Colorado’s sentinel timekeepers work all year long, relaxing in fall with the extra hour donated by Standard Time, and revving back to work when Daylight Saving Time reclaims that hour. Some are set by hand, some by satellite and some have stopped, which means they’re still correct twice a day. Right or wrong, every public clock tells more than time. Claire Martin, The Denver Post
Swiss Army clocks
REI Denver Flagship store, 1416 Platte St., Denver
Mountain time.
Ten Victorinox clocks tell the time at various international landmarks: Mount Everest, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Switzerland’s north face of the Eiger, Isla Isabela in the Galapagos islands, L’alpe d’Huez in France, Chile’s Bio Bío river, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and Vail’s China Bowl, Colorado’s Mount Elbert and Washington’s Mount Rainier.
Lionshead
Clock tower and gondola, Vail
Time’s past.
Once an icon, now a memory of time past, the clock tower was demolished in 2005. An 11th-hour drive to save the icon’s wooden face and internal mechanism was unsuccessful.
Palmer High School clock
301 N. Nevada Ave., Colorado Springs
Face lift.
With a face set on the building corner, the clock installed in 1986 replicates and replaces an earlier version that fell into disrepair in 1971.
Atomic clock
National Bureau of Standards and Technology, 325 Broadway, Boulder;
Set your watch by it.
NIST-F1, the nation’s primary time and frequency standard, is a cesium fountain atomic clock developed at the NIST laboratories in Boulder. It ranks among the world’s most accurate clocks defining Coordinated Universal Time. The website shows real time, night and day, throughout the world.
Town Center Clock tower, 211 Midland Ave., Basalt
Time’s up.
The bookstore under the clock tower, Town Center Booksellers, closes at the end of March, a victim of the economy and changes in customers’ purchasing habits.
Pioneers History Museum
1903 El Paso County Courthouse, 215 S. Tejon St., Colorado Springs
Hands of justice.
August J. Smith’s elegant courthouse became a museum in 1994. The clock at the north entrance has a brass housing made by E. Howard, a Boston clockmaker, between 1860 and 1880.
McPhee & McGinnity Co.
Clock tower at Broadway and Walnut Street, Denver
Hour town.
The clock tower, built in 1923 by the architectural firm Fisher and Fisher, is now a three-story loft unit, one of 37 loft apartments renovated by OZ Architecture.
McKnight’s Jewelers
Clock, 343 Main St., Delta
Here’s the wind-up.
Originally installed in 1914 when the store was located three doors down from its present location, this clock moved along with the store in 1919. It runs on its original gears and weights. Bill Hebrew, whose father, Don, has owned the store since 1960, has the job of winding the clock once a week.
Daniels & Fisher Clock Tower
16th and Arapahoe streets, Denver
High time.
This 375-foot downtown landmark, built in 1910, has dominated the Denver skyline for nearly 100 years.
San Miguel County Courthouse
333 W. Colorado Ave., Telluride
Minute-iae.
Built in 1887 by W.H. Nelson to replace the courthouse that had burned down two years earlier, the clock tower features a fish-scale pattern on its pyramid metal roof.
East High clock tower
1600 City Park Esplanade, Denver
Geared for history.
Hebard Williamson, an 1893 graduate of the demolished East High School, won national kudos for his design of its replacement that included a 162-foot tower modeled after Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.
Summit Canyon Mountaineering
Clock tower, Eighth Street and Grand Avenue, Glenwood Springs
Tick-rock.
Glenwood Springs architect Doug Harr added the clock tower when his firm renovated the building and interior of the popular outdoor-gear shop. It chimes on the hour, and its synthesizer can hook up to an organ to play other songs.
Glockenspiel
La Tour Restaurant, 122 E. Meadow Drive, Vail
Ve haf vays of making you tock.
A dirndled German maiden with blond plaits stands permanently at attention, ready to toll the bell that announces each hour.
Wheeler Town Clock
Downtown Manitou Springs
A fin time to run dry.
This clock, cast in Italy, was also a fountain when Jerome Wheeler donated it in 1889 to mark the opening of the Manitou Water Bottling Co. Today it’s dry, but water once flowed from the stylized dolphin heads into bowls, offering dogs a free drink. The statue depicts Hygeia, the Greek goddess of health and medicine.
