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by Terry W. Blevins
(Originally published November, 1981)
 It was "the best hotel between Kansas City and Denver," wrote one local historian. Its beautiful landscaping, its fountain and its spacious accommodations attracted famous world travelers and local cowboys alike.
It was the Collins Hotel in Stratton.
The hotel was named after its builder and first owner, Joe Collins, an early day Eastern Colorado "mover and shaker" who learned at a tender age that buying and selling land would lead to success.
A Wisconsin native, Collins bought and sold his first farm - for a profit - at the age of 17. Fifteen years later, in 1906, Collins and some of his brothers homesteaded in Colorado. Making good in horses and cattle, Collins went into the hardware business, and selling that, he began dealing in real estate as a specialty.
In 1917, he bought out the Square Deal Lumber Co., and in its place, Joe Collins built the Collins Hotel. According to Dessie Reeves-Cassity, "He hired a landscape gardener to landscape the surroundings, created a sunken garden, set out beautiful flowers, kept a professional caretaker and made it the show place of both Kansas and Colorado." Nor did he scrimp on the interior; the linoleum was brought from England. There was hot and cold water, and all electric lights.
The hotel was big. It had 104 doors with numbers on them, but only 80 were for the 9 x 12 bedrooms. The rest were for chutes and closets. The hotel boasted three public bathrooms, and two of the rooms had individual bathrooms, as well. The halls were 10 feet wide.
In the attic, space was sold to cowboys who wanted a spot to roll out their bedrolls. For 75 cents a night, cowboys could rent curtained cubicles, and one retired cattleman, Lloyd Pugh, recalls some "real parties" in that attic. When the hotel sold in 1966, the wires which held the curtains were still there.
In the east wing was a large dining room, which could seat 72 persons, and a smaller cafe with 18 stools and two tables. Meals were cooked on coal stoves. The cooks were particularly busy packing lunches when the survey crew (working on Highway 24) stayed at the hotel. Loretta (Pelle) Ehlers, a former waitress and cook in the hotel, said a T-bone steak dinner sold for 60 cents in the 1930s, and the luncheon special usually went for around 45 cents. A cheap lunch, including roast beef, potatoes and gravy, vegetable, coffee and a roll, could be purchased for a quarter.
Mrs. Ehlers said about 35 drummers (salesmen) stayed at the hotel each week. While they all enjoyed the hospitality and the comparative luxury, at least one salesman had cause for irritation. Mrs. Ehlers said a ketchup salesman arrived in the dining room one day, only to find some other brand of ketchup - in his company's bottles! To appease the salesman, and to keep him as a customer, the hotel removed the offending ketchup from the premises.
Among the famous names who registered and stayed at the Collins hotel were Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, Paul Harris (founder of the Rotary Club, from Chicago), Paul Whiteman, Marian Davies, and Governor Edwin C. "Big Ed" Johnson.
Although there were a number of hotel managers, Joe Collins owned the hotel until he died in 1949. He continued to deal in real estate during his lifetime, and is credited with bringing many new residents to the area from across the nation.
The hotel was willed to five heirs upon Collins' death, and one of them, Frances Van Ness, bought out the interests of the other four. She and her sister, Rose Huber, operated the hotel until Mrs. Van Ness died in 1965. Mrs. Huber and another sister, Isabel Ross, then sold the hotel to Harley and June Pottorff in 1966.
The Pottorffs remodeled the old hotel, now known as Twin Oaks. The 18,000 square feet of floor space received new carpeting, although the English linoleum was "still in good shape," and the walls received more than 100 gallons of new paint. The wide halls were converted to bathrooms. The old hotel was converted to apartments, and for many years, a portion was used as the Stratton Senior Citizens Center. Since Collins, died, the gardens and fountain have made way for a paved parking lot; the dining room and kitchen are no longer in use. But in a casual glance from across the street, it still looks much as it did, more than 80 years ago.
(Material for this article provided by Lloyd Pugh, Loretta Ehlers, June Pottorff, the Kit Carson County Assessor's Office, and Narratives of Stratton, Colorado, by Dessie Reeves-Cassity.)
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