Fort Collins History & The Armstrong Hotel
It’s 1923. Glittery frocks, cotton worsted trousers and full vest suits are “in”, and despite the nation’s downturn from The Great Depression, former military post of Fort Collins, Colorado is doing surprisingly well.
Currently, The Armstrong Hotel in the heart of Old Town doesn’t exist. Soon to be proprietors of the hotel, Caroline Armstrong Mantz and her husband Charles Mantz, are visitng her father Andrew Armstrong in his beautiful home north of where The Armstrong Hotel will eventually stand. His home is a two-story stunner, set back in a lot filled with big trees and a sprawling lawn. The Armstrong family is well known in the community; their home acts as a headquarters for the Roosevelt National Forest Service and a community meeting place.
Mr. Armstrong is a burly man, wears a pocket watch, bowler-type hat, and sports an aged mustache and beard. His daughter Caroline and her husband Charles have just begun construction on the original Armstrong Hotel, which will carry Mr. Armstrong’s name for generations to come.
Fort Collins, Colorado, Circa 1923
The city is expanding as well. Many noteworthy buildings, including the original Fort Collins High School, which opened its doors in 1925, are being constructed. A new hospital is built just outside the city, which treats 14,500 people a year in a three-story brick building off Remington street.
Bus lines are established between Fort Collins and Denver, an airfield named “Christman Field” is built to honor a World War II pilot, and traffic on the corner of College and Mountain has become unbearable. The city purchases a high-tech traffic signal, which signals right-of-way by means of two red and green arms that raise and lower in succession.
The city even produces its own home movie, “The Girl from Collins” and promotes the film on the college campus. The local newspaper (Fort Collins Express-Courier) and The Lyric Theatre, a local favorite, sponsors a fiddlers contest in an effort to make Fort Collins “the fiddlers capital of the west”.
