Cortez Historic Preservation Day will feature a presentation by Jill Seyfarth of Cultural Resource Planning on Wednesday, May 13 and two presentations at the Sunflower Theatre, 2 E. Main St., on Saturday, May 16.
Seyfarth will discuss her latest research on historic structures in the Original Townsite between Montezuma Avenue and Main Street, titled “From Mercantile to Mid-Century Modern: Cortez Grows Up.” Funded by a Colorado Certified Local Government grant to the City of Cortez, she will tell about the buildings and the people who built and lived in them. Hosted by the Montezuma County Historical Society, the free program will be at 7 p.m. at the Cortez Cultural Center at 25 N. Market Street.
For more information about Cortez Historic Preservation Week, tune into KSJD’s “Zine,” 90.5 FM, on Monday, May 11 at 8:30 a.m. for a lively discussion with Seyfarth and Linda Towle, chair of the Historic Preservation Board.
At the Sunflower
Cortez Historic Preservation Day will featuretwo presentations at the Sunflower Theatre, 2 E. Main St., on Saturday, May 16.
The morning presentation, at 10 a.m., “Our Stone Buildings: Past, Present, and Future,” will include a video on the Baxstrom Stone Masons who built several of the historic sandstone buildings in Cortez. This will be followed by a discussion with stone mason Chris Zeller about the process of stone quarrying, actual building with stone, and the long-term preservation of stone buildings.
There will be a question-and-answer session outside looking at the stone work on the Cornerstone/KSJD building, formerly the Montezuma Valley National Bank. The Bank building was built by the Baxstoms in 1909.
A program at the theater at 4 p.m. will celebrate the recent listing of the Gold Medal Orchard in McElmo Canyon on Colorado’s List of Endangered Places.
This program will feature a short video on the history of the Orchard, which won a Gold Medal for fruit at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Jude Schuenemeyer will present the current work that the Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project (MORP) is doing to find and preserve historic orchards in southwestern Colorado. This will be a fund raiser for MORP and a $20 donation is suggested.
A cash bar benefits the Sunflower Theatre.