Dear Buck:
How is it possible that a new development in northwest Loveland has a Chivington Street? Anyone who knows anything about Colorado history is painfully aware of Col. John Chivington, who led the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. This just can’t be tolerated.
Signed: Appalled
Dear Appalled:
You aren’t the only person outraged by that name. You will be glad to hear that a Loveland resident brought his concerns about the street to the city’s attention in early 2019, and the City Council approved a name change from Chivington Street to Black Kettle Street on Oct. 1, 2019.
It’s true that Google’s maps haven’t yet caught up with the name change, and that even some maps on the city of Loveland’s website still show Chivington, but I’ve been told that this will be worked out eventually.
If you’d like to know how all this came about, stick around for the rest of the story.
Bruce Harshberger, a resident of northwest Loveland, said he was curious about the expansion of the Eagle Brook Meadows subdivision west of Taft Avenue and south of 57th Street, so he looked at a Google map of the area.
“Lo and behold, there was a Chivington Street,” he recalled. “I was aghast. I thought, ‘You can’t commemorate this man.’”
Through a chance encounter one morning at the Perkins restaurant in west Loveland, Harshberger said he met City Manager Steve Adams. He told Adams his concern, Adams started the wheels of city government turning, and eight months later, the City Council voted unanimously to change the name to Black Kettle, which Harshberger had suggested.
“John Chivington was ruthless”
Harshberger said he and his wife, Janet, had visited the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in southeast Colorado, and he was painfully aware of what Chivington had done there.
“It sure made an impression on me,” he said.
During a period referred to as the American Indian Wars, Chivington and a force of 675 Army cavalrymen descended on a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians on Nov. 29, 1864, and killed more than 200 of them.
“They were peacefully sleeping. He attacked them in the morning, mostly women, older people and children. They were mutilated, some of them,” Harshberger said. “Then he went back to Denver and proclaimed a wonderful victory over well-armed Indians.
“John Chivington was ruthless, uncaring and compassionless,” he said.
Harshberger said he’s glad city officials agreed.
“I felt happy that they thought it was legitimate to not honor Chivington but to honor the man who opposed him peacefully, holding up an American flag,” he said in reference to Southern Cheyenne chief Black Kettle, one of three chiefs in the Native American camp that day.
Black Kettle, who was known as a peacemaker, survived the attack. He and his wife, who was seriously wounded, moved to Oklahoma, only to be killed four years later by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s 7th Cavalry Regiment.
So how did a street in Loveland get named for so notorious a figure?
Naming Loveland’s streets
I’m afraid I don’t have a clear answer to that question, other than it probably was named after a town, not a man.
Senior planner Troy Bliss, who has been involved in the approval process for Eagle Brook Meadows, explained that Loveland’s municipal code gives guidelines for the naming of new streets in the city.
The city code says new streets north of Eisenhower Boulevard and west of Taft Avenue “shall have the names of states, Colorado towns, Colorado counties, famous historical persons (not generals or pilots), agricultural (crops, equipment but not animals) and oceans, seas and bays.”
That section of Eagle Brook Meadows has streets named after the towns of La Salle, Olathe, Ault, Maher, Guffey and others. Chivington also is a small Colorado town, just south of the Sand Creek Massacre site.
Bliss speculated that when the developer of the subdivision attached the names of those small towns to the streets, it didn’t occur to anyone what the name Chivington represented.
“Back then we probably weren’t necessarily focused on the background of names. … I think we’re a little bit more keen on it now,” he said. “We don’t want to create a situation where we’re approving street names that might have negative connotations.”
City GIS specialist RJ Fulton agreed. He’s the person who checks out proposed street names to make sure they fit the municipal code’s requirements and that they don’t duplicate or even sound like any other street names in Larimer County.
“I paid attention in my Colorado history class”
Fulton, who has worked for the city for almost three years, wasn’t around back in 2008 when the Eagle Brook Meadows development plan got its final approval. But he said he hopes the name Chivington would have raised a red flag for him.
“I paid attention in my Colorado history class. I did know who Chivington was,” he said.
Fulton said he often has to run internet searches on proposed street names to make sure they fit the city criteria. In light of the Chivington episode, he said he’s going to pay closer attention in the future.
“Now I’ll have to make sure that the guy didn’t commit any war crimes,” he said.
I was able to talk to Brett Bennett, who with his late father, Bradford Bennett, started developing the property in the early 2000s and was involved when the streets were platted. Their company ended up deeding the property back to the bank after the housing crisis hit. A different developer is now building Eagle Brook Meadows.
Bennett said he really doesn’t remember naming the streets in that part of Eagle Brook but figures they were just using the names of Colorado towns that hadn’t already been claimed by other streets in the county.
“We had no idea that Chivington was associated with the Sand Creek Massacre,” he said. “We never would have used his name.”
Longmont’s Chivington controversy
The city of Longmont faced its own Chivington controversy many years ago. In 1977, a street in a new subdivision was named Chivington Drive. That never sat well with some residents, who tried several times over the decades to get it changed.
On Dec. 28, 2004, a crowd of about 100 people witnessed the Longmont City Council’s 6-1 vote to change Chivington Drive to Sunrise Drive.
In the case of Loveland, no street signs have gone up yet, and no homes have been built on the street in question, so the renaming is simpler here.
Now, if only Google would catch up to the change.
Buck Thompson finds answers to questions regarding life in Loveland. Send your questions to news@reporter-herald.com with Dear Buck in the subject line, or write to Reporter-Herald — Buck Thompson, at P.O. Box Y, Berthoud, CO 80513.
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