2016 BHS Calendar

Price – $15 (plus $2 shipping)

A century ago, Berthoud, Colorado, was the bustling agricultural center of southern Larimer County. The town boasted about 750 citizens and all the shops and industries required to satisfy the needs of town and country dwellers alike. It would not be until the decade neared its end that local boys would be shipped off to Europe to fight in World War I and return with the deadly Spanish Flu.

Exactly a century ago in 1916, Carrie McCormick formed Berthoud’s first chapter of Camp Fire Girls. Prosperous citizens, Louis F. Bein and Dr. David W. McCarty, built elegant homes at 748 Mountain Avenue and 645 7th Street that surpassed the quality of any dwelling built in Berthoud up to that time. Four students graduated from Berthoud High School and 85,000 tourists, including several Berthoud residents, rumbled up the Big Thompson Canyon in their roadsters and touring cars to visit the newly dedicated Rocky Mountain National Park.

In 1916, the Grandview Hotel changed management and two people were injured when a train collided with a “motor car” at the Mountain Avenue crossing of the Colorado & Southern Railroad tracks. New brick buildings were constructed to house the Red Rock country school west of Berthoud and the Moon Theater at 342 Massachusetts Avenue.

Frederick Bein, a farmer living in the Sunnyside District northeast of Berthoud, sent many fine draft horses to auction while contractor John A. Bell built several concrete silos on farms near town. In almost every respect, 1916 was a fine year in Berthoud, a community that the local chamber of commerce started promoting as the “Garden Spot of Colorado” in 1909.

The Berthoud Historical Society thanks local citizens and businesses that made the production of the calendar possible. With their support, we continue our mission to discover, preserve and interpret the history of Berthoud, the Little Thompson Valley, Colorado, and the surrounding region.

The late Bill Sterkel, a Berthoud native and member of a German from Russia family, never forgot how he got his first camera. As a young boy in the 1910s, Bill determined that the only way he would ever get his hands on a camera was to go door-to-door selling tins of Rosebud salve. (The company offered cameras as premiums to people who sold their products.) Bill eventually earned his camera and caught a picture-taking bug that lasted his lifetime.

The Berthoud Historical Society would like to thank everyone, who over the years, donated photographs or loaned them for copying. Without their generosity the production of a calendar filled with snapshots would not be possible. We also offer our sincere appreciation to the Berthoud businesses
and individuals that sponsor calendar pages and make this annual project possible.

We present to you Snapshots of Berthoud. We hope that this calendar helps fulfill our mission to discover, preserve and interpret the history of Berthoud, the Little Thompson Valley, Colorado, and the surrounding region.

Please enjoy!