Fraser will keep its moniker as the “Icebox of the Nation” despite calls for a more marketable alternative, the town manager said.
Instead, the community between Winter Park and Granby will update its decades-old official logo, the town board of trustees decided at its most recent meeting.
Joyce Burford, the trustee who floated the idea to abandon the slogan, said the reaction from the community was clear.
“What we’ve heard is very strong – keep the icebox,” said Burford, who also serves as the marketing director for the Winter Park/Fraser Chamber of Commerce. “We get e-mails, and people come up to you when you are out and about.”
Town Manager Jeff Durbin agreed.
“There’s an awful lot of passion about our history, and this (decision) is reflective of that,” he said.
A resident who works for a company building new homes first suggested that the fast-growing resort area needed to chill the icebox tagline.
Fraser, which boasts an average annual temperature of 34.8 degrees and hits lows of minus 40 in the winter, gained its moniker in the 1950s when it regularly made the evening news as the coldest spot in the country.
In the late 1980s, Fraser filed for a copyright on the icebox tagline, sparking a furor in International Falls, Minn.
As a compromise, Fraser officials backed down and agreed to use the icebox motto only in Colorado.
Durbin said a committee would work with area graphic artists to update the town’s logo to replace the image of a horse-drawn logging wagon.
