FUN COLORADO LORE

by Pam North

Colorado abounds in unusual, little-known stories of its earlier
history, providing amusing insights into the state's past.

For instance, there's the Great Denver Squirrel War.  Although never
formally named as such, there actually was an impromptu
squirrel-shooting squad in the Denver police department.  In 1843, a
councilman decided that squirrels were a public nuisance, making too
much noise and attacking birds' nests.  He promoted his cause
enthusiatically enough to get an ordinance passed for several districts
that the police could be called to eliminate offending squirrels.  The
edict remained on the books for thirteen years until 1956, despite many
prior attempts to persuade Mayor Ben Stapleton to veto the law.  When
mid-block traffic lights to control speed on one-way streets were
established about that time, they immediately were dubbed "squirrel
crossings."

The idea for the famous Hershey Bar was born in Denver.  In the 1880s
Milton Hershey, an apprentice confectioner, accompanied his father on 
a journey from Pennsylvania to Denver.  His father's hope was to cash 
in on the booming silver market, but his efforts were unsuccessful.  
Milton found employment with a Denver candy maker, and while working 
there he came to the realization that the addition of fresh milk greatly
improved chocolate, bettering its flavor and texture.  Upon returning to 
his home state, Milton began to mass-produce the new-recipe chocolate
in the form of the Hershey Bar, making what previously had been an 
expensive luxury confection affordable to almost everyone. Milton became 
to chocolate what Henry Ford was to the automobile.  Later extending 
even further the idea he had conceived in Denver, Hershey devised an 
especially long-lasting chocolate that became a part of  combat
"D-rations" 
during World War II.  Standing up to tropical temperatures, it became a 
favorite of American servicemen and the refugee children with whom it
was 
often shared.

The term "house calls" took on a whole new meaning in 1882 in Twin
Lakes, a tiny village near Mt. Elbert.  A local physician, known simply
as "Old Doc Rice," had a traveling office that seems to be unique in
Colorado history.  The good doctor had built a small house, complete
with a little stove and a crooked stove pipe, on the framework of a
sleigh.  An opening in the front permitted him to drive his horse while
he himself stayed warm and protected from the elements.  An ample supply
of wood was also cached therein to nourish the stove so that the little
room was cozy and comfortable while he examined his patients.

The bedtime rhyme of many years ago, "go to sleep and don't let the bed
bugs bite," may have amusing connotations today, but bed bugs were a
major nuisance in yesterday's Colorado cabins.  The bed bug, a wingless
bloodsucking insect, was a prolific reproducer during periods in which
the cabins were unoccupied.  Beds in ranchers' cow camps were thoroughly
doused with kerosene in the autumn in an effort to keep them
insect-free, but the irksome pests still managed to be evident en masse
when the cowhands returned in the summer.  Another method employed,
placing all four legs of the bed in basins of kerosene, proved equally
worthless, as the wily bugs simply migrated to the ceiling and then
dropped down onto the bedding.  One family, the Gears, homesteading near
Mt. Elbert in the early 1900s, finally found a novel solution to the
problem.  Even the pitch-oozing walls of their log cabin had not stopped
the bed bugs from establishing residence in their home, and although the
Gears could temporarily eliminate the insects from the bedding with
kerosene soaks, the bedsteads continued to harbor the critters.  In
desperation they kicked over some nearby anthills and placed the
bedsteads over the displaced colonies.  The ants finished the bed bug
destruction by swarming over the bedsteads, carrying off the bed bugs
and even the nits hidden in the crevices of the woodwork.

Stories like these give substance to the fact that truth is often even
more off-beat than fiction.




Resources:     I Never Knew That About Colorado, by Abbott Fay
               More That I Never Knew About Colorado, by Abbott Fay