Preserving Our Heritage

In 1997, the people of Montrose, Colorado, worked to document and record the history of their region and town. In the 1880s, George H. Smith dug the 800-foot-deep artesian well called Iron Mike near South First and Uncompahgre, and its flowing water, believed to have medicinal and healing qualities, supplied a popular bath house and was bottled and shipped across the country. Smith and the town board fought a long legal dispute over disposal of waste water from his spa, since the town had no sewer system and used water was sent through open ditches to the Uncompahgre River, and efforts to stop him from using town ditches ended in a draw. In 1896, the artesian well was connected to Montrose's second Belvedere Hotel at South First and Uncompahgre, where mineral baths were offered along with steam heat and electric lights; the original Belvedere Hotel, built in 1889 at Main and Selig, had burned in 1894 during the Fireman's Ball. Later, mineral water from the well was piped across Uncompahgre Street, now Centennial Plaza, to the present Iron Mike fountain at the plaza's southwest corner, and the second Belvedere Hotel was razed in 1976 for a parking lot. Montrose City Hall at 433 South First, built in 1926 as a library and City Hall, is a two-story vernacular adaptation of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture and was later adapted for the municipal needs of a growing community. The Firehouse at 24 South Uncompahgre, built in 1909 and used as a fire station until 1980, later served as city offices; before the city bought its first motorized fire truck, Leapin' Lena, in 1923, horse-drawn fire wagons were used, with overhead harnesses for rapid hitching and on-duty firemen living upstairs and sliding down a pole to answer alarms.

Montrose, Colorado · United States