Our Latest History Lesson

Forde and Grace Beeten and their four children – Arthur, Louis, Herbert and Eleanor, moved to Johnstown from Fort Lupton, Colorado in 1915. Forde was transferred from the Colorado Condensed Milk Company there to the Johnstown factory as manager. In June 1916, Forde suffered severe burns while troubleshooting the cause of a power outage at…

Did anybody say snow? On Saturday, April 22, 1920 around 4:00 a.m., one of the most terrific storms which has ever been experienced in Colorado began to rage and continued without intermission until late Monday afternoon. Great damage to livestock and to buildings is reported from some communities. Denver was threatened with a serious milk…

Leslie (Babe) Byers, his wife Evelyn, and their young daughter Barbara moved to Johnstown in 1937 where Babe worked as a butcher for Hays Market. In 1940, he worked at the Red and White Grocery for Ed McClure until he purchased the Community Cold Storage in November 1941. He renamed it Byers Cold Storage.  The…

Harvey Parish was a staunch prohibitionist. As the town founder, he once owned the entire west side of Main St (Parish Ave) – that side of downtown was considered “dry” long before the 18th Amendment established Prohibition on January 1, 1920. To help keep his town respectable and free of public drunks, Harvey attempted to…

The Gray family’s roots in Johnstown date back to 1885 when James Albert Gray, his wife Ellen, and their six children moved to the Hillsboro district near what would become Milliken. The family settled on a quarter-section of land and lived in a dug-out until it was possible to build a house. In 1901, James…

 In the late 1800s, country schoolhouses dotted the landscape on the edges of local farms. They usually had one or two rooms; the two-roomed schools seated first through fourth grade in one room, and grades fifth through eighth in the other. Each classroom had a wood burning stove for heat and a water bucket and…