Work in progress
Page 4
Colorado's original New Deal
Winter Park Ski Resort
During the 1930s and early 1940s, Works Progress Administration crews built 400 structures in Colorado, including schools, sewage plants and dams, and 9,000 miles of new roads. The banks of the Platte River and Cherry Creek in Denver were shored up with riprap, Stapleton Airport and Fitzsimons Medical Center were expanded and Lowry Field was built. The Big Thompson water project came into existence. Oh, yeah, and between 1936 and 1941, a CCC company in Morrison built Red Rocks Amphitheatre, one of Colorado’s crown jewels to this day.
Other CCC projects in Colorado included soil erosion mitigation, forestry work and stabilization of irrigation systems. In the state and national parks, projects included work on roads, trails, campgrounds and other facilities. Additional programs served students lunch and canned produce.
A FEW NEW DEAL HIGHLIGHTS IN COLORADO:
U.S. 6 over Vail Pass: WPA funding helped pave the road over the 10,666-foot pass, which opened to auto traffic in 1940.
Winter Park Ski Area: Numerous Denver Mountain Parks projects were funded with New Deal Money, including the slopes at Winter Park.
Stapleton Airport: New runways were built at Denver’s former airport.
Rimrock Road, Colorado National Monument: CCC and WPA crews worked on the serpentine road until World War II.
Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison: Between 1936 and 1941, CCC workers built what is now considered one of the best outdoor music venues in the world.
Colorado-Big Thompson Water Project: Built in part by the WPA, this massive diversion project includes more than 100 structures that pump water from the mountains to the plains.
Lowry Field: The WPA converted the former Agnes Memorial Sanatorium into the modern airfield at the former Lowry Air Force Base in 1937-38.
Fitzsimons Medical Center: The former Army medical center was expanded.
Denver-based writer Eric Peterson is the author of Frommer's Colorado, Frommer's Montana & Wyoming, Frommer's Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks and the Ramble series of guidebooks, featuring first-person travelogues covering everything from atomic landmarks in New Mexico to celebrity gone wrong in Hollywood. Peterson has also recently written about backpacking in Yosemite, cross-country skiing in Yellowstone and downhill skiing in Colorado for such publications as Denver's Westword and The New York Daily News.
Readers Respond
Leave a comment