Secret Places from the Past you can Find Right here in Durango
By Henry Haggart
Around five years ago, only a couple years after I had moved to Durango, some of our family friends from Santa Fe came to visit and decided to stay in the Strater. The Strater is a hotel founded in 1887, only six years before the Durango power plant was created in 1893. The Strater has remained a functional hotel ever since its founding. Now, as well as being a hotel, it's a tourist destination, showing off the styles of the late 1890’s and giving a comfortable place to stay. During that week my friend and I traveled back and forth between the Strater and our house. My time in the Strater was awesome, the old building sparked my curiosity like no other. During my stay we ended up hearing about the secret hiding places, and that they contained toys or even a few quarters. So we ended up on an adventure, to find the treasure! After a while of looking we were shown one out of pity and found a cool toy frog inside. At the time, even without knowing the history of these cool places, I was amazed. With some background information you can visit these cool local hiding places, and maybe find some treasure too.
On the side of the staircases there are a lotof pretty flower designs at regular intervals. The flowers are glued to the side of the steps and glazed over with multiple layers wood finish. One of the small wooden flowers that decorate the staircase pulls out to reveal a small hiding place from days of old.
In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s people started to realize how sinful the things society had deemed normal were, such as slavery, murder, and prostitution. So during this era, many laws were made to “purify” the United States, like the Emancipation Proclamation. Another attempted improvement was created in 1920’s called prohibition. The prohibition was constitutional ban of alcoholic drinks. Because alcohol had already been so widespread before this law alcohol did not disappear, it just became more elusive. There are many examples across America of where people hid from the law to drink liquor or where people hid their personal flasks; both types of hiding places exist in the Stater Hotel.
Another hiding place you can find in the Strater may be a little more discreet, each corner in the building has an intricately carved swirly design on top. One of these swirls lifts up on an old hinge to reveal a small drawer for hiding liquor and other things like gold.
“During a time when Durango’s future still hung in the balance – would it remain a mining camp or become a metropolis – a Cleveland pharmacist named Henry Strater had the vision and faith that Durango would prosper, and with its prosperity, it would need a grand hotel.”- Strater Hotel website. The starter was a major construction in the year 1887 and worth a lot of money, this big investment brought other people besides miners to Durango. This may be the only reason Durango isn't a ghost of a once booming mining town like Rico (a town between Dolores and Telluride) is. An example of the immediate growth following the Strater is that six years after its foundation a power plant was constructed in Durango. This power plant came only 3 years after the very first power plant “The Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant, constructed in 1890 near Ophir, Colorado” showing Durango’s prominence over other places in Colorado and in the United States.
After my week at the Strater, when I was little, I began to look at the hiding places that I knew about and tried to find others. Knowing why these exist and the rich history of why people were hiding their liquor has made this place even more special.
By Henry Haggart
Around five years ago, only a couple years after I had moved to Durango, some of our family friends from Santa Fe came to visit and decided to stay in the Strater. The Strater is a hotel founded in 1887, only six years before the Durango power plant was created in 1893. The Strater has remained a functional hotel ever since its founding. Now, as well as being a hotel, it's a tourist destination, showing off the styles of the late 1890’s and giving a comfortable place to stay. During that week my friend and I traveled back and forth between the Strater and our house. My time in the Strater was awesome, the old building sparked my curiosity like no other. During my stay we ended up hearing about the secret hiding places, and that they contained toys or even a few quarters. So we ended up on an adventure, to find the treasure! After a while of looking we were shown one out of pity and found a cool toy frog inside. At the time, even without knowing the history of these cool places, I was amazed. With some background information you can visit these cool local hiding places, and maybe find some treasure too.
On the side of the staircases there are a lotof pretty flower designs at regular intervals. The flowers are glued to the side of the steps and glazed over with multiple layers wood finish. One of the small wooden flowers that decorate the staircase pulls out to reveal a small hiding place from days of old.
In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s people started to realize how sinful the things society had deemed normal were, such as slavery, murder, and prostitution. So during this era, many laws were made to “purify” the United States, like the Emancipation Proclamation. Another attempted improvement was created in 1920’s called prohibition. The prohibition was constitutional ban of alcoholic drinks. Because alcohol had already been so widespread before this law alcohol did not disappear, it just became more elusive. There are many examples across America of where people hid from the law to drink liquor or where people hid their personal flasks; both types of hiding places exist in the Stater Hotel.
Another hiding place you can find in the Strater may be a little more discreet, each corner in the building has an intricately carved swirly design on top. One of these swirls lifts up on an old hinge to reveal a small drawer for hiding liquor and other things like gold.
“During a time when Durango’s future still hung in the balance – would it remain a mining camp or become a metropolis – a Cleveland pharmacist named Henry Strater had the vision and faith that Durango would prosper, and with its prosperity, it would need a grand hotel.”- Strater Hotel website. The starter was a major construction in the year 1887 and worth a lot of money, this big investment brought other people besides miners to Durango. This may be the only reason Durango isn't a ghost of a once booming mining town like Rico (a town between Dolores and Telluride) is. An example of the immediate growth following the Strater is that six years after its foundation a power plant was constructed in Durango. This power plant came only 3 years after the very first power plant “The Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant, constructed in 1890 near Ophir, Colorado” showing Durango’s prominence over other places in Colorado and in the United States.
After my week at the Strater, when I was little, I began to look at the hiding places that I knew about and tried to find others. Knowing why these exist and the rich history of why people were hiding their liquor has made this place even more special.