From the Archive: Student Hijinx!

by Lesley Drayton, Curator, Local History Archive

The Fort Collins Local History Archive recently received a donation of scrapbook pages belonging to a student at Colorado A&M College (present-day Colorado State University) who was also a member of the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon in the early 1950s. The pages offer a fun glimpse into some of the shenanigans carried out by the students at this time. For instance, these two fraternity brothers show their loyalty in a hair-raising fashion:

The scrapbook pages also chronicle a unique stunt pulled off by the members of the Aggie Livestock Club to publicize their Little National Western Stockshow. The students broke city ordinances by leading two sheep and a steer down College Avenue, and were subsequently “arrested” by city police. The whole lot was sent to jail where they were later “pardoned” by Colorado Governor Daniel Thornton. It helps to have friends in high places!

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From the Archive: Opening the Door to Laporte

by Lesley Drayton, Curator, Local History Archives

A short while back, the Fort Collins Local History Archive received a donation of 17 scrapbooks dating from the mid 1930s to the 1950s that contain hundreds of newspaper articles pertaining to the history of Laporte, Colorado. These scrapbooks were created by local resident Ruth Hereim, who was the Laporte correspondent for the Fort Collins Express-Courier newspaper (later to become the Fort Collins Coloradoan). Most of the articles pasted in the scrapbooks’ pages were written by Ms. Hereim and provide a detailed look at a quarter-century of the goings-on in Laporte.

Ruth Hereim

A 1956 article about Mrs. Hereim featured in the Fort Collins Coloradoan mentions the scrapbooks:

“Some time a history of Laporte could be written from her scrapbooks, which included every local newspaper article relating to Laporte since 1934.

Like many older scrapbooks, this collection is in fragile condition and must be handled carefully to avoid chipping the pages or loosening the glued newspaper clippings. For this reason, along with the unique nature of the scrapbooks’ contents, the staff and volunteers of the Local History Archive plan on scanning each of the scrapbooks and placing them on the Fort Collins History Connection website. You can view the scanned 1958-1959 scrapbook and virtually “flip” through pages of Laporte history. More to come!