Shane Ricks has uncovered a lot of buried history over eight years of working on road projects across Colorado — fossils, a 1920s-era car, an old pistol and even human remains.
“Itap always cool finding stuff,” he said. “I’m still waiting to find a suitcase of money.”
But the excavator operator for Zak Dirt hasn’t ever found anything quite like the historic item he happened upon while working on the Heart Improvement Plan (HIP) Streets project, in downtown Loveland. Last month, while digging a trench for a water line underneath the intersection at Fourth Street and Lincoln Avenue, his excavator bumped against something he knew wasn’t just an ordinary obstruction.
“You get a weird feeling about certain things,” he said. “I’ve been doing this a decent amount of time, and I can feel the difference between concrete versus rock versus steel or whatever just by the noise it makes against the bucket (of the excavator).”
Sure enough, after a little more digging, Ricks and his crew discovered what turned out to be a large and surprisingly intact cylinder of concrete, buried in the center of the intersection.
With pressure mounting to get Lincoln Avenue reopened, Ricks used his excavator to move the seven-ton object to an out-of-the-way corner near Thompson Pocket Park, while the city’s HIP Streets team played detective to uncover its origins.
“We started pulling historic photos and historic aerials,” recalled project manager Shelley Aschenbrenner, who worked with city surveyor Paul Hernandez on the research. “And we saw something in the middle of the road.”
A little more online sleuthing led them to Loveland’s 1918 erection of a flagpole celebrating the city’s success in the Liberty Loan campaign during World War I. About a decade later, the pole was removed and the caisson beneath it was repurposed as the foundation for one of Loveland’s first mechanized streetlights, which was in use until the 1950s, Aschenbrenner said.
“We can see it in the 1956 photo, but in the next ones, which are 1969, it doesn’t show up,” she explained. “I don’t know if they chipped more of it off to lower the surface or they raised the surface of the road when they abandoned it. We’ve been trying to find information about when the new signals went up, but so far nothing.”
As a self-professed “car guy,” Ricks was delighted to find that the 7-ton cylinder he uncovered wasn’t just concrete, but a relic of Loveland’s transition from horse-drawn wagons to motorized traffic.
“It was definitely a lot cooler once we found out what it was,” he said. “I have a bunch of the old lights in my garage and I always thought it would be pretty, pretty sweet to see one of the older poles.”
The caisson will be hauled to the Loveland Recycling Center for storage.
The streetlight base is just one of several historic objects uncovered by crews working on HIP Streets, which is replacing infrastructure beneath a five-block stretch of Fourth Street while modernizing sidewalks, lighting and streetscape design above ground.
In the six months since the , crews have also turned up old bottles in front of the former Draper Drug Store, part of a wooden water pipe underneath Garfield Avenue, and rusted horseshoes and nails near Lincoln Avenue, potentially from a nearby blacksmith shop, Aschenbrenner speculated.
With roughly a year left in construction, the biggest surprises may still be ahead. The final two blocks of Fourth Street scheduled for work are also the oldest, and members of the Loveland Downtown District said they’re eager to see what else might surface as crews dig into layers of downtown’s past.
“Itap so fascinating when you start digging,” said Abby Powell, assistant director of the downtown district. “We’re hoping to find even more.”
Staff from the district and the Loveland Museum are now collecting the items for a new exhibit called Found on Fourth, anticipated to open in fall 2026 at the Loveland Museum. The exhibit will showcase the artifacts and tell the story of downtown’s evolution from dirt roads and wooden pipes to modern infrastructure.
City and museum officials are encouraging community members to share historic photos of downtown that could help enrich the exhibit. Anyone with images or materials related to 4th Street is invited to contact the Downtown District at lwaneka@lovelandpartnership.org.
