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The Thunder and Buttons bar and restaurant at 2415 West Colorado also has a colorful history.
In the 1980s Whitey Pine, a contractor, went into partnership with a man who knew the restaurant business and they took advantage of the CDGB/SBA loan program to buy the building for a new restaurant and bistro.
The building had no distinctive name. So Dave Hughes, principle historian of Colorado City suggested one which came out of this famous story from the rip roaring saloon days of the 1890s.
A Colorado City resident, called Prarie Dog O'Byrne who had an endless wheel on the back of his carriage where a prarie dog would run endlessly, had managed to domesticate two antlered Elk from North Park Colorado to pull his carriage. A very difficult feat. They had to be exercised every day. The whole wild rig was spectacular running around Colorado City. Prarie Dog would frequently offer Laura Belle, the Queen of Colorado's Red Light District, a ride. He would then race down Colorado Avenue the 3 miles into downtown Colorado Springs where the fine horses of the refined women of Wood Avenue would smell those rangy elk, bolt, tip over, throw the ladies into the dirt. Whereupon the Police would jail Prarie Dog over night, and hapless Laura Bell would have to drag her gown up dusty Colorado Avenue back to Colorado City.
The name of the Elk were Thunder and Buttons.
That became the name of the Bar/Restaurant in this building. It was a popular success for over 10 years. But a bad fire gutted the building one night, and Whitey got out of the Restaurant business, but kept the building. He first leased it to the only chain operation in Colorado City, a fancy Pizza palace named Boujoes, which only lasted 5 years. (One remarkable thing is that no chain stores located in Old Colorado City from 1976 to the present - 2005. Which validated the original Dave Hughes economic vision for revitalization that the district should support local owner-occupants through its financial support mechanisms.)
Then a 1984 woman graduate of the Air Force Academy who admitted she 'hung out' with fellow cadets when she had time off in the original Thunder and Buttons, and enjoyed the place during her cadet years between 1980 and 1984, was commissioned and became an Air Force Pilot. She resigned from the Air Force after 7 years and became a United Airlines pilot. Looking for a business opportunity while she still was flying commercially she came back to Colorado City, and opened a re-newed Thunder and Buttons, in 2004, with a feminine 'pilot' and military decor. So the name lives on.
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