by Meg Dunn | Apr 28, 2015 | Architecture & Neighborhoods, Fort Collins, Frontier Faces, Renovations & Razes, Then and Now
There are things that we pass down from parent to child to grandchild: photographs, stories, homemade furniture, favorite books, significant items of jewelry. Some families have a family Bible full of genealogical information. Others pass on property — houses...
by Meg Dunn | Apr 21, 2015 | Fort Collins, Philosophy on History, Renovations & Razes
Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away. — Marcus Aurelius History is important. It’s not just a matter of...
by Meg Dunn | Mar 24, 2015 | Frontier Faces, Historic Landmarks, Laporte / Bellvue
The Bellvue Grange can now face the sunrise with both “eyes” wide open. For as long as many people can remember, the windows on the grange have been boarded up. Vandalism was such a problem in the 1960s and 70s that the residents, in exasperation, just...
by Meg Dunn | Feb 17, 2015 | Denver, Museums & Historic Sites, National History, People Groups
When Paul Stewart was growing up in Iowa in the 1930s, he loved to play “Cowboys and Indians” with his friends. But he always ended up playing the role of the Indian because, so his friends told him, there was no such thing as a Black cowboy. It...
by Meg Dunn | Dec 2, 2014 | Fort Collins, Frontier Faces
It seems like Fort Collins is going gangbusters these days, with Otterbox/Blue Ocean finishing up one new building and already planning the next, with Woodward Governor building a new and improved riverside campus, and with new townhouses and apartments going up like...
by Meg Dunn | Nov 11, 2014 | Architecture & Neighborhoods, Fort Collins
The Loomis Addition was one of the first neighborhoods added on to the city of Fort Collins back in 1887. (It includes the area inside Laporte, Whitcomb, Mulberry and Washington on the west side of Old Town.) It contains houses that span almost the entire chronology...
by Meg Dunn | Oct 17, 2014 | Agricultural College / A&M / CSU, Renovations & Razes, Sports, Then and Now
Labeled only as the “Men’s Gym” on the Colorado State University Archives & Special Collections website, what is now known as the Glenn Morris Field House is shown here in 1940 and 2014. The comparison between the two photos is like a “Find...
by Meg Dunn | Sep 13, 2014 | Historic Landmarks, Historic Preservation
I have known that there are financial incentives to landmarking a property since 2009, when we first decided to remodel our house. Karen McWilliams, the city’s historic preservation planner, gave me all the handouts that describe what landmarking is all about...
by Meg Dunn | Sep 9, 2014 | Architecture & Neighborhoods, Fort Collins, Renovations & Razes
In 1887, the Fort Collins Light and Power Company was created in order to provide the new fangled power of electricity to the city of Fort Collins. In 1908, a Lafayette based company, Northern Colorado Power, bought up the Fort Collins company and shut down the...
by Meg Dunn | Aug 26, 2014 | Agricultural History, Buckeye, Waverly & Wellington
According to a National Geographic article on sugar, the average person consumed 4 pounds of sugar a year in 1700, 18 pounds by 1800 and a whopping 100 pounds of sugar annually by 1900. In other words, by the 20th century we had begun our national sugar fixation in...
