Friday Flashback: Arvada Commerce, 1948-Style Six miles northwest of the heart of Denver, with a population of about 1,800, Arvada had almost 100 local businesses (excluding professionals, such as physicians) in 1948. Downtown Denver offered good shopping, and little of the regions manufacturing was done here; still, Arvadas longstanding tradition of small, local businesses continued throughout the 1940s: 48 retail establishments employed 244 people, and together grossed $4.3 million annually. In 2014 dollars, thats over $42 million. 40 service establishments employed 109 people, grossing $607,000 per year--almost $6 million in 2014 dollars. These businesses included construction, cleaning and laundry, news, printing, photography, recreation, machine and welding shops, and repair shops. There were five manufacturing/processing businesses. There would have been six, but Arva-Pride Flour had closed in 1944. The five remaining companies grossed $1.5 million annually, nearly $15 million when adjusted for inflation. Whats easy to overlook, more than sixty years later, is the importance farming had in Arvada, and in all of Jefferson County. Clear Creek stands at the north end of a wide expanse of fertile soil, just right for truck farming. Likewise, there was very good farmland in the vicinity of Ralston Creek. Jefferson County in 1948 had 1,918 farms, averaging 134 acres each; the vast majority were owner-operated. Orchards didnt do well here, but everything else the farmers planted in Jefferson County seemed to thrive. Imagine farm after farm, extending the length of the Clear Creek Valley all the way west to South Table Mountain, spilling over with tomatoes, celery, berries, onions, and corn. Over 160,000 chickens provided the area with a whopping 1,244,608 DOZEN eggs in 1948. There were 995 stands of bees, 43,613 turkeys, 2,345 sheep and lambs, and a couple of thousand hogs. Copious quantities of wheat, barley, and alfalfa blanketed the valleys in green, along with hay for the 30,000 head of cattle and 3,219 horses. So the gold was in the ground, after all, just not in the way people had first expected. Heres a prescient quote from the authors of a 1948 field study of Arvada: Disadvantages of the Arvada site and location arise from its proximity to an expanding urban agglomeration. In the course of time Denvers needs for outward expansion may engulf Arvada despite the competing interests and the present intense land use for other purposes. However, the report also cites the number of small local businesses as an advantage, allowing Arvada a greater degree of independence and self-sufficiency than a typical suburb of that time. My parents moved to Colorado in 1956. Recently, my dad and I were driving down Ward Road, around 52nd, and he was remembering the whole area, north and south, being covered in farms. We lived in the Fairmount area for two years, in the sixties, and it, too, was mainly farmland wherever it was flat enough not to tip over a plow. I wish we had this on time lapse--but, then again, maybe I dont. Source: University of Denver Public Summary Report on the Arvada Community, published 1948
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 12:34:48 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015