SIDE STREETS: Sol's was lost, but historic organ donation arranged

I’m so disappointed. I didn’t get there in time to save old Sol’s life.

By the time I raced to 632 N. Prospect St. on Tuesday in the Middle Shooks Run neighborhood, a Bobcat had chewed right through old Sol’s concrete-and-brick mid-section.

All that remained of the century-old barn was the weathered, wooden triangular facade that read: “Sol’s Dairy.”

I found it leaning, upside-down, against a tiny old cottage on the same lot. But there wasn’t much left of the building that had housed Sam Rollins’ Highland View Dairy in 1923 and then Sol Cox’s dairy into the 1950s.

But all is not lost.

That facade, captured in a 1953 Myron Wood photo and mostly obscured for decades by Virginia creeper vines, might yet be saved in a sort of historic organ donation.

Chet Delarm, a builder who removed the barn so he could expand the old cottage, said he’d gladly donate the facade to the neighborhood or the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, if anyone wanted it.

Want it?

Matt Mayberry, museum director, almost immediately pounced on the sign: “I think we’ll take it.”

He recognized its value as an historic landmark; a link to the neighborhood’s roots as a rural pasture along the Shooks Run creek on the east outskirts of Colorado Springs.

In fact, the area was first used by 17-year-old Melvin Sinton in 1880 to graze his dozen dairy cows before the city encroached and pushed his herd south and east.

Neighbors such as Suzanne Eubank had hoped the front of the barn building, including the sign, might be saved as a neighborhood landmark and homage to Mary Ford, who was Sam Rollins’ daughter and lived most of her 95 years in the tiny one-bedroom, one-bath cottage until her death Jan. 1, 2011.

“It dates to the time when Shooks Run was all pastures and dairy barns,” Suzanne said. “I think they should leave it as a monument to the neighborhood.”

Neighborhood activist Gary Rapp also values the sign, but he said the Middle Shooks Run Neighborhood Association probably didn’t have any place to display it.

Other neighbors shared fond memories of the sign and Mary Ford, who used to sit on her tiny front porch on hot days and chat with passersby.

Her son, Claude Ford, 69, said his grandfather, Sam, ran the dairy until he died of a burst appendix in 1929. The business was sold to Sol Cox, who carried on processing milk in the barn for nearly 30 years.

“They didn’t milk cows in the barn,” Claude said. “The barn had a dock on the back and farmers would drop off cans of milk. He’d process the milk, rinse the cans, and set them out for the farmers to take away.”

I understand we can’t keep every old building, but I’m glad folks like Mayberry are around to salvage at least key souvenirs of our past.

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