Old Slides

In the spirit of the old slides and pictures people have been posting, I thought that I would start posting a few that would provoke some interest and discussion.

When I first moved to Durango in 1970 I was fifteen and ready to explore the “Narrow Gauge Capital Of The World”. One of the things that was interesting was that the High School had an open campus and one could go downtown and have lunch at the Woolworth lunch counter. Across Main Avenue was a little shop next to the bank known as Richie’s. It was dark inside and had a marble counter that was set up to serve ice cream sodas and malteds. It was right out of the 20s. Remember, this is before Telluride had a ski area and Durango was still regarded as an agricultural town. Mr. Richie was, at least to me at 15, an old man and didn’t mind people coming in to look. There was everything you could think of that would belong in a local, family owned 5 & dime that had been in business since Christ was a boy. One thing that caught my eye was the many slides of local attractions for sale. I believe that Mr. Richie took these slides himself, assembled them in sets and was selling them in his store with the tourists in mind. These slides had “Richie’s Store - Durango, Colorado” printed on the cardboard. I saved my lunch money and eventually ended up buying all of the sets that had train images. I didn’t realize for many years that these slides were from the early days of Durango’s tourist industry. Richie’s closed in the late 70s/ early 80s for years and I couldn’t tell you what kind of business is in there now without looking in the phone book. I’m sure that it is geared for folks whose monthly income is more than my yearly income!


Anyway, I scanned this slide a few years back at a high dpi. It was on my computer at 15 MB. I had to reduce it to post it here. It is now 116 KB and I hope that it works. Comments and discussion are encouraged...