COLORADO -- FLUSH WITH OUTHOUSES by Pam North The outhouse (also known as the privy, nessie or necessity, biffy, library, throne room, chapel of ease, or white house) has become an object of humor, but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was an everyday part of the fabric of American life Traditionally it was placed out of view, 50 to 150 feet behind the residence, where it could be visited discreetly. One humorous directive as to the location of a proposed outhouse was to place it behind the woodpile, the theory being that women, modest and embarrassed to make a trip to the privy when men were around, would return carrying a few pieces of firewood as a cover, thereby making work easier for the man of the house. The vast majority of privies, even those of residences belonging to owners of higher economic and social status, were modestly constructed of wood, often scrap lumber, and made to be movable periodically when the pit beneath filled up with waste. Typical outhouses measured no more than four feet square and seven feet high at the roof peak. Slanted shed roofs were favored for ease of construction and fewer crannies for wasp nest construction. Simplicity was key; extraneous touches such as seat lids, windows, ornamentation, and even the stereotypical crescent-moon door cut-outs were uncommon. Exterior painting was commonly white, which looked clean and had the benefit of making the structure easier to locate on dark nights. Most privies were single-seaters, as the era's prevailing etiquette and modesty discouraged joint occupancy. Those with two or more seats sometimes had one smaller seat size and a wooden step to accommodate youngsters. Minimal interior decor was supplied by calendars, magazine illustrations, box tops and advertisements which also helped to insulate against draftiness. A Sears & Roebuck catalog often was standard equipment (a page was torn out, scrunched and worked a bit to soften it before use); toilet paper was a luxury, and most people preferred to spend their money on other things. A bucket in a corner held a supply of lime to be tossed in the hole periodically to reduce flies and odor. Vigorous weekly scrubbings with soapy leftover washwater were adhered to by meticulous housewives. A trip to the outhouse could be fraught with peril. A hook-and-eye latch on the door offered some security during a visit to the privy, but if not secured would sometimes subject the occupant to the common occurence of a prankster running by and yanking the door open, exposing the victim. Firecrackers could be set off outside, frightening the occupant enough to exit unceremoniously with his pants down. Sometimes the privy door was quickly and quietly secured with rope or wire, locking the victim inside, or even worse, the privy was tipped over while occupied, the last a messy fate no one wished to meet.. Colorado has its share of outhouses, most of them the common, primitive variety, but other more exotic varieties exist as well: hexagonal, two-story, sheet metal, stone, or decorated structures, some of them even on the National Register of Historic Places. Gilpin County has had its own unique collection. A photograph of Central City taken in 1864 shows the back of the business district, with outhouses behind almost every building. Each outhouse sat on stilts so that waste products dropped into Gregory Gulch (Black Hawk, downhill at the base of Gregory Gulch, might have based some of its historic hostility to Central City from this situation alone). Black Hawk's Lace House, considered one of Colorado's finest example of Carpenter Gothic architecture, is on the National Register of Historic Places, and so therefore is its outhouse. The structure (once festooned with ivy winding through it) is perched at the end of a wooden stairway ascending the hill behind the house; a destination point that must have proved challenging after a heavy snowfall. This and other local residences with outhouses similarly accessed by steep staircases presumably kept an ample supply of chamberpots on hand. The Black Hawk school outhouse, dating from approximately 1870, had separate sections for boys and girls. The schoolhouse in Russell Gulch had an outhouse atypically built on top of a stone wall and covered with sheet metal, the foundation wall forming the above-ground pit necessary due to the solid bedrock below. Due to the lack of a local sewage system, outhouses remain a part of daily life for many Russell Gulch residents, who sometimes attach a fake TV antenna.or post humorous signs on them. This custom gives one pause when encountering the "Glory Hole" sign at the nearby location of a famous local gold mine. Boulder County has an outhouse inconveniently located on the opposite side of the road from the owner's residence; a hurried journey to that privy could find extra drama in dodging a passing automobile or waiting out a traffic jam. Another interesting outhouse in that area is a two-hole brick structure behind what was once a doctor's office. Masonry outhouses are rarities since they were stationary and had to be mucked out instead of simply being moved to a newly-dug hole as were the wooden structures. An elaborate, clapboard-sided, hexagonal privy is located behind the historic Hamill House in Georgetown. The family's side and the servants' side are separated by a dividing wall that functions as a vent leading up to an elaborate cupola. Toilet seat materials indicated the difference in stature between the two classes; pine for the servants and walnut for the affluent family's members, though all were smoothly finished and of varying dimensions to accommodate adults and children. The roof perimeter is adorned with fancy edging trims, and a carved canopy overhangs the doorway. This was the ultimate Victorian privy. Another hexagonal outhouse, this with a six-sided peaked-roof, is at Inter-Laken, once a popular mountain resort on the south shore of Twin Lakes. The privy was constructed with private stalls, each lettered to correspond to rooms rented by guests. At Finntown, east of Leadville, was a hexagonal outhouse built of corrugated steel sheets nailed over a lumber frame; it had windows and an arched door with ornamental brackets on each side, a faceted, domed roof topped with a decorative ball, and unfortunately exists now only in photographs. A Breckenridge outhouse features a Dutch door, and a Hartsel privy sports an unusual triangular window in its door. Extra-tall privies were built in Wapiti, and an outhouse of massive logs was constructed at Camp Cree, near Monarch Pass. In Victor, an elaborate outhouse, with center stairs leading to a small porch, is decorated with pressed tin siding, and has tiny adjacent rooms for coal and firewood storage. An architect-designed outhouse in Fulford has a forest-facing door with a periscope aimed toward the town's main street. A disadvantage of this one is that the occupant is invisible from the eyes of town residents only when the interior is relatively dark; bright noon sunlight makes him subject to indecent exposure. One of the most interesting historical outhouses is the two-story version behind the Masonic Hall in Crested Butte. The two levels are offset from each other; back-to-back "business" sides allow one pit to service both levels. Winter snowdrifts seasonally prevent access to the lower level, but this privy is still functional. An additional smaller two-story outhouse in the town once existed, but was a victim of new construction. Another method of building two-story outhouses was to cantilever the upper story at the back and place the seats at the overhang; materials released from the top fell behind the rear wall of the lower level. One wag dubbed double-decker privies as "skyscrappers.".: Scattered across Colorado are another outhouse oddity; many of the National Park Service privies are built simply as two slab-wood walls, four feet high, set at right angles to each other, with a corner toilet set on a piece of plywood over a pit. these roofless privies offer little privacy or shelter from the elements. Definitely bare-minimum structures, users also would bare minimum. A local resident in Guffey has built a his-and-hers outhouse with a large crack in the boards of the partition between the men's and women's sides; a prospectivee voyeur attempting to sneak a peek through the crack encounters only a mirrored image of his own face. Besides the structures themselves, outhouses present themselves in fun themes for a tour and a race in Colorado. Walden has a tour of outhouses, followed by a barbeque and live music by an all-female, seven-piece jug band, with outhouses and chamber pots the subjects of the music. One of the musical instruments is a gilt-finished toilet seat with string-suspended tuned washers as windchimes. One stop in the tour is a pair of oversized outhouses furnished inside with items such as a bed, a stove and a stuffed moose. The Jackson County Library benefits from this celebration. One of the highlights of Leadville's Boom Days is an outhouse race. Two teams compete; each team has one member riding inside a caster-equipped outhouse, two pulling it with ropes, and two pushing. At the sound of the starting gun, the outhouse is maneuvered down the street, around a cone set-up, and returned to the start/finish line; the team with the fastest time wins the race. Outhouses are a disappearing relic of another time, falling victim to age, plumbing modernization, building codes, and Halloween pranks. These remnants of the "good old days" fortunately are regarded by some as having historic relelevance worthy of preservation. The outhouse, primitive or elaborate, historic or recreated, is an American institution from yesteryear.that, while cheerfully abandoned, should not be forgotten.