Harvesting Historical Riches

Watch Nunn Grow

Several years ago, a woman called the Colorado Historical Society and asked to speak with someone about a problem with a historic sign on U.S. Highway 85.  Our information officer directed the woman’s call to me.  At that time I was working in the Society’s roadside interpretation program, the office responsible for creating, placing, and maintaining interpretive highway markers across the state.  As the woman told me her remarkable story, I realized that her sign problem signified a larger issue.  It symbolized an entire town’s fight to preserve its identity and history.

Although I have forgotten the caller’s name, I remember her story well.  She lived in Nunn, a small town twenty miles north of Greeley on U.S. 85.  Everyone who drives through town will notice a 130-foot-high water tower emblazoned with the slogan, “Watch Nunn Grow.” A few years ago, a telecommunications company wanted to attach a cell phone antenna assembly to the tower.  The caller was concerned that the antenna would diminish the historic tower’s integrity.  I referred her to the Society’s Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation and did not think about the tower again until someone brought Nunn’s recent historic preservation successes to my attention.

Revisiting the town’s story, I was happy to learn that the water tower remains unblemished by modern protrusions.  But the town itself is changing.  Property owners, taking their cue from the tower’s eighty-year-old slogan, are building new homes in several locations in town and on its fringes.  For the first time in recent memory, Nunn is growing.

Any kind of change, good or bad, inspires reflection.  Just as a beacon mounted atop the water tower once guided airplanes between Denver and Cheyenne, local historians show newcomers and old timers alike how this new present connects to the past.  These historians tell their stories inside the old municipal hall, now reincarnated as the Northern Drylanders Museum.

Standing in the water tower’s shadow, the museum building itself conveys a sense of Nunn’s past.  Like all of Colorado’s dry-land farming communities, Nunn suffered from low rainfall, low crop yields, and low prices for agricultural products during the Great Depression.  In late 1933, the Civil Works Administration (a New Deal relief program) temporarily boosted incomes and spirits by helping to build a municipal hall in Nunn.  The town provided the land, equipment, and materials, while the CWA paid the men’s wages.  However, the federal government shut down the CWA before the building could be completed.  Unfazed by the setback, local citizens raised enough money to finish the job by staging benefit dances and other events.  The first dance inaugurated the building’s term as Nunn’s social and civic center.  During the following decades, the building hosted athletic events, school dances, weddings, and family reunions.  It also housed the town clerk, police station, and fire department.  But as area schools built new gymnasiums and auditoriums, the municipal hall became a vacated and forgotten shell.

Three years ago, the High Plains Historical Society rescued the building and converted it into a museum.  But before the members could bring the history of northern Weld County to life, they needed to resuscitate the aging facility.  A 1949 fire had damaged roof trusses, while the concrete walls, windows, and exterior paint had suffered from deferred maintenance and weathering.  Realizing that such a project exceeded the society’s financial means, the society’s members turned to the State Historical Fund for help.

The High Plains Historical Society received a SHF grant to conduct a historic structure assessment in 2002.  The completed report recommended a comprehensive rehabilitation to address structural defects, building accessibility problems, and safety hazards.  Work began in 2003 and will be completed next year.  The State Historical Fund contributed $156,092 to the project.

When the Northern Drylanders Museum opens to the public in 2004, it will resume its historic role as Nunn’s social center.  Its gallery will fill with school children and other curious patrons in the spring and the annual fall festival will be held there in August.  If you decide to visit, just drive twenty miles north of Greeley on U.S. 85 and look for a water tower.  You can’t miss it.  Just don’t try to call the museum with your cell phone.

BY BEN FOGELBERG, Editor