By Shannon Lukens for Steamboat Radio News/Blizzard Broadcasting. Courtesy photos.

 

The Toponas Community Club has discovered the original Toponas stage curtain that is once again hanging.

It’s full of old hand-painted advertisements from the late 1930s, of businesses mainly in Yampa and Oak Creek. It is estimated to be close to 100 years old. It had been taken down and rolled up, and stored under the old side benches in the basement.

The curtain is again hanging in the Toponas Hall building along 131. The building has been a meeting place for South Routt residents since 1924.

South Routt Resident Marissa Perry provided some context of the dates and businesses of the curtain:

“This had to be installed in the late 1930s as there were two hospitals in Oak Creek, up until about 1940. Many members fondly recall the old company names and the locals who ran businesses in South Routt.

The Peoples store in Toponas was purchased in 1949 by Cecil (a WWII Army Air Corps pilot who kept a plane in his Toponas hangar to the delight of local children) and Jane Weston which they ran while raising their kids until 1979 when they started Weston Oil in Steamboat.

Frank ‘Shorty’ Strutzel had the saw mill in Toponas and was Pat Woodcock’s father, she passed away at the age of 88 in 2023. Born 1934 while her dad as operating his sawmill.

So we can safely estimate the curtain was created during her childhood making it a vintage status with an approximate age of 75-92 years old, give or take a decade.”