A history of Delta's Main Street* - Part II

MAIN STREET’S FLAG POLE

Delta, CO's Main Street circa 1898 with the 75 ft. tall flag poll.
Delta County Historical Society Photo

As the Spanish-American War came to an end in 1898, a group of Delta businessmen thought it would be a good idea to have a flagpole in the center of town. So Delta erected a 75-foot tall flag pole in the center of the intersection of Main and Third Streets and proudly displayed a giant 45-star US flag.

In August 1898, an 86-foot tall tree was cut and hauled off of Grand Mesa to Delta. The Delta County Independent noted that several Eckert residents had reported seeing the giant pole being hauled down the Surface Creek road.

Businessmen Frank Dodge and Frank Sanders volunteered to see that the pole was properly placed. The Town of Delta built a band stand around the flagpole “for the benefit of the band boys.” Unfortunately, the affixing of a pulley to the top of the flagpole was an afterthought. The newspaper noted that "the pulley was so far down the pole that the flag flies constantly at half-mast," leaving everybody asking, “who is dead?”

When electricity came to Delta in 1900, the town thought it would be a great idea to hang a light bulb atop the flagpole (well, half-way up) to illuminate Main Street. The light bulb and wiring were attached to the flag pulley and hoisted half-way up the 75-foot pole. The pulley system was needed in order to be able to change the light bulb when it burned out. At that time, the city power plant was located at First and Main.

In 1898, traffic on Main Street, with few exceptions, was entirely horse-drawn buggies and wagons. However, within a few years automobiles were common along Main Street. The flagpole and band-stand became a frequent target of early motorists whose driving skills preceded the requirement for a driver's license. The town enacted a 7-mph speed limit within intersections, but somehow a few motorists still managed to hit the flagpole.

By 1908, the Town of Delta condemned the flagpole and bandstand as “dangerous.” On April 9, 1908, the town took down the flagpole and replaced it with a smaller one. The small flagpole might only have lasted a year or two, as there are no known photographs featuring a smaller flagpole.

DELTA'S MAIN STREET - PART OF A BIGGER TRANSPORTATION PICTURE   

Delta's Main Street circa 1958, after the widening.
Delta County Historical Society Photo

Delta’s Main Street, while a footnote in the nation’s evolving transportation debate in the mid-1950s, played a role in ensuring the Interstate did not pass through Delta County. The pre-cursors to the Interstate Highway System rested in two landmark reports requested by Congress in 1939 (Toll Roads and Free Roads) and 1944 (Interregional Highways). Each report contained a map of an illustrative "Interregional System," as it was originally called, and had an east-west route terminating in Denver and a north-south route also passing through Denver.

Edwin C. Johnson, who was one of Colorado’s US Senators in the late 1930s through the mid-1950s and was governor both prior to and after his time in the senate, envisioned a massive highway from Denver to California. After the preliminary report of Toll Roads and Free Roads, State Highway Engineer Charles D. Vail and Sen. Johnson crafted a plan to show that a westward route from Denver was feasible. By the autumn of 1939 US Route 6 was being built over Black Gore Pass. Prior to 1940, roads through the Gore Valley and along Beaver Creek were barely used. In January 1940, Black-Gore Pass was re-named Vail Pass, in honor of the engineer who was determined to prove a western roadway out of Denver would work.

In March 1973, the first bore of the I-70 Continental Divide Tunnels were opened and named for President Eisenhower. The second bore opened in December 1979 and was named for Governor Johnson who had fought for the highway. By the mid-1970s the Highway 50 Association was disbanded, as travelers began favoring the new I-70 route to the north. With the decline of traffic volumes Life magazine in July 1986 proclaimed: US 50 "The Loneliest Road" in America. Ironically, there has been talk of making US 50 a four-lane highway to help relieve the congestion now on I-70, though this has been met with the traditional “no money” argument. Perhaps it will happen someday, as some segments are already four-lane.

The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 authorized designation of a 40,000-mile "National System of Interstate Highways." By 1947, the work was nearly complete and as Johnson and other state officials feared, Denver was known as the “dead-end city.” Part of the problem was the cost of building a major highway through the mountains and by law, a neighboring state had to connect to the highway and continue it.

US Hwy 50 has been widened to 4-lanes in some locations.

Utah and Nevada proposed upgrading US Route 50 to Interstate status. The plan had merit, as transiting the mountains via Monarch Pass meant fewer storms for truckers, thus  keeping freight moving. Denver was against this plan, as it meant it would keep the “dead end” title and Pueblo-Colorado Springs would have the benefit of the westward highway.

By 1955 the debate over a westward Interstate from Denver was in full swing. State Rep. Charles Conklin and State Sen. James Mowbray, both of Delta, backed Gov. Ed Johnson, in helping squash the Utah-Nevada proposal of turning US Highway 50 into an Interstate Highway (the debate which continued until the autumn of 1969). President Dwight Eisenhower, whose wife Mamie was born and raised in Denver, gave approval to the westward expansion of I-70 from Denver to Grand Junction in the Interstate Act of 1956. As a bit of irony, the Eisenhowers were married in Denver on the same day that President Wilson signed the 1916 Highway Act which got the Federal Government involved in the road business.

TREES & FLOWERS ALONG MAIN STREET

Delta has become famous for it's tree lined Main Street, flowers, and murals.
Susan Reep Photo

Delta began planting trees up and down Main Street in the 1890s. By the 1940s, the beautiful deciduous trees garnered Delta the nickname: “city of trees.” Over the years, all of the original trees have been replaced, most of them several times. Aggressive roots have caused sidewalks to buckle in some places over the years, though today this is mostly seen on side streets. Managing roots and tree size continues to require constant care.

In 1990, Delta began a major urban renewal program that included: industrial clean-up, and the creation of Confluence Park, Bill Heddles Recreation Center, and Fort Uncompahgre. At the same time, the Delta County Museum was moved from the court house to its current location at Third and Meeker, and an urban trail from Lincoln Elementary School to Confluence Park, among other projects, was established. Delta also began adding murals along Main Street along with median flowers and large pots of flowers along the sidewalks.

The flowers along Delta’s Main Street are planted and maintained by a couple of seasonal city employees, Cindy Valdez and Veronica Pacheco, they have affectionately become known as the “flower ladies.” Camelot Gardens in Montrose has had so many customers ask about the mix of flowers planted along Delta’s Main Street that the owners stock the exact same variety of flowers as the “Delta flower lady” plants.

Delta's flowers are known throughout Colorado.

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*This article, published in the Delta County Museum's quarterly newsletter, is part two in a two-part series covering the development of Delta's Main Street and the politics relating to it.

Soper, Matt. "A history of Delta's Main Street." Delta County Historical Society (Delta, Colo.) Newsletter Iss. No. 87 (July-Sept 2016) p4+