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Archive for the 'Pioneers Museum' Tag

BACK PAGES BRING HISTORY TO LIFE

January 31st, 2013, 12:53 pm by

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Last week, I read an interesting item in The Gazette about Martin Drake.

He’d been arrested and stood trial.

Seems he failed to shovel the snow outside his real estate office in Colorado City.

Yes. The story was about that Martin Drake.

Martin Drake circa 1960
courtesy Colorado Springs Utilities

Before Martin Drake was a electric-generating plant more famous for generating headlines and heated debate over its future, there was a man who sold real estate, served 22 years on the Colorado Springs City Council and was honored with a power plant in his name as credit for his foresight in securing water resources and ensuring a cheap power supply through creation of a city-owned electric utility.

The item was in our Back Pages column, which moved recently to page B2 of the Local & State section.

I love the Back Pages, a daily feature that reports brief news headlines from 100, 75 and 50 years ago.

It often includes names or events that resonate across the decades. Like the Jan. 23 item on Drake.

In a few sentences, I learned Drake was a resident of Colorado City before it was annexed into Colorado Springs in 1917 and that the town was serious about snow removal.

Martin Drake Power Plant, 2013, photo by Mark Reis, The Gazette

Drake and an associate, Frank Wolff, were “ordered into police court” to face charges. They were acquitted after they convinced the court of “a defect in the ordinance under which they were arrested.”

So I looked up Drake and learned he was a native of Lawrence, Kan., who moved with his parents to Colorado City in 1878 at age 4. Not long after his snow trial, he got into banking and within two years was president of First National Bank.

A political career followed and he was elected to the council in 1921, finishing second in the race to George Birdsall. (Interesting footnote: Birdsall’s name would one day adorn the power plant on North Nevada Avenue.)

Back Pages is compiled by my friends at the Pioneers Museum and I asked director Matt Mayberry about how items are chosen.

Roy J. Wasson circa 1960
courtesy Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum

“When researching, we scan for names and events that would echo in today’s world,” Mayberry said.  “I did Back Pages myself for years. It’s always fun whenever you find somebody who we revere today or think of as a landmark. It’s humanizing the past. And that’s what we do at the museum.”

His crew did it again on Jan. 17 when the 50-year-ago item announced the retirement of Roy J.  Wasson after a 39-year career at School District 11, including 21 years as superintendent.

Wasson was a legend in District 11. He’d taken over during World War II and guided the district during the turbulent war years and post-war boom with its explosive growth.

Before his teaching career, Wasson was a decorated pilot during World War I.

Roy J. Wasson High School, 2009, Gazette file photo

He was so beloved that his D-11 board surprised him in 1958 by naming the district’s new “northeast high school” in his honor.

Yes, it’s the same school now facing closure.

Funny, isn’t it, how things like that happen.

He was the symbol of smart growth and honored with a school bearing his name. Now, just 50 years later, the school is deemed excessive due to declining enrollment and shifting populations.

Makes me wonder, what would Roy say

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AUTOGRAPHED ARMSTRONG JERSEY NOW SYMBOL OF WORST SPORTS CHEAT EVER

January 18th, 2013, 12:01 pm by

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The wall in the Pioneers Museum was bare where the professional bike racing jersey autographed by Lance Armstrong had hung.

For a moment Thursday, I feared I was too late.

I had wanted to be present when the staff removed the jersey of the disgraced former seven time Tour de France champion and Olympic bronze medalist.

Actually, I kind of hoped to light the match on the bonfire when it was burned.

Take a few charred embers as souvenirs.

Savor the memory as I watched him confess his doping sins to Oprah Winfrey on TV. (I couldn’t wait to see the long-defiant Armstrong grovel before Winfrey!)

Matt Mayberry, museum director, led me to a basement room where the U.S. Postal Service jersey was lying, on its back, on the floor. How appropriate.

But the jersey remained in its case.

Mayberry wasn’t about to burn it.

He still values it as a powerful symbol of Colorado Springs as the home to U.S.A. Cycling, the national governing body for competitive biking, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which since 2000 has policed Olympic athletes for performance-enhancing drugs, and the U.S. Olympic Committee and the U.S. Olympic Training Center.

Instead of burning it, or simply shelving the blue-and-white jersey, Mayberry’s staff was updating it to reflect its changing status from cherished souvenir to sad sign of the times.

“It’s not often we have to update our exhibits to reflect something that’s happening in the news,” Mayberry said. “It’s an interesting opportunity to show what’s going on in the world around us.

“It feels like the rest of the story.”

So his staff worked with the folks at USADA to develop a five-paragraph explanation of the scandal that dethroned Armstrong as one of the nation’s most admired athletes, known for overcoming testicular cancer to win seven consecutive Tour de France racing titles in 1999-2005.

The jersey was placed back on the wall with a footnote explaining how a USADA investigation revealed Armstrong’s doping, resulting in a lifetime ban from sanctioned sports, including marathons, and stripping him of his seven titles and his 2000 Olympic medal.

USADA is the new hero. And the jersey is the piece that tells the story.

“I don’t know what taking down the jersey would accomplish,” Mayberry said. “That would feel a little bit like trying to sanitize history. We’re not interested in that. And I like having a local connection to the story.”

I suppose that is as it should be.

In fact, I hope kids touring the museum stop and read the updated exhibit.

And take it to heart.

Who wants to end up a symbol of one of the worst cheating scandals in the history of sports?

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HIDDEN GEMS, TOURS, PUB CRAWL . . . I LOVE HISTORY

May 16th, 2012, 12:38 pm by

Pub crawl, free prizes and cool history . . . need I say more?

If you are a fan of history, as I am, enjoy a cold microbrew and good food at unique restaurants, as I do, then maybe you, too, will want to join one of the most interesting promotions of historic preservation I’ve stumbled upon.

It’s the Historic Buildings Restaurant & Pub Crawl sponsored by the Colorado Springs Historic Preservation Board.

The event is going on all May as part of the celebration of National Preservation Month.

If you don’t care to eat and drink your history lessons, there are other events that will immerse you in the area’s rich history.

This link takes you to a cool then-and-now slide show.

In fact, on Thursday night a tour is scheduled of the old chapel at Evergreen Cemetery with director Will DeBoer.

It will start at 7:30 p.m. at the cemetery, 1005 S. Hancock Expressway, and will include lots of anecdotes and fun facts.

Participants should park outside the cemetery gates, walk to the chapel and bring a sweater and a flashlight.

Next Thursday, May 24, the Pioneers Museum will offer a behind-the-scenes tour, starting at 6 p.m. Museum director Matt Mayberry will lead the after-hours look at the old El Paso County Courthouse, 215 S. Tejon St. Space is limited, so RSVP with an email to Preservation Board staffer Erin McCauley, emccauley@springsgov.com. (The tour may include a trip to the bell tower!)

And at 2 p.m., Sunday, May 27, author Jennifer Wendler Lovell will lead a 1.5-mile walking tour of Wood Avenue. Participants will be able to buy the book she co-wrote: “Exploring the Old North End Neighborhood of Colorado Springs: A Guide to its History and Architecture.”

Those all sound great but I’m most interested in the pub crawl.

The board has compiled a list of 10 restaurant/pubs that occupy historic buildings, mostly downtown, in a pamphlet available on my blog and the city’s website.

On the right is the cover of the brochure:

The restaurants and their buildings are listed with brief descriptions. Visit six of the 10 in May, get a stamp on a postcard, mail it in and be entered to win free stuff!

Mayberry noted the irony of the historic pub crawl.

“If you were to look back at each of the deeds on those properties, you’d find deed restrictions attached prohibiting the sale and distribution of alcohol,” he said, noting Colorado Springs founder Gen. William Jackson Palmer wanted his resort town to be different.

“He didn’t want it become just a typical Western town,” Mayberry said.

If Palmer could see downtown any Friday night, he’d fall off his horse.

“It’s one of the tidbits that makes Colorado Springs unique,” Mayberry said. “Little things you get from historic preservation make the place you live more interesting.”

Here are the inside pages of the brochure and the postcard:

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WHAT WOULD KATHARINE LEE BATES THINK?

February 7th, 2010, 12:00 pm by

What would Katharine Lee Bates think?

katharine_lee_bates

The  Wellesley College English professor spent the summer of 1893 in Colorado Springs teaching at Colorado College.

During that summer, she and some other teachers rode a wagon to the summit of Pikes Peak.

The trip inspired her to later write the words to “America the Beautful” and the poem was first published July 4, 1895, in a church magazine in Boston.

It was later set to music and became the unofficial national anthem. A bronze of Bates was commissioned and unveiled in 2002. It sits outside the Pioneers Museum, positioned so Bates appears to be gazing at the El Paso County Courthouse. Oops. Actually, she was facing Pikes Peak until the courthouse additional nearly blocked her view. But that’s another blog.

katharine-lee-bates-statue

Terry Sullivan

Local tourist official Terry Sullivan, right, worries what Bates might write today, if she were to witness the effects of budget cuts on city parks and institutions.

What would she think of unwatered grass in our parks? No trash cans? Pools and neighborhood community centers boarded up? Streets dark because the city turned off 10,000 streetlights.

Sullivan is president of Experience Colorado Springs, the area’s convention and visitors bureau. Tourism is his life.

 Even worse, he worries what folks across America think after word of the crisis made national news last week.

 It started with a story in the Denver Post and spread across the Internet, finding its way onto blogs and network television newscasts.denverpost

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Read the entire Denver Post story.

The biggest blow, in Sullivan’s eyes, was , including a 28-second sound bite by ABC News anchorwoman Diane Sawyer on the evening news. Here’s a link to the ABC News report . 

abcnews

It really wasn’t a huge story for Sawyer and ABC.

Just a brief mention of the problems.

But it was enough to get the attention of folks like Sullivan, who knows just how important a tourist destination’s reputation is to its success or failure.

Some in Colorado Springs caution against overreacting to the bad-mouthing.

mike-kazmierskiMike Kazmierski, right, president of the Colorado Springs Reginal Economic Development Corp. counters that the harsh headlines are a sign of the times.

Hardly a city in the United States isn’t suffering in this historically bad economy, Kazmierski said.

And he is quick to point to three pages of accolades in 2009 from magazines on Web sites that praised the Pikes Peak region.

 In each, Colorado Springs is rated one of the healthiest, happiest, smartest places to live and do business in America.

 ”Our problems are transient,” Kazmierski said. “The mountains, our quality of life, will be here forever.

“We’re all i na tough time. But we live here for a reason. It’s a wonderful community. We’ll get through this. We always have.”

america_the_beautiful

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