Dear Readers:
Occasionally after I write a column responding to one of your questions, someone will write or call with more information about the topic. That has been the case with a couple of recent columns, and I wanted to share those new insights with you.
Those loud booms
On March 8, I wrote about the loud booms that people had been hearing at night, specifically in southwest Loveland.
Although some experts ruled out sonic booms and exploding electrical transformers, I wasn’t able to provide a definitive answer to the source of those startling sounds. Theories still in play were big fireworks, homemade explosives, industrial noises and frost quakes.
I promptly received a letter from a reader who has lived on the shore of Ryan Gulch Reservoir in southwest Loveland for 27 years.
“Another common source of loud ‘BOOMS’ at night are emanating from the ice on our many local reservoirs,” Don Simon wrote. “As nighttime temperature drops, the surface ice expands, creating stresses in the ice cap.
“Often the stress is relieved by a fracture running across the lake ice. The result is a large ‘BOOM,’” he wrote. “Occasionally wind pressure is also involved.
“Those of us who live on the shoreline of our local reservoirs hear and ignore the ‘booms’ every winter,” he said.
I called Don to find out more. He said the cracking can happen several times a night.
Even though the reservoir covers just 90 acres, is about half a mile across, and the crack typically is only half an inch across, “it releases a huge amount of energy,” he told me.
The sound is similar to the boom of a large firework, he said.
But it’s nothing to what happens in the Upper Midwest, where lake ice can freeze to a depth of several feet, he said.
“When that stuff goes off, everybody knows about it for several miles,” he said.
He remembers as a boy growing up in Wisconsin, skating out in the middle of a lake a couple of miles from shore, when the ice would crack with a “kaboom!”
“That would get your attention,” he said.
So I don’t know if the booms heard recently in southwest Loveland, which does have its share of reservoirs and ponds, are coming from cracking lake ice, but it’s a good theory, I think.
The downtown clock
Loveland Reporter-Herald file photo
The historic clock in front of 239 E. Fourth St. in downtown Loveland is pictured Feb. 11.Early in the year, a reader wrote me to ask when the city would fix the old street clock in front of 239 E. Fourth St. in downtown Loveland. I wrote a column Feb. 15 that recounted the history of the clock and mentioned that the city, which now owns it, is in the process of figuring out how to get it running again and how to pay for the repairs.
What that column left out was exactly how the city of Loveland came to own that piece of local history, which was installed in 1910 by the owners of the Brannan Brothers jewelry store.
I received an email from Andy Smith, who worked for the city of Loveland many years ago and now is an adviser in Fort Collins with NAI Affinity, a commercial real estate brokerage. He said longtime Loveland businessman Barry Floyd played a pivotal role in keeping that clock in downtown Loveland.
You might remember Floyd as the man who bought the Loveland Feed and Grain building at 130 W. Third St. to save it from demolition. He ended up selling it to Artspace.
The clock on the sidewalk always was owned by the person who owned 239 E. Fourth St. Smith, who was working for Floyd’s real estate company at the time, said that in 2008, the property went into foreclosure “and was quietly picked up by an investor from California.”
“The new owner asked Barry to list the property (flip) for sale,” Smith wrote. “He happened to mention to us that he had been approached by collectors and other downtowns interested in buying just the clock, and was excited to do so.
“Naturally, Barry did not want the clock to leave downtown, so he asked the seller to wait for us to figure out a way to keep the clock in Loveland. So I enlisted the help of Marc Cittone at the city of Loveland so we could work on the deal in parallel,” Smith said in his email.
“We worked quietly on getting the city interested in owning and maintaining the clock,” he said. “We did not have much time to make it happen. …”
The city ended up buying the clock on the sidewalk, as well as the master clock inside 239 E. Fourth St. that operated the “slave” outside, for $2,499, according to city records.
By the time the new owner bought the property from the California investor in 2008, “the clock was owned by the city, probably saved from being located to who-knows-where, maybe Loveland, Ohio,” Smith said.
I never knew that piece of the story and am thankful for Andy Smith for filling in the gaps.
Buck Thompson finds answers to questions regarding life in Loveland. Send your questions to news@reporter-herald.com with Dear Buck in the subject line, or write to Reporter-Herald — Buck Thompson, at P.O. Box Y, Berthoud, CO 80513.
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Dear Buck follow-ups: More info on nighttime booms, downtown Loveland’s street clock - Loveland Reporter-Herald
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