DOWN MEMORY LANE
Buff's "Wild West" show a hit in the forties

Denver Public Library. Western History Collection. Call number X-1028. Photo by Orin Sealy.

By Cynthia Skeen
With Buff Rutherford

Browsers through the Denver Public Library's Western History Collection of photos can get a smile out of this one. The curly-haired heart-throb on the horse is Buff Rutherford, long-time Georgetown resident and raconteur. The Society dates the photo as 1946, and Buff recalls that he was seventeen and was just about to enter the military service.

The occasion for the photograph was a write-up in The Denver Post about tourism in Georgetown, specifically "The Big Do," held Saturday nights for two summers at McClellan Hall. Ben Draper sponsored the events, and this promotional photo featured Betty Whitenack (to the immediate right of Buff), also a resident of Georgetown. She and her husband Pete Gracie live in New Mexico now. The other figures may be non-resident models. Their names are given as Lesley Lierson and Helen Addison, with Glen Stein in the doorway.

McClellan Hall was not the original McClellan Opera House, which was located on the corner of Sixth and Taos Street and which burned to the ground in 1892. The new McClellan Hall was located at 509 Sixth Street. The large box over the entry doors once held a movie projector. The box was installed in order to achieve the required distance to the far wall for projecting the movies.


The poster in the window advertises "The Yellow Rose of Texas," playing Thursday. But on Saturday nights, Mr. Draper used the space for "The Big Do." There was usually a dance, and sometimes a speaker or poet was the featured entertainment.

Why the horse? Mr. Draper was interested in promoting tourism for the town, and he thought that a Wild West theme would attract the most crowds. The horse in the picture belonged to Buff. His name was Lucky, and Buff had just broken him in that spring.

In keeping with the Wild West theme, Buff and his friends once staged a hold-up of his father's business. In the morning before the enactment, one of the local young men tacked "Wanted" posters around town. Buff drove a wagon, and his brother John and a cousin rode horses. They swooped into Mr. Rutherford's leather shop, known as Columbine Crafts, around noon, tied him up, and hauled him off in the wagon. The prank was timed to coincide with the arrival of a tourist bus in town. However, their motive was not entirely tourism-related. In fact, the boys pulled off a real kidnapping. Buff's father was taken up Guanella Pass Road to a family cook-out, which he otherwise would not have attended because he normally worked hard in his shop until 5:30 in the afternoon.


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