By Lisa Levitt Ryckman
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

To usher in the 1900s, Coloradans danced and drank and had a swell time. And then they shopped for underwear.

"A MUSLIN UNDERWEAR CRISIS!" screamed one of dozens of ads for the first big bloomer sales of the New Year, circa 1900. "A sale that breaks every record and makes other Underwear events look like nothing!

"The choicest American ideas will be represented in prodigal profusion -- while wide-awake, obliging salesmen will smooth the way to satisfactory choosing."

The turn-of-the-century preoccupation with underwear makes sense, said Stephen Leonard, chairman of the history department at Metropolitan State College in Denver and co-author of the book Denver: Mining Camp to Metropolis. "It was probably colder back then."

No question on that first day of the last 100 years. Despite their heavy-duty muslin skivvies, Coloradans shivered into the 20th century in a mind-numbing cold of 20 below zero.

But while newspapers of the day contained considerable argument over the price of a corset or the best cure for falling eyebrow hair, there seemed to be no real dispute about when the new century began.

"HAIL TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY" read the banner headline on the Denver Rocky Mountain News -- on Jan. 1, 1901.

"I think they were more intelligent than we are now in that respect," Leonard said. "Today, we're total victims of hype."

Denver residents welcomed 1901 with "dances, religious services, home prayers, songs, avowals of friendship and love, making of good resolutions, swearing of great and solemn oaths for better behaviors ... ," one newspaper reported. "Every factory whistle blew, every church bell pealed, hundreds of fire arms banged, numerous small horns tooted, and all mankind that was awake shouted joyously"

Even though they were celebrating a new century, Denver saloons had been ordered to close at midnight, an ordinance enforced by police officers identified only as Lindsay and Baughman and ignored by a number of tavern proprietors.

"As a result, Louis Klipfel, who conducts various resorts in that section of the city, enjoyed the distinction of being the first man arrested in the new century," one account said. "J.W Gamble was a close second, for his place was also found open."

While everyone else was partying, W.C. Casley became Colorado's first crime victim of the century. The 29-year-old Pueblo druggist had dropped in on a dance around 11 p.m. but had decided to forego frivolity and head to his store. Shortly thereafter, Casley wrestled with a robber who shot him between the eyes with a .38-caliber Smith and Wesson and emptied his pockets and his cash drawer.

The Denver of that day had 133,859 residents -- nationally insignificant and smaller than St. Paul, Minn., or Rochester, N.Y. -- but a major player in a region devastated by depression in the last decade of the 1800s, Leonard said.

"While we were a boom city in 1890, we were a city in 1900 where the glow had really been taken off," he said. "We were struggling to come back. But we really weren't there yet."

Telephones were a rarity in Denver homes, and gas lights were commonplace. Automobiles and air flight captivated the public imagination.

"There was a great feeling of expectation about technology, just like there is today," Leonard said.

And there was a similar fascination with the idea that we aren't alone. The first X-file of the 20th century was trumpeted on the Denver Rocky Mountain News' front page under the headline: "TESLA WILL TALK WITH MARS FROM PIKE'S PEAK -- Great Wizard Predicts Startling Revelations in Astronomy in the Near Future."

Nikola Tesla, it seems, had spent some time in the mountains of Colorado, developing ways to harness alternating electrical current -- a process that would revolutionize the world. Subsequently, he said he hoped to be contacted by unspecified aliens, allowing him to announce to the world, "Brethren, we have a message from another world, unknown and remote. It reads: One. One, two, three."

"His pet dream for years has been to ascertain if the planets are inhabited," the News story continued breathlessly. "Is it possible that in some mysterious way, this electrical wizard has received a message from Mars?"

In most ways, New Year's Eve of 1900 and 1901 were indistinguishable from each other -- or from any New Year's celebration since.

Miners from the Gold Coin Mine in Victor packed a newly erected brick warehouse for a New Year's dance and fund-raiser for the Gold Coin band. The Greeley Odd Fellows chapter partied the night away. "The affair was quite swell," an observer wrote.

Members of the Denver Wheel Club danced to the "low, sobbing measure of the Sylvester waltz when 12 o'clock struck," a newspaper story said. "On the instant the lights went out, immediately every man kissed his partner. Some did it twice or thrice, and a few couples were still busy when the lights were turned on again."

Merrymakers who overindulged ended up before a magistrate.

"Frank Armstrong lost one arm some years ago, and yesterday he lost his head and admitted as much to the court," began one newspaper account.

"I plead guilty, Judge," Armstrong said. "I was paralyzed drunk and didn't know whether I was walking a wire or driving a four-in-hand until this morning, when I found myself in the bullpen."

John McLaughlin ended up in court after he fell and broke his artificial leg, which he told the judge was worse than breaking a real leg because the fake one is harder to fix.

"I suppose you were enjoying a drunk, a New Year's drunk, eh?"

"Yes, Your Honor. I was, and I will say it was a beaut."

"Must have been," the judge said, then added with a sigh, "$5 and costs!"

For the less adventurous, church services beckoned. For the less fortunate, charity abounded. "Two hundred little souls whose mothers are too poor to buy anything but strict necessaries and whose fathers are in a majority of cases drunkards were gladdened by gifts of edibles and toys," a newspaper item said.

To greet the new century, Denver was one of four cities across the nation where residents turned on lights at the stroke of midnight.

"Standing at a window on the 9th floor of the Equitable building at 10 minutes to 12 o'clock, one looked out on an apparently sleeping city," a reporter wrote. "It was practically a dark city, too. ... The streets were almost deserted, for the night was cold. ... Truly, it was a dying year and century, and truly the death was as cold and cheerless as ever was any that invaded human ranks.

"Then here and there flickered a light and like tiny beacons ... they beamed out over the white mantle of snow which cloaked Denver. Within less time than the eye could survey its normal scope, the tiny beacons had suddenly become transformed into a blaze of glorious light.

"All in all, it was a joyous occasion, a memorable dawn of a century that promises a future that those of former centuries in their fondest hopes never dreamed of."

Colorado Milestones, which appears Tuesdays, is part of a yearlong project by the Denver Rocky Mountain News, NEWS4 and the Colorado Historical Society. Digital and print copies of historical images available at the Colorado Historical Society (303) 866-2305.

Online: RockyMountainNews.com, keyword "2000."

On TV: Wednesday at 7 p.m.: A NEWS4 special: Thirty-five prominent Coloradans from varied fields contribute a personal item for a living time capsule.

December 28, 1999

Colorado Millennium 2000 is a yearlong project by the Denver Rocky Mountain News, NEWS4 and the Colorado Historical Society
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