, but I don’t.

“A place between two stands of trees,” as Adrienne Rich says. Rich died this week of complications related to Rheumatoid Arthritis, I think before she figured it out. But she was chasing the right clues. “Talk about trees,” she advised. I am with her.

I took a photo in a small town, of the stream that flows through the center, and empties in to the lake. I took another of an old Plymouth in front of the old town’s buildings, as one nears the lake… and another as the twilight reflected off its surface near the Gazebo. Not sure you can find a more welcoming sight.

There has been trouble in town, however. Early last month, the town hall was torched in the middle of the night, burned to the ground. Look at the lot over there behind the Post Office and you can barely tell there was ever anything there.

The lady fishing at the lake shakes her head in wonder.

Town Hall is important, history, presence, sense of identity. As one local educator said to me, “It is a part of us.”

Another poet, earlier than Rich, may have been wishful thinking.

Reverend Graham Frank described it in 1889.

“Here the children dwell in safety,

As they play by the streams;

And their elders all are happy,

With ease and rest and dreams,

And the mountains hold this village,

In the tenderest embrace,

While the trees and streams and sun and moon,

Lend their beauty to this place.”

True poetry. And like it, maybe you are never supposed to understand. Ambiguous, vague, wooly, hazy and uncertain. Both bitter and smooth in one mouthful … one more Sunday morning.

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