Denver and Golden go wild when the armistice news arrives, and the fire bell in Golden does not survive the enthusiasm
1918 · Denver / Golden / Colorado
On November 11, 1918, the armistice ending World War I takes effect at 11 a.m. News reaches Colorado in the middle of the night. Denver, Golden, Greeley, Fort Collins, and Boulder fill the streets with impromptu parades, horns, and flags. Golden rings its fire bell until it cracks. Governor Gunter declares a state holiday. The influenza pandemic is still circulating; the crowds that celebrate peace help restart the wave.
November 11, 1918 is the day the shooting is supposed to stop and Colorado decides the appropriate response is to make as much noise as possible.
The armistice is signed in a railway car in the Forest of Compiègne. Hostilities cease at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. In Colorado the news arrives while most people are still asleep. Whistles blow. Church bells ring. Newsboys shout. People pour out of hotels and boarding houses into the streets of Denver in the dark. Automobiles full of shouting passengers head downtown. Mayor Mills proclaims a public holiday and a day of thanksgiving. Governor Julius Gunter does the same for the whole state.
By morning the party is official and completely unplanned. Stores close. Trolley traffic stops because the crowds are too thick. Municipal Facts later calls it the most remarkable popular demonstration of joy in history. Laborers in overalls, bakery girls in white aprons, stockyard cowboys, soldiers who will never ship to France, Red Cross nurses, and kids in paper hats all end up in the same streets. Over eight thousand people pack the city auditorium alone. The celebration runs, with short intermissions, for nearly forty-eight hours.
Golden goes at least as hard. The fire bell on the city hall rings nonstop for more than seven hours until it finally cracks. A spontaneous parade stretches six blocks down Washington Avenue. A signal cannon gets fired on the sidewalk in front of the Woods-Rubey Bank. North Table Mountain watches the whole thing. The cracked bell is later reinstalled in front of the municipal center and is still there.
Fort Collins, Greeley, Boulder, and every other town with a whistle or a church steeple does some version of the same. There is a false start four days earlier when a Denver paper jumps the gun and prints PEACE in giant type. The real celebration waits until the eleventh.
There is a catch. Denver and the rest of the country are still in the middle of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Public gatherings had been restricted. Health officials know the crowds are a bad idea and also know there is nothing they can do about them. A week later the case counts are climbing again. Coloradans who die of the flu outnumber those who die in the war.
The day becomes Armistice Day, then Veterans Day in 1954 so it can cover every war instead of only the one that was supposed to end them. Colorado keeps the date. The cracked bell in Golden still hangs where the town put it. If you are downtown on the eleventh and hear a lot of noise, you are participating in a tradition that started when the news arrived in the middle of the night and nobody went back to bed.
Wear a coat. The temperature in 1918 was not the point. The point was that the guns had stopped and Colorado was awake to notice.
Sources: Denver Public Library: A Party in the Streets · Golden Today: Armistice Day · Greeley Tribune: How Greeley celebrated · History Colorado: The Eleventh Hour