Longmont’s Historic Eastside Neighborhood isn’t just the city’s oldest intact neighborhood — it has been home to local leaders, athletes and inventors, who’ve left their mark not just on the Front Range but the world.
In honor of the city’s 150th birthday, several residents have banded together to create a series of cycling and walking tours to share the stories and history that make up the legacy neighborhood.
The next cycling tour will take place at 9 a.m. Saturday. Attendees are asked to meet on the west side of the Longmont library, 409 Fourth Ave. Walking tours will take place at 9 a.m. Saturday, July 10 and July 17 at the same meeting place. The roughly 3.6-mile tours are free and open to the public. No sign-up is required.
Sharon O’Leary, co-chair of the Historic Eastside Neighborhood Association and a 44-year resident of the neighborhood, said the tour is bound to bring history alive for those who participate.
“I think the most important thing is this (neighborhood) is the humble beginnings of Longmont,” O’Leary said. “A lot of our founding families started over here. When you get to the west side, homes are grander, but this is original Longmont right here.”
The historic eastside neighborhood stretches from Fourth and Ninth avenues between Emery and Martin streets. Erik Mason, curator of research at the Longmont Museum, said he believes it’s accurate to say Eastside is the city’s oldest intact neighborhood.
“While the east side and the west side both started to be built on at the same time (when Longmont was founded in 1871), more of the west side homes have been replaced with newer structures,” Mason wrote in an email, “so I think the east side has the largest collection of early homes in Longmont.”
Leading the tours is Rick Jacobi, a neighborhood resident, who researched the area.
“I’m the show for the most part,” Jacobi said. “It’s been quite a bit of fun researching all this. The tours are about the people as much as it is about the houses. It’s really the people who make a neighborhood.”
Along the way, those touring the neighborhood will pass by the home of Asa Maxton, who wrote a renowned book on sugar beets and had a fascination for natural history, collecting items such as fossils, arrowheads and even a rhinoceros skull found near Greeley. The neighborhood was also home to an Olympic athlete, a cutting-edge tractor inventor and war heroes.
Even O’Leary lives in a storied home, known as the Wiggins house, in the 500 block of Emery Street. The home was once where builder James Wiggins lived with his wife, Frances. Wiggins built the Callahan House, 312 Terry St., in 1892, which today is a historic property, known as a popular events venue with an extravagant garden.
The tours are approximated to take a little more than two hours by bike and roughly three hours by foot. Jacobi said people are welcome to divide the walking tours and participate on both days, with a halfway meeting point at Collyer Park, 619 Collyer St.
With a passion for local history, O’Leary thinks it’s tours like the ones the neighborhood is hosting that will inspire the next generation to carry on work to preserve historic buildings and the stories that come with them.
“If we can get people interested in how Longmont began and they visually see the smaller homes, mid-sized homes and a couple of grand homes — it gives you a sense of all classes,” O’Leary said. “We were an immigrant town. It’s really important people see how things began, and, like anything, it’s a work in progress. I believe preserving a home is the best form of recycling.”
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