Friday Feature: Oral History

Moving to Fort Collins is the theme for today’s 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.)

(Cartoon from A Perfect World)

When we came to Fort Collins in 1887, the Stout quarries were running. A railroad track was running up the middle of that lake where Spring Canyon is, and a railroad trestle went over the highway. My mother had a cousin working there, and the wages were two dollars a day, ten hours a day, and they cut a lot of paving blocks. That was awful good wages in those times.
--Adam Michie, 1974

We came to Fort Collins by train in 1904. We got off at the little station at the college. There wasn’t much there. It was March and everything was beautiful; we thought we’d hit heaven because it was so much different from Nebraska. The fountain at the college when we got off the train and came through there was the first thing that I remember. It was in front of the old college chapel, and it had mineral water coming out the spigots.
--Grace Graves, 1974

Our family moved from Denver to Fort Collins just after the big flood in the spring of 1904. We moved in a hayrack drawn by a team of horses, all our worldly possessions piled on the wagon. My brother and I rode our bicycles. It took us three days to make the trip. We camped along the way each night.
--Lora Shipp, 1978

Mystery Photo:
Believe it or not, this elevated doorway was once the second-floor entrance to a two-story outhouse.







For today's mystery photo, can you identify this person from Fort Collins history? (Photo from Fort Collins History Connection)