"Sheridan Celebrates" has been held each year since the city centennial in 1990. There is a theme for each year and a booklet is published containing information about the City of Sheridan, the activities and sponsors for the day, and history. The theme in 1994 was "Family Ties." In 1994 biographies were included for six Sheridan families.
Families provide the backbone in any community. Sheridan has always maintained a family oriented front and projected those values upon its government and education structures. Sheridan's early history was marked by settlement of the fertile areas along the Platte River and Bear Creek, Fort Logan, and the hill north of the farm that John McBroom, Sheridan's first resident settled on. In later years more people would follow, drawn by available land, bringing their families or their hopes of one to make homes, create industries, and add to the richness of this small community.
Lothar and Lena Hartung were another family that came to Sheridan to make a comfortable life for themselves.
They bought a sagebrush and soapweed pasture from Cora Curkeet
[nee McBroom] in 1929. They moved from Denver to the acreage,
which ran from Clay Street to Federal on West Hampden Avenue with
their two sons, Don, four years old, and Ted, one year old. Over
the years the family developed the property into a 300 tree cherry
orchard and a 6,000 hen poultry farm called Happy Hollow Farm.
A narrow-gauge railroad ran along the south side of the Hartung
property. [The Colorado Southern Ry. line ran east and west about
where the northbournd turning lane from U. S. 285 onto Federal
Blvd. is] The two boys often waved "to the engineer in the
steam engine with its large smoke stack."
The major landmarks of the time were Fort Logan, still a vital
military base, Loretta Heights College for girls, Mullen Home
for boys, and the many productive truck garden farms such as the
Waldow family and the Chic family's made green swatches along
Bear Creek. There were also several large dairy farms such as
the Curkeets and the Platers, which later became Tucker's dairy
farm [sic]. South of the railroad tracks [from us] lived a Swiss
family named Goonan who farmed a piece of land, and south of them
was the blacksmith shop run by the Henry's.
In the early 1930s a deadly flash flood roared down Bear Creek
destroying Morrison and flooding the narrow gauge railroad and
the area that is now South Park Mobile Home Park. Just east of
what is now Clay Street, along Bear Creek, the flood washed out
a Boy Scout camp. The Denver Post featured "a picture of
a house along the south bank of Bear Creek sitting in the lake
of flood water with a "for sale" sign barely visible
above the water on its front page."
At that time West Hampden Avenue was a concrete highway that made
its way from Englewood to Fort Logan. Federal Boulevard was paved
to West Hampden Avenue and ended there. A gravel road [now Federal
Blvd. south of Hampden] ran south and was the drive into the Plater
dairy farm, which was on the south bank of Bear Creek.
Fort Logan and Petersburg served the community. Don and Ted Hartung
went to Fort Logan. Don Hartung remembers his science teacher,
Miss Bodine, who later married and became Mrs. Terry, the same
Mrs. Terry that Alice Terry School and Park are named after. When
the two boys graduated from Fort Logan, Lothar and Lena paid the
their tuition to attend Englewood High School.
Copyright © 2002 by the Sheridan Historical Society
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