The Montezuma County road department has some antiquated equipment, and they’d like to show off the old technology to the public.
Road superintendent Rob Englehart presented various construction contraptions that have been retired to various fields, backyards and the Back 40 of the county shop.
“It would be nice to clean them up and put them in a public place somewhere with a brass plaque explaining what it is and its history,” he said.
Proposals include incorporating them into the landscaping of the new courthouse or placing them in front of the new Montezuma County historical society museum at the Lake Vista Grange Hall on County Road M.
Just like farmers who never throw anything away, then generations later end up with a wind break of classic equipment bordering their fields, the county, as well, holds onto the past.
“It’s part of our history, and people will appreciate that we saved some of it for them to look at,” Englehart said.
He passed around photos including one of a miniature 3-wheel dump truck nicknamed The Jitterbug, which was used for hauling muck out of tunnels. Later on, the “motorized wheel barrel” was used by road departments to haul tools to the job site.
Another shows an old blader that would have been pulled by a horse in the 1930s and ’40s. The privately owned unit, which sits in a field off County Road L, was used for years to grade the McElmo Canyon Road, and was nimble enough to maintain irrigation ditches. Like a lot of old cool stuff, if it were publicly displayed, the owners might consider donating it, Englehart said.
A larger, more complex blader shows the technology’s evolution and would have been pulled by a tractor.
Another interesting item is a custom concrete mixer used by Montezuma Valley Irrigation Co. in the 1950s. It was pulled by a tractor and used to line irrigation ditches with cement one section at a time.
Historic displays capture public attention, and promote a retro-industrial feel. In Dolores, local historian Val Truelsen displayed an early 20th century International Harvester Hay Press on Railroad Avenue a few years ago, and you often see travelers pull over to check it out.
“That’s the idea, to give people a reason to slow down and pull over in our town,” he said.
