(An excerpt for the Loveland Reporter-Herald, March 15, 2009) 1. Loveland has appeared twice in the old Ripley's Believe It or Not column - once for having the only cemetery in the country split by a highway (i.e., Loveland Burial Park) and once for having the only fountain that had natural gas and water in the same pipe (the old Barnes Fountain, which was over a well at 4th Street & Cleveland Avenue). The natural gas fed lights on the fountain, which was known for its strange-tasting water. 2. Cherry orchards once covered the city, and locally grown cherries took first prize at the St. Louis World Fair in 1904. 3. Loveland was the first city in Colorado to set aside 1 percent of the budget of all public improvement projects for art. It now has 307 pieces of art in parks and public buildings, worth more than $7 million. 4. Thousands of valentines funnel through the city each year from all over the world to be stamped with a special Loveland postmark. That program, started in 1947, led to the nickname "Sweetheart City." 5.Loveland has one of the few remaining Washington elm trees, a descendant of the tree where George Washington took command of the troops in 1775. It was planted in 1932 at Lincoln Avenue and Eisenhower Boulevard. 6. Loveland boasts two of the largest and most renowned sculpture shows in the world. 7. The city was named after William Austin Hamilton Loveland - one of the founders of the Colorado Central railroad and a friend of the man who founded the city. Some say Mr. Loveland never even set a foot in the city. Loveland, Ohio, was named after his father, the Rev. Leonard Loveland. 8. The first ever Great Western Sugar Factory was built in Loveland in 1901. The factory still stands, its stacks are visible from most of the city. 9. The Pulliam Building, a community building at 545 N. Cleveland Avenue, was built in 1937-39 as a Works Progress Administration project to create 180 jobs during the Depression. 10. Legos were manufactured in Loveland from 1965 to 1975. A year ago (2008), crews removed the last of the giant Legos that had decorated the exterior of the building at 609 SW 14th Street. 11. Loveland formerly had the Rocky Mountain Pottery Factory, which made and sold pine-scented pottery complete with wood-like finish. 12. President barack Obama, the nation's 44th president, joins eight other U.S. presidents without a Loveland street named after them. The list includes: both George Bushes, Bill Clinton, Herbert Hoover, Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. The first streets were named after presidents in 1904 when the city renamed those with letter designations. 13. Actor Kyle Howard, currently on the television series "My Boys," grew up in Loveland and got his acting start in school and community plays. 14. Every Veterans Day, a group of veterans drives around the city early in the morning ringing large bells. 15. Loveland gained international fame in the late 1890's for a picture published in the newspaper of a local farmer with an 86-pound, 10-ounce potato. Turns out the publisher, W.L. Thorndyke, and farmer, Joseph B. Swan, doctored the photo (in an era without Photoshop, no less) - a move that became known as the Maggie Murphy Potato Hoax. 16. An article in the August 1948 issue of the "American war Mother" stated: "It is a significant fact that the Loveland, Colorado, community sent more boys per capita of population into World War II than any other place in the United States." (It is unclear if that was verified.) 17. Centennial Park, which includes the ball fields at First Street and Taft Avenue, was built on the site of the former city dump. 18. Wildlife often ventures onto Mariana Butte Golf Course in west Loveland. Golfers and workers have spotted bears, a bobcat, elk, a mountain lion, foxes, geese, and a den of coyotes in the past two years. 19. In 1990, a storage tank at Great Western Sugar spilled 582,000 gallons of molasses into the surrounding neighborhood in east Loveland. 20. Aluminum and stainless steel critters, including a dragonfly, raccoon, cricket and frog, grace streetlights on Taft Avenue between First and Eighth streets. 21. When the Embassy Suites opens the Loveland Hotel, Spa, and Conference Center at the end of March (2009), it will be the largest hotel between Denver and Canada. 22. Loveland has the largest Northern catalpa tree in Colorado, located on the east side of Madison Avenue near 29th Street. 23. The first golf course in the city was built in the 1920's or 1930's on what is now Derby Hill (south Loveland). 24. Arapaho Indians used clay from the banks of the Big Thompson River to make their pipes, so they referred to the river as "The Pipe." 25. Loveland's own piece of Roadside America is a wooden American Indian statue - a photo favorite - that was stuck by lightning and infested with bugs during it tenure (1979-1991) at South Shore Park. The 37-foot, 5-ton statue, caved from a cottonwood tree, now stand on private land and is visible from U.S.34 just west of town after a local committee mobilized to "Save Our Statue Redman." |