Estes Park 101 years ago

Note the kids on bicycles - Estes Park had less than 50 school-age children in 1917

 This is Elkhorn Avenue looking west around 1917, with block 2 on the right (plus a bit of the future Bond Park in the immediate right foreground) and block 5 on the left (with a small bit of block 6 in the distant left).  The post office with the community bulletin board and flag out front appears to be open for business, which would date this photograph to no earlier than 1914.

Here's what a don't see:  I don't see the big neon Lewiston Hotels sign on the roof of the building replaced by the current Indian Village, which would date the photograph to 1921 or later if it were visible.  More importantly, I don't see the two-story Josephine Hotel in the location of the current Wheel Bar, which would date the photograph to 1918 or later if it were there.

The Rocky Mountain National Park information building (now located on the museum campus) is the first building visible on the left.  Obviously, there was no need for a dedicated Rocky Mountain National Park information center building prior to the formation of the park in 1915.  The cut-out window (you can see the same cut-out window as you drive by the museum on Highway 36) in a zoomed-in version of this photo appears to contain some kind of circular logo or floral-like symbol containing five "panels".  It would be fascinating to find a matching equivalent from this era in other national park related material, because it is potentially a National Park Service logo or NPS-produced graphic, which would date this photograph to no earlier than August 1916, when the NPS was formed.

The back of the postcard contains some useful information, but it would be really helpful if this photograph had been sent through the mail.  Instead, we have a Velox stamp box, which records indicate was produced (this version, anyway) from 1907 to 1917.  I'm not a big fan of using stamp boxes to guess at the date of photographs appearing in photo-postcards.  A photograph could have been taken prior to the age of postcards, and the negative reproduced over and over throughout the years on different photo-paper backing, so the stamp box appearing on any particular print run only gives information about when the photograph was printed, not when the photograph was taken.  As well, local photographers could have purchased a particular type of manufacturer's photo paper and had it lying around unused long after the company went out of business or switched to a different stamp box logo, so while this Velox stampbox appeared on products manufactured between 1907-1917, it doesn't necessarily "prove" this photograph couldn't have been taken after 1917 (we already knew it wasn't taken prior to 1907, because there would have been no post office on the right and no reason to have a flag flying in that location prior to 1907).

Everyone with passing interest in Estes Park history will naturally be drawn to the Sam Service advertising copy painted on the side of his building.  Because Sam didn't take a photograph (and more importantly, didn't date these photographs) every time he changed ads, this particular advertised inventory of baled hay and grain offers little help in "squeezing" the potential date range of this picture.  Note also the gas pump out front of Sam's store, which confirms that Sam sold gasoline.  When you are comprising a list of all the locations where gasoline was sold in downtown Estes over the years, it is easy to leave off Sam Service's store, which later became the Coffee Bar, with coffee dispensed from the same gravity-fed pump, according to some claims. 

When the town is digging up Elkhorn and finds soil contaminated with fuel in places you wouldn't expect fuel-contamination to be found, it's helpful to have (accurately-dated) photographs, to know when and where the potential existed for major fuel leaks.