PHOTOS: This weekend, Craig Fire/Rescue celebrated 100 years of service, full of fire truck rides, cornhole games and tours of the department’s state-of-the-art equipment. However, that wasn’t always the case.
Dan Davidson, director of the Museum of Northwest Colorado, said that before Craig established its fire services, the tools that the community did have were primitive. Volunteers, horses or early automobiles would pull a cart with the hose bundled on top to the nearest fire hydrant or water hookup.
“Their first fire truck was a 24 Model-T LaFrance,” Davidson said. “It was mainly for quick responses, and that was in the mid 20s. Before that (and the formation of the fire department), they sort of only had an old hose cart. In Craig’s earlier case, the reason they got (the truck) was because they lost a lot of large buildings to fires. They were tired of burning down their own buildings.” Craig in 1921 was booming, Davidson added.