Fort Collins Stories

Today’s stories about making a living in early Fort Collins are excerpts from “Talking About Fort Collins: Selections from Oral Histories,” a joint project of The Friends of the Library and the Local History Department of the Fort Collins Public Library (1992). (Transcripts of the oral histories are also available at Fort Collins History Connection. )

“Father and mother Tedmon came to Fort Collins in 1878. After a short, and bad, experience ranching, father bought the little hotel known as Blake House that stood on the corner of Jefferson and Linden. Then father built the Tedmon House there, finished it in ’80. He sold that place in 1882, I believe for $17,000. Made quite a profit on it. Just think of it—three stories high, and every floor had a bathroom! That hotel stood there until 1910.”
--Bolivar S. Tedmon, Jr. 1975

The Stover Drug Store and The Tedmon House Hotel at the corner of Linden and Jefferson Streets, circa 1887.

“My father, John M. Hoffman, came to Fort Collins in 1887, and worked as a miller for B.F. Hottel. In the 1893 panic—that’s what they called it in those days, and I guess it was really rough—they wanted to cut his wages, and he said no, he’d worked too long. He was getting three dollars and a half a day then as head miller. When you look back on it, that was kind of nervy to do in the middle of a depression.

“I don’t know where he got the money, but anyway he dug a ditch and built a dam and a little feed grinding mill, and he ground grain for the farmers. At that time Mulberry stopped at Riverside, and he was just across Riverside. He said that at the end of the first year he had $1800 in the bank, more money than he’d ever had before. So he stayed with that and later built a flour mill there.”
--Milton Coy Hoffman, 1978

Mystery Photo
Last week's photo was taken at the Shields Street entrance to the Cathy Fromme Prairie.





















Where in Fort Collins was this week's picture taken?