Blog Posts - Front Range Research Associates, Inc.

McFadden Barn Listed in National Register

4/26/2022

The McFadden Barn (ca. 1900-01), located on a historic ranch north of Buena Vista, Colorado, was listed in the National Register March 31, 2022. The barn is significant for its architecture as a very good example of a large bank (or sidehill) barn, with three sides built into the slope of the land (providing access to the main level of the building) and the fourth side affording access to the barn’s lower level. The building features unusual joinery is clad with horizontal boards. Dendrochronological testing assisted the project in estimating the barn's date of construction.

Coronado Lodge Honored by Pueblo Chapter of NAACP

3/7/2022

During Black History Month 2022, the Pueblo chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) honored the Coronado Lodge for the role it played welcoming African American travelers during the era of segregation. The 1940s motel was listed in The Green Book. Front Range prepared the National Register nomination for the property, which was listed in 2020. The full account appears in the March 1, 2022 Pueblo Chieftain.

Buena Vista Ranger Station Listed in National Register

3/5/2022

On March 2, 2022, the National Park Service announced the listing in the National Register of the former Buena Vista Ranger Station of the US Forest Service. Constructed ca. 1937 on Buena Vista's Main Street, the building served initially as an office for the Forest Ranger for the Cochetopa National Forest, which was created in 1908, and later filled a similar function for the San Isabel National Forest. The Buena Vista building is significant for its association with the administration of the national forests in Colorado and as an example of an in-town combination ranger station, containing a ranger office, storage, and a garage. The project was privately funded by the owners. The image below shows the ranger station in 1939.

Two National Historic Landmarks Advance to Advisory Board

11/1/2021

The Landmarks Committee of the National Park System Advisory Board unanimously voted to forward two National Historic Landmark nominations prepared by Front Range to the Advisory Board.

Wink's Panorama, northwest of Denver, Colorado, served as a summer resort for African Americans during the era of segregation. It was built and operated by Obrey Wendell "Wink" Hamlet, an African American coal, wood, and moving entrepreneur in Denver's Five Points neighborhood. The lodge operated from May through September and drew guests from the Midwest and South. Wink's Panorama was listed in The Green Book and Ebony's guide to mountian summer resorts.

The committee also approved the nomination for the Rio Vista Bracero Reception Center in Socorro, Texas (thirteen miles southeast of El Paso on the US-Mexico border). The 11.1-acre facility initially served as the El Paso County Poor Farm starting in 1916. In 1951 the US Labor Department selected it as the site of a processing and contracting center for the Mexican Farm Labor Program, between 1951 and 1964. The bracero program was the largest alien worker programs ever undertaken by the US, comprising more than four million contracts for Mexican farmworkers, who worked in forty-six states and comprised nearly a fourth of all US agricultural workers by 1959.

Holdsworth House/Pines Lodge Listed in National Register

11/1/2021

The Holdsworth House/Aspenholme/Pines Lodge, northwest of Westcliffe in Custer County, Colorado, was listed in the National Register on October 15. Built in 1898, the building is significant for its architecture as an intact example of a Shingle-style residence in a mountain resort setting. The building is further significant in the area of Ethnic Heritage/European for its association with British members of the “English Colony” near Westcliffe, Custer County, Colorado, who brought British cultural traditions to the area beginning in the 1870s and extending into the first decades of the twentieth century. It is also significant in the area of Entertainment/Recreation as the centerpiece of a summer resort operated by the Cusack family from 1911 to 1941.

Howard Berkeley Park Chapel Featured in Doors Open Denver, 2021

8/25/2021

UPDATE: September 17--DOD advised today that most virtual tours, including this one, will not be offered due to technical issues. Tom Simmons, Front Range principal and a member of Historic Berkeley Regis (HBR), will participate October 11, 2021 in a Doors Open Denver virtual tour of the Howard Berkeley Park Chapel, a 1960 funeral home designed by Denver architect J. Roger Musick. HBR played a significant role in saving the building from demolition in 2019, and Front Range prepared a Denver Landmark application for the new owners in 2020. The building now houses Redemption Church Denver, as well as a Montessori school and an events center. More information and ticketing is available at the link below:
mailchi.mp/denverarchitecture/doors-open-denver-tickets-on-sale-for-virtual-tours-in-person-tours-archival-tours-1647216?e=c424c48c45

CF&I Administrative Complex Designated NHL

2/27/2021

Colorado Fuel and Iron Company Administrative Complex, Pueblo, Colorado was designated as a National Historic Landmark in January 2021. The administrative complex served as the operational headquarters for the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I), a firm formed in 1892 that played an influential role in the development of the American economy through industrial extraction and production in the early twentieth century as the Trans-Mississippi West’s pioneer steelmaker and its principal coal and coke enterprise. Managers, engineers, and clerical staff within the administrative complex oversaw the day to day administration of Colorado Fuel and Iron’s multi-state industrial empire, including operating a steel and iron plant in Pueblo (completed in 1882 and comprising the nation’s first, fully integrated steel manufacturing facility west of St. Louis, a position it retained until 1942); overseeing coal, iron, and limestone mines and coke ovens in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, and Oklahoma; directing the flow of eastern capital to developing western natural resources and industrial capacity, particularly through the involvement of the Rockefeller family who controlled the company from 1907 to 1944; and implementing the firm’s 1915 Employee Representation Plan, which impacted workers and work culture and stimulated the adoption of hundreds of similar measures throughout the country in the 1910s and 1920s. Designated January 2021.

Klagetoh Chapter House Designated NHL

2/27/2021

In January 2021, the Secretary of the Interior designated the Klagetoh Chapter House on the Navajo Nation in northeast Arizona a National Historic Landmark. Significant for its association with Navajo political leader and public health advocate Annie Dodge Wauneka, the chapter house was constructed in 1964 and employs native sandstone quarried near by. Wauneka gained election to the Navajo Tribal Council in 1951 and served in that body until 1979. In the 1950s, she led the Navajo effort to combat an epidemic of tuberculosis on the reservation and gained national attention and praise for her advocacy on public health matters. Wauneka was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in December 1963. During the 2020 Covid pandemic, the chapter house served as a testing and supply distribution site. The project was undertaken by Front Range for the National Collaborative for Women's History Sites.

Central/Keating Junior High School in Pueblo Listed in National Register

1/26/2021

Central/Keating Junior High School in Pueblo, Colorado, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in December 2020. The school is significant in the area of Education, serving as Pueblo School District 20’s first and only junior high school from its initial construction in 1927 to 1954. The building continued as a junior high/middle school until its closure in 1982. The school reflects the district’s implementation of the 1910s and 1920s concept of educational reform through creation of the junior high school, an intermediate level facility between elementary and high schools that recognized the different social and educational needs of young teenagers. The school is also locally significant for its Architecture as a well-preserved example of the Classical Revival architectural style applied to educational buildings. It also is an illustration of a purpose-built 1920s junior high school building, including functional rooms reflecting then new teaching methods and curriculums. The school is further locally significant as a work of Pueblo architects William W. Stickney (1922 central part) and Walter F. DeMordaunt (1929 east and west wings).

Three Chaffee County Resources Listed in National/State Registers

1/26/2021

Maxwell Park School. The 1912 Maxwell Park School southwest of Buena Vista was listed in the National Register in December 2020. The one-room country school is significant for its architecture and for the role it played in educating the children of surrounding ranchers. The building displays ornamental concrete block construction.

Riedel/Circle S Ranch Bunkhouse. The 1930s Riedel/Circle S Ranch bunkhouse west of Buena Vista was listed in the State Register in September. The bunkhouse is for its association with dude ranching from ca. early 1930s to the ca. early 1940s. The building represents the growing popularity of dude ranching in Colorado, as it was formed by joining two existing buildings together, a ranch hand bunkhouse and a log cabin to provide accommodations for ranch guests. Jack W. and Harriet R. Riedel purchased the existing ranch property in 1930 and began dude/guest ranch activities during the summers. The building is further significant as an example of a Rustic-style dude ranch guesthouse/bunkhouse. The Rustic style was often employed in mountain settings for lodges, vacation homes, and other resort facilities. This building’s Rustic architecture displays log walls; a gable roof; a full-width porch with log posts, bracing, and railing facing a scenic view; and multiple entrances on the front, some featuring ornamented Dutch wood doors

Irving Barn. The ca. 1886-88 Irving Barn south of Nathrop was listed in the State Register in September. The frame barn is significant in the area of Architecture as an example of an English frame barn in central Chaffee County, as reflected in its original rectangular shape, side-gable roof, board walls, upper story loft, and entrance on the wall of its long axis. James C. and Margaret S. Irving settled on the farm in 1886, and erected the barn. Mr. Irving became one of the most prosperous farmers in this section of Chaffee County, raising vegetables and livestock and adding more land to his holdings. The east addition illustrates the custom of adding onto an early barn to meet new needs. In this case the new space may have housed a vehicle, farm machinery, or storage space.