"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.
Sheridan and its surrounding areas were a thriving community and industry and commerce grew as people used the rich open land to make a living for themselves and their families. The Tucker family is one such long time community group who made their mark in our community.
"I've lived in Sheridan since 1926. My folks ran a dairy
at 3300 S. Zuni, where we had a small house. Later my father bought
the old Valverde School and moved it to 3296 S. Zuni, where I
was raised. We sold milk, cream, butter, buttermilk and cottage
cheese. The dairy was called Yellow Top Dairy. We had Jerseys
and Holsteins. The cow pasture was nearly to Sheridan and almost
to Evans.
"My father leveled Zuni into a street, as there were no roads
any where on the hill. Federal Blvd. was open to Hampden then.
"I remember the depot [for the Colorado
& Southern Ry.] at Zuni & Hampden. It was run by Mrs.
Ditch. It was a big two story wood building painted red. Mrs.
Ditch lived there with her children Cecil, Lorraine, and Aubrey.
Aubrey was killed in an accident during a Petersburg picnic in
Deer Creek Canyon on the last day of school. He and Ross Hornbuckle
were climbing and Aubrey fell and was killed."
"Across the track [to the east] was the weight station run
by Mrs. Jaridean [sic]. Her house was two boxcars put together
with the scales in front. [The scales are still there in C &
M Iron.] There was a water tower about 1/2 block south of the
depot." There were also a couple of small one room shacks
for the Section Men [she thought].
"On the east side of the tracks was a road that went down
to a camp at Bear Creek, called Camp DeRickle and it had an arched
gate at Hampden with the name on it. At the camp there was a swinging
bridge over the creek. The big log house that was run at that
time by the Pickrel family had bunks in the loft where the kids
slept." [This was a Boy Scout camp.] "On the north side
of Hampden was a beet dump where in the fall the beet farmers
would dump their beets in an open boxcar after weighing them."
"Later my two younger brothers, Lee and Glen Tucker, were
volunteer firemen. My brother Lee Tucker was also Town Marshal,
Road Commissioner and Building Inspector. Lee now lives in Wellington
Colorado. Glen lives in Fort Collins. My older brother Charley
lives in Ault, CO.
"I bought my land from Fred Curkeet whose house still stands
on Hampden by the VFW. My husband, Armond, and I built our home
at 3357 S. Zuni where I still live, a block from where I was raised.
My three sons Dick, Bob and Jack all went to Petersburg School
and then to Sheridan High School. My father, Russell, died in
1976 and my mother, Myrtle, in 1984. My sister Opal Heyvaert and
I still live in Sheridan."
"Goats were owned by a family named Field. Zeno Morgan lived
in the bottoms on Umatilla. [Morgan was featured as a Town Mayor
in The Littleton Independent, March 29, 1940.] The bottoms were
called Frog Holler or Bull Frog Holler. The area shown on the
map as Olsen Park [also Sheridan Park] was a truck garden run
by the Nakasone's. The Holder's had a store and his wife cut hair,
they lived across Kenyon from Petersburg School. The Flickenger's
also lived near the Tucker family. Dardano's lived on Dartmouth
and used water from the Bell Ditch for their truck garden."
"The Bell Ditch served a large area, taking water from Bear
Creek and returning it to the Platte. The ditch itself was too
wide to jump across."
"In 1939-40 Dorothy and her husband both worked in the laundry
at Fort Logan, and lived at Sunset Ridge. She had lived in Englewood
and was picked up by the bus to bring her to Fort Logan through
the NYA , National Youth Association [?]. Dorothy went to school
at both Petersburg and Fort Logan, since they changed the boundaries
once. She attended Englewood High School. She cooked at Fort Logan
School for sixteen years."
Copyright © 2002 by the Sheridan Historical Society
All rights reserved