(CRIPPLE CREEK, Colo.) – Cripple Creek is now dealing with the aftermath of yet another storm, but locals say the damage from Friday’s hail storm was like no other. Hail, as big as golf balls, dented roofs, totaled cars, and even managed to destroy parts of Cripple Creek’s oldest buildings.
The Old Homestead House Museum is one of Cripple Creek’s oldest buildings, standing since 1896. The house had, more or less, withstood every hail storm this city has seen for over one hundred years, but this one was different.
Sandy Holloway, an Old Homestead House Museum tour guide, has lived in the Cripple Creek area since 1996. She says she has never seen storms like this before.
“I was just heartbroken, just devastated… Sandy and I both, we were coming in to work… telling each other, okay, we’re ready. We can face this… and all day we just felt sad, just sad,” said Kirstie Crawford, the president of the Old Homestead House board of directors.
Following Friday night’s unforgiving hail storm, Holloway and Crawford are now mourning the loss of the Old Homestead House Museum’s skylight. They said the skylight’s main function for the house was to provide light and heat, but that it was also unique in its own right.
“It’s a very big part of the upstairs tour because people marveled that it was built in 1896 and that it has truly, until the other night, withstood the test of time… I’m sure it was a huge crash,” said Holloway.
After 127 years, the skylight succumbed to the golf-ball-sized hail that plummeted into the city that night, hallmarking an unprecedented storm.
Old Homestead House Museum’s shattered skylight after the hail storm. Courtesy: Old Homestead House Museum
The skylight’s broken glass on the ground underneath. Courtesy: Old Homestead House Museum
“For this one to have taken out almost that entire skylight tells us that that hail was not only really hard, but it lasted for quite a while,” said Crawford.
Many skylights and historic buildings in the city suffered the same fate. The Outlaws and Law Men Jail Museum’s skylight similarly survived for over one hundred years before getting completely destroyed. Employees there feel just as devastated about their loss.
The Cripple Creek District Museum suffered severe damage to the outside of the building, and the Victor Lowell Thomas Museum’s lost the original panes to their skylights.
While it might seem like an overreaction to a simple glass replacement, the Jail Museum and the Old Homestead are a few of the final buildings still standing in Cripple Creek from their time.
“Most of those buildings from back in those days were torn down. So for us to be left standing is pretty special… I think it’s pretty important to try to make history stay and then fix what we can,” said Crawford.
Old Homestead wants to preserve the history of the house by replacing the skylight with its authentic historical glass. They are accepting donations which can be given in-person, over the phone, or online through their website. They said they will also be fundraising at the Pearl DeVere Day Celebration & Bed Race, on July 22.
The guides say they will still mention the skylight in their museum tours as an instrumental part of the house’s history, but now with one anecdote, “Now, I say, this is what I would have told you,” said Holloway with a laugh, trying to make light of the situation.
