What we know
One-story iron-clad building marked 'Town Hall', housing the hook-and-ladder truck, on the Nov. 1895 Sanborn map, which also gives the population as 500 and the water facilities as 'not good'. It is gone from the Oct. 1900 sheet, which still lists the 'H. & L. truck & buckets at Town Hall' (S-0147). 'In 1894 the firehouse was called the Hook and Ladder House' (Lavelett, S-0011, p. 79). The town's first meeting, on July 3, 1879, was in the Gwillim hall 'on the corner of Third and Front Streets' (p. 14); whether this building was that hall is not known.
Where it was
133 Front Street, east side, near Third, on the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Monument, sheet 1, Nov. 1895 (Library of Congress, S-0147); placed by fitting the sheet to today's Front, Washington and Jefferson street crossings at 1st and 3rd streets (six points, each within about 15 feet of the fit). Good to about a hundred feet.
Sources
- S-0011: Lucille Lavelett, Through the Years at Monument, Colorado: The Story of Monument, Colorado, 5th printing (Palmer Lake: Palmer Lake Historical Society, 2004); first published Colorado Springs: Valliant Press, 1975
- S-0147: Sanborn-Perris Map Co., Monument, El Paso County, Col., fire-insurance maps, sheet 1, November 1895 and October 1900 (Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, Sanborn Maps collection)
Sources are named in the text above. Numbers such as S-0080 refer to our source list. Most newspaper quotations were read in the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. Long quotations from recent books are shortened here.