SIDEWALK BAZAAR WILL OFFER SHOPPERS MANY BARGAINS

At least 18 Woodland Park merchants will participate Saturday, June 14, in the first annual Sidewalk Bazaar, sponsored by the Woodland Park Chamber of Commerce. Also planned in conjunction with the bazaar is a formal dedication ceremony for the community’s new U.S. Post Office.

WEATHER

Weather offerings to date would lead us to believe it’s going to be a damp summer in the Pikes Peak Region.

‘WILD AND WOOLY WEST’ WASN’T WELCOME HERE

According to the earliest records available here in Woodland Park and from talking with some of its longtime residents the town must always have been the least wooly of all the towns in the “wild and wooly west.”… 1890 [was] when a certificate of incorporation was filed for a town site by the Woodland Park town and Improvement Co. A year later the new town had a post office, hardware store, a blacksmith and wagon shop, a drug store, furniture store and a saddle and livery business. As the town grew churches and saloons sprung up in equal number. … It was against the law in those days to run a house of ill fame, as they insisted on calling it, and gambling in any way was out. A person was forbidden by law to carry concealed bowie knives, daggers or other deadly weapons; you weren’t allowed to keep more than 25 pounds of gun powder sitting around the house and anyone caught driving his team or riding a horse in an irresponsible manner was liable for arrest. … Yes, Woodland Park must always have been a pretty placid place in which to live. Any excitement that came about a person had to pretty much dream up for themselves. Like one of the well known citizens who regularly got boozed up on Saturday night and rode his horse into a saloon. Or the fellow who roped a switching engine over by Divide but much to his sorrow broke both his legs in the process. But that apparently was the town in its earliest days. The long gone Woodland House, once located on the hill above the lumber company looked down at the height of its brief glory on a sprawling little village of boardwalks, blowing dirt and the clatter of trains on the old Midland Railway.

FROM THE FOX’S CORNER

In the 1920s a fool and his money were soon parted. Today, it happens to everyone.

–Compiled by Suzanne Core