The Address Book desk. Written from Mel McFarland's columns and the 1902 map; nothing here is from memory yet. When a neighbor takes this desk, their name goes here.
Stop right here on the sidewalk with me. See that? Keep looking, because I'm going to point at five places Mel McFarland wrote about, and every one of them was something else first.
The Goodwill center on Colorado Avenue. See it? Part of that was the Golden Flake potato chip factory. Chips. Made right here. Now, Mel ran that in his quiz column of January 17, 2008, a whole column of reused buildings, and hold onto that one, because it comes back in a minute.
Fire Station 5, at Colorado and 29th. Same column, told you. You know what that was before it was a fire station? The Standard Club, a recreation hall built for the workers at the Standard Gold Mill.
2902 W Colorado. Old city hall. And then, hang on, this is the part I love, it became the first Whittier School. Mel gave the answer on June 16, 2005. A city hall that turned into a school.
Bancroft Park. Now, where the farmers market sets up. That was once Bancroft School, a big one, all the grades, junior high and high school classes too (January 17, 2008, and May 17, 2012). Next Saturday, stand right where you are with your market bag and picture it.
The Van Briggle building. You know what that was? The Colorado Midland roundhouse. Fourteen stalls of stone, part of shops that covered 57 acres between 21st and 26th, south of the creek. Six hundred men worked those shops at their peak (April 19, 2012). And that the roundhouse became Van Briggle Pottery? That's in his columns of January 10, 2009 and February 19, 2009.
Now. One honest warning before we walk on. The paper has the 1892 and 1902 Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress, public domain). See the 1902 index sheet? It puts Colorado City at 4,000 people. But the town's street numbers were renumbered after Colorado Springs annexed it in 1917, so we won't match a 1902 address to a 2026 one without the key. The key lives at the History Center, 1 S 24th. That's the next stop for this desk.
Here's where you come in. This desk has one standing question: what was in this storefront in 1968? If you remember, send it in. A name, a counter, what it smelled like, who worked there. Email hello@westsidewherewithal.com, or call or text 719-201-5462. A person reads every one.