Does Denver Newspaper Agency state circulation manager Rick Charbonneau ever spend a day at home? If his photo trail is to believed, we bet not. Where did he snap this shot of an antique vehicle? What was it used for? Send your guess to coloradosunday@denverpost.com, and include a digital photo of yourself. We’ll pick a tale to share next week. The best wins a $50 gas card.
How’d you know?
Last week: Beehive coke ovens, Redstone
Winner: Dale Matsuda of Castle Rock, with daughters Mariko and Midori, and wife Gretchen
My family and I spent part of our summer vacation in Redstone in 2005. It is a real toss-the-cellphone-in-the-drawer kind of place. You have to drive north about a half-hour to get phone coverage. It is a great place to get away and have some family time. This was the last leg of our DED vacation – that’s Dirt Every Day. We did lots of four-wheel-drive trails and I even broke my truck a bit while staying in Redstone. Because there is no cell service, I had to use the hotel phone to call Glenwood Springs to set up repairs.
Also-ran No. 1: Ursula Sagehorn, Fort Lupton, pictured in a coke oven with sisters Andi Marko, Susi Ramirez and Monica Horak
Each year, my sisters and I plan a weekend getaway. This past September we chose to bum around this amazingly beautiful state of ours, stopping wherever and whenever we saw something of interest. On Colorado 133, driving from Glenwood Springs to Hotchkiss, we happened upon these beehive or coke ovens just outside of Redstone. Well, they certainly qualified as interesting and were reminiscent of the ovens we often saw (in Cokedale) growing up in Trinidad. Because we come from a coal-mining town, we are somewhat familiar with the purpose of this type of oven, which is to carbonize, or “coke” coal. According to the plaque located by them, coke is made “when coals are heated to drive off moisture and volatile matter in the absence of oxygen.”
Also-ran No. 2: Carol Carder, Denver
In 1901 “Fuel King” Charles Cleveland Osgood, president of Colorado Fuel and Iron, built the model company town of Redstone and these ovens. While the Cleveholm Manor, now Redstone Castle, echoed Old World aristocracy, these coke ovens formed the industrial heart of Redstone. Ironically, two industrialists Osgood entertained at Cleveholm Manor, John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould, drove Osgood out of CF&I in 1903 in a hostile takeover. By 1911, Redstone was nearly a ghost town. In 2004, the Redstone Historical Society, with partial funding from a Colorado Historical Fund grant, purchased the coke oven site for $290,000 and turned it over to Pitkin County.
