THE ANNUAL LIGHTING CEREMONY

Fort … A fortified place stronger and more secure.

John Fraim

Canadian Sunset

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The city is an hour north of Denver nestled against the Rocky Mountains and started out as a real fort, like a lot of places out in Colorado in 1860s. It wasn’t just named for one to sound cool like one of those cities out west in the movies. It was founded as a military outpost of the US Army in 1864. It succeeded the previous encampment called Camp Collins. It was erected during the Indian wars of the mid-1860s to protect the Overland mail route that had been recently relocated through the region for travelers crossing the country on the Overland Trail. The Overland Trail (also known as the Overland Stage Line) was a stagecoach and wagon trail in the American West of the 19th century.

While portions of the route had been used by explorers and trappers since the 1820s, the Overland Trail was most heavily used in the 1860s as a route alternative to the Oregon Trial and the Mormon Trail through central Wyoming. The Overland Trail was famously used by the Overland Stage Company owned by Ben Holladay to run mail and passengers to Salt Lake City via stagecoaches in the early 1860s. The stage line operated until 1869 when the completion of the transcontinental railroad eliminated the need for mail service by stagecoach.

The stagecoach passengers would camp at Camp Collins. But a flood destroyed the original location, and it was decided a location farther down the river would make a good location for a new fort. The post was manned originally by two companies of The 11^th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry whose members engaged in the Indian Wars out there in the 1860s.

The Overland Stage

We’re out in Ft. Collins, CO to inspect the new home we built cross country without physically being there. We couldn’t have done this without the help of Sarah and Casey. Both Steph and I have a history of different places lived in our lives. I was born in California and have owned homes in California and Ohio all my life. My wife Stephanie has had a very similar experience. She has owned 14 homes in LA over twenty years. Both of us ended up in Columbus, Ohio in 2007.Both with two marriages behind us. 

Now, it’s the first week in November 2025. So much news is happening that it dominates the zeitgeist of world perspective so that the little things of living a daily life are not noticed as much as they might be. The government shutdown has moved into more than a month. Transportation Commissioner Sean Duffy appears over the immense tv screens at the Denver Airport. The nation seems headed in a different direction as NYC has a new mayor and NJ and Virginia new Governors. The shutdown has affected all of us. It seems to many that the nation is being held hostage by both political parties. 

We checked our flight from Columbus to Denver in every way possible and things looked good as just the first 4% of flight controllers were being cut back. So, we went for it. I had the sudden feeling of being a skydiver (or that scene in Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid) testing all the built-up good luck or bad luck I had in life and just jumping for it.

The Denver Airport – Great Tent-like Domes & A Secret

Here we were, inside this immense location called the Denver International Airport. Rising out of the Colorado prairieland, twenty miles from Denver. The space around it the largest I’ve ever seen. It is hard to conceive of a larger, operational facility moving huge numbers of people each day. A familiar welcome over the speakers – in the trains running between the various gates of the airport – from the Mayor of Denver. And the great tent-like dome of the main part of the airport. 

If I wasn’t always running through Denver International such a maddingly way, with other travelers, I imagine I might see some of the majesty and efficiency of the overall operation. Like the mystery time capsule at the airport supposedly placed by a secret society and to be opened in 2094.

The Denver Airport Time Capsule / Planned to be Opened in 2094

* * *

After getting our baggage and rental car we head east to hit Interstate 25 north to Ft. Collins. We have been making the trip for years in all times of the year. In early November of 2025, with news breaking all the time on the political front, we drive north from the airport. Around noon on November 4^th. The presence of the Rocky Mountains maybe 15 miles to our left. The Colorado prairie on both sides of the freeway.  I have the recurrent feeling of expansiveness each drive north when arriving in Colorado. The sky is larger. The world more an open arms place than something squeezed into an urban location

Lobby of the Armstrong Hotel (1923) – Looking Out onto College Avenue

We check into the Armstrong Hotel in the Old Town part of Ft. Collins. Built in 1923, It is on the corner of College & Olive in the heart of Old Town Ft. Collins. It’s different from the hotel we’ve been staying at out here over the years. This hotel is in Old Town, target zero, the heart of Old Town. 

There is a magic about Old Town in Ft. Collins that is difficult to describe or define. It is not something that comes from the headlines written by the Tourist Bureau for the city. It’s a feeling for the place that sinks in after a few visits. After time and reflection. Its not something that reaches out in PR to hit you over the head like any nearness to the Disney brand. It’s much more subtle and dim and quiet than all the noise of the attempts of all the other cities to brand themselves with loud noises and images.

Front of the Armstrong Hotel (The famous Ace Gillettes Below)

In so many ways, it is a fact that cities in the worst environments advertise themselves the most. While those in the greatest environments hardly say a word about themselves. There is the fear that good words might attract when the real hope is to repel newcomers to the magic world. 

After a week in Ft. Collins, a crazy week in November 2025, one thinks of it again in terms of its original “fort” surname. Yet, this time, after watching the lighting ceremony on November 7^th, the town seems more a special “fortress” than a “fort” to me.

* * *

We’re out here to tie up final things on the new home we just built. A big move for us now living in Ohio. Yet, not as big a move as one might think for two people who have always bounced living between California and Ohio.  A middle territory that makes a certain amount of sense for our lives. The nearby mountains. The spirit of the west. A fortress that distinguishes itself from a bland of outside world. 

Ft. Collins used to protect a trail involved with transportation in the early American West. Now, the present Ft. Collins seems to protect a mental rather than physical trail in my mind. It seems more a fortress than a fort. Not an outpost of a nation but a fortress from within.

Protecting something learned from without. But something uniquely a product of a particular place against the Rocky Mountains of northern Colorado just south of Wyoming. We’ve gone into the mountains above Ft. Collins several times. The place on the river near Ft. Collins with all the famous people on the walls. Estes Park where the model hotel for King’s The Shining is located. The grand reservoir named Horsetooth above Ft. Collins, a long lake against the rising mountains.

* * *

Steve, father of my stepson Casey, a graduate of the local Colorado State University in Ft. Collins and longtime resident of Ft. Collins, tells me on our drive around the reservoir one day, that the southern part of the reservoir was buried under water. There are many stories about this event, and I read many of them on the Internet after our tour of Ft. Collins Steve conducted that wonderful afternoon in Ft. Collins a few years ago. 

Thinking about our recent trip out to Ft. Collins to see out new home, I look at it as a type of Fortress Collins. Protecting not only a trail to a new territory of America in the 1860s. But the legacy of an old western trail. Now, protecting a new trail. 

A trail not into a new, outward, external, physical land like the Overland Trail. But into a new inward, spiritual trail. Moving towards a new future. Yet preserving so much of America at the same time. by evolving from a fort into a fortress. A fort that protected a trail to a new part of America. And now a fortress that protects another type of trail in America. 

* * *

These thoughts were confirmed on my recent trip to Ft. Collins with Steph to finalize things with our new Ft. Collins home. The power of a fortress is not always in its walls but rather in its internal message. Some places create their own “fortresses” powered in one way like explosions. 

An internal radiance expanding outward. A place that knows itself and does not import ideas from without. Knows about them. Perhaps uses parts of these ideas. But always maintains its own thoughts and independence on the matter.

All great communities are based on the originality and creation based around export and its internal radiance and outward expanding power. The importation into a community changes the uniqueness of the community. Like a large break in the walls of the fortress, the inner fortress becomes flooded with the outside world. 

Right now, it seems Ft. Collins exports itself in a very subtle manner to the world. Not through the PR of the chamber or city to promote itself but rather through a visitor’s coming to understand the city a little better with each visit. It only reveals itself a little at a time. 

Building With Stained Glass Windows in Old Town Square at the Lighting Ceremony

This year, for the first time, we attend the biggest annual event in Ft. Collins: the Lighting Ceremony in Old Town on November 7^th each year. It kicks off the holidays in Old Town Square on where thousands gathered to see the lights in the trees of the town turned on.  we saw the light display illuminate for the first time this season.

The window in our room of the Armstrong Hotel looked down onto College and you could see the increasing amount of people moving down the street right to left for the center of Old Town. Many families pushing baby carriages or shepherding children. We went down and joined Casey and Sarah and grandson Theo and began moving with the crowd. Casey had Theo in a stroller.

It became increasingly crowded as we moved to the center of the town. Casey, a longtime resident of Ft, Collins said he had never seen it like this. We go as far as we can until we can’t go any further and simply stop and wait for the lights to go on. 

Another Building in Old Town Square

At 6:30 p.m. the lights turn on in the Old Town section of Ft. Collins. Model for Walt Disney’s Mainstreet in Disneyland. Not a surprise. The effect is spectacular. Magical. Lights in all of the trees and lights on the buildings. Thousands of lights and thousands of people in the large courtyard of downtown Old Town. The kickoff to the holiday season in Fort Collins. 

A spirit radiates outward from the lighting ceremony tonight. A place that started out as a fort to protect a trail. And was still protecting a trail in a sense. And, was now still a fort in many ways. Stronger than ever. A fortress of something new it seemed to me. A combination of California, Ohio and Colorado. Ohio was in Ft. Collins. After all, there was the 11^th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry out here, engaged in the Indian Wars of the 1860s.

Our next few days in Ft. Collins are used to find rental space and finalize things on the new home. We spend a good amount of time at it. We eat at a lot of the places along College Avenue in Old Town. Ace Gillette’s is in the basement of the Armstrong. An old speakeasy from the 1920s but fantastic. In the mornings, we go down to MUGs on the corner and really part of the hotel. Mostly college students from the 35,000 Colorado State University about a quarter mile south. All on computers or smartphones. It reminded me of my years living near Berkeley.

Officers in the 11th Ohio Cavalry Who Came to Ft. Collins to Fight Indians

Saturday, the day after the lighting ceremony on Friday, the family – except grandson Theo – all go to a big Ohio State Buckeyes bar in Ft. Collins to watch OSU play Purdue. We all had little name tags of where we were from. So many Ohio people on the name tags. Probably a lot brought out here by the Ohio Cavalry that came out to fight Indians. For every OSU touchdown we got a famous chocolate buckeye. (Similar to buckeyes from Ohio’s state tree). The candy dates back to 1919, when the Buckeye Candy Company was opened in Brooklyn, Ohio by three women. Today, Ohioans consume more than six million pounds of buckeyes per year. It’s similar to Reese’s peanut butter cup, in which the peanut butter center is surrounded by a thin chocolate shell and covered in thick chocolate. We sit at a table watching the game on the big TV screen in the tropical themed bar and I continue to pass the chocolate buckeyes I get for OSU touchdowns to Casey’s dad Steve sitting next to me. He loves them.

Our final day in Ft. Collins, the government is still shut down. That night, as we pack, there is news on all the channels that the Senate is voting late at night to end the shutdown. Lifting the shutdown passes the Senate and now goes to the House. The shutdown might be over soon.

* * *

We head east on Mulberry from our hotel and pick up Steph’s daughter Sarah as she’s flying back to New York and getting a ride with us to the airport. Over the Colorado prairie the eastern sky is a bright orange and pink. There is nothing that symbolizes a new day as much as a great sunrise. 

A few miles along I-25 south, is the last turnoff for Ft. Collins. The Rockies foothills are maybe five miles to the west. Their crevices slowly illuminated by the rising sun in the east. 

Later, I reflect on the magic town of Ft. Collins. Recognized as special by the creators of Disneyland. There is something about the town that impresses one with the perception that it is a town that really knows who and what and why it is. Not like a lot of the large suburbs around Denver like Columbine and Aurora. Far enough north of Denver to not be an extension of it. The southern.

* * *

But at the present, in early morning driving south on I-25, my mind is focused on finding the rental place, turning the car in, getting the bus to the terminal, checking our baggage in, going through TSA, riding the train to Gate B and walking about a quarter of a mile to the gate for our Columbus flight. It is one time. part of Wyoming is little more than 50 miles north of Ft. Collins. 

It takes about an hour to turn the car in and standing on the platform with just our carry-on bag waiting for the train. The last step in our travel. There is an announcement that the trains at Denver have operational problems and have stopped running. We stand on the platform waiting for the train to the gates. 

At first it said the train was 3 minutes away and then five minutes and suddenly it dropped to 30 seconds, and it was there and the doors open. People are still flooding down the elevators from check-in above as the landing area gets crunched together with passengers. Steph and I are squeezed in as the train sits there for a few minutes. There is a grumbling that some people might get off and walk to the gates. Then, the familiar announcement that the doors are closing and the train speeding to Gate A and then our Gate B. The ride up the long elevator and final walk to our gate. 

Front Range of the Rockies Near Estes Park – 20 Miles South of Ft. Collins

Soon, we’re in the air heading east into the rising sun of a new day and maybe a new time in the nation with the shutdown moving towards some reopening of the government. Denver is below and then behind us and Ft. Collins nestled into the foothills of the mountains. Far enough from the big city but close enough to benefit from what it has to offer. Ft. Collins will never be someone else’s suburb. Never forgetting its heritage as a fort.