540 County Rd History - Louisville Grain Elevator

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Construction by John K. Mullen and Early Operation The story of Louisville, Colorado is often told in terms of its history as a small coal mining town. However, farming not only predated mining in the area, but local farmers continued to play an important role in the town's economy and cultural life through much of the 1900s. It was on the farm of David Kerr that coal was first discovered in 1877. And since coal mining was seasonal in this area due to the high moisture content of the coal that caused it to disintegrate once the coal was brought out of the ground, coal mining and farming came to have a complimentary relationship. Some miners worked on farms in the warm months, while some farmers worked in coal mines in the cold months. Louisville area farmers, though they did not live in town, certainly identified themselves as Louisville residents and fully participated in the town's economic, civic, and cultural life. They attended Louisville churches, shopped in the stores, and sent their children to Louisville schools. Just as Louisville miners tended to be recent European immigrants, the area farmers also represented different ethnicities. Louisville faced particular challenges in the 1880s and 1890s (following its founding in 1878) and finally emerged with a viable economy after the turn of the century. This development likely made it a particularly attractive site for someone to build an elevator or mill in the early 1900s. A 1902 Denver Post item reported that a company called the Centennial Mill and Elevator Company in Louisville had been incorporated. However, there is no evidence that this was the company that constructed the Louisville Grain Elevator. Boulder County property records indicate that the property on which the Grain Elevator was built came from The Union Pacific Coal Company. The deeds show that Peter F. Murphy of Louisville purchased property from Union Pacific in August 1905 and resold this parcel to John K. Mullen in October 1905. Both were Irish Catholics. It could be speculated that they knew one another and that Murphy was even acting on Mullen's behalf. John K. Mullen, who had the Louisville Grain Elevator built, was an Irish immigrant who rose to great heights as the head of an empire of grain elevators and flour mills in Colorado and some surrounding states. He was born in County Galway, Ireland in 1847 and came to the United States in 1856 at the time of the Irish Potato Famine. He and his family settled in Oriskany Falls, New York, where he worked at a flour mill. As a young man, he worked his way West and assumed more and more responsibility in the grain industry. As described on the jacket of William J. Convery's biography of Mullen, Pride of the Rockies: The Life of Colorado's Premiere Irish Patron, John Kernan Mullen, Mullen "ruthlessly rose to control of the West's flour milling industry and was one of the architects of early Denver's transformation from a dusty supply town to the Queen City of the Mountains and Plains. A celebrated giver during his lifetime, J.K. Mullen endowed many religious and civic monuments." For example, Mullen High School in Denver was named for him, as was the Mullen Library at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. He helped finance and oversaw the construction of Denver's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. At times, he was even the owner of Elitch Gardens and the famous Matchless Mine in Leadville, among other prominent Colorado properties. The book states that "[e]vidence of Mullen's contribution to the architectural landscape stretches beyond Denver. The tallest structure in many farming towns throughout the Rocky Mountain West is the grain elevator constructed by Mullen's Colorado Milling and Elevator Company" (p. 2). "By 1924, The 2