2024 - Historic Victor Bowl

Picture this: it’s August 1899 in the booming mining town of Victor, Colorado. A woman, smoking a cigarette, walks outside to wash laundry. At that time, kerosene was a popular ingredient in laundry detergent. The woman's cigarette found its way into the washtub, and the ensuing fire quickly became out of control. In a matter of a few hours, twelve blocks of Victor’s business district were left in shambles.
By April of 1900, however, most of the businesses and buildings had been rebuilt, and Victor’s population had swelled to over 12,000. Included in the rebuild was Ketelsen Grocery, a small store serving the local residents. By the late 1930s, new owners had transformed the interior into a four-lane bowling alley. The venue held and hosted many bowling tournaments throughout the years and was popular with the Cripple Creek Junior League during the 1960s.
Today, the Historic Victor Bowling Alley is still operational with its manual pinsetters, a rare feature. Although the building is believed to be in decent condition, supporting beams hold the roof on three of the four lanes. The previous owner opened the venue for special events like Victor’s annual Gold Rush Days.
In 2020, the building was sold to Steve and Bee Morgan, who, after filming a feature film in Cripple Creek-Victor, fell in love with the area and its history. They hope to restore the Historic Victor Bowl to full-time use and serve as a catalyst for other historic building owners in downtown Victor to provide spaces for families and children away from the local gambling districts.
CPI is excited to partner with the Morgans to help bring back family-friendly spaces using historic buildings that were once the center of cultural and social life in Victor.
Colorado Preservation, Inc: coloradopreservation.org/
CBS Colorado
Official Site: www.cbsnews.com/colorado/
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[@MaxZomboni]

They should mostly just leave it alone. Just fix up what is there and leave it as is. It's a 1930s bowling alley. It is what it is. Renovation does not mean opening stuff up and creating something it never was. It's like the people who take old historic buildings and tear out all the beautiful masonry work, strip it down to the bare brick walls and call that a renovation. That's not a renovation. That's a desecration, and after you do that, you can never get it back to what it was.

[@industriastroll3177]

Just fix the roofs, re-surface the lanes, restore the pinsetters, and it's done.

[@MaxZomboni]

​@@industriastroll3177 My thoughts exactly. It's an amazing time capsule just the way it is. From what I can find out this place it was just a little hole on the wall meeting place for locals to come to bowl from the 1930s to the 1960s, and has been sitting mostly empty since then except for special events. I agree it looks like the roof needs some major work, but the interior should be left looking just like it does now. I appreciate what they are doing for the building but I get nervous when I hear them talking about "opening it up". If they tear out too much they will be reverting it back to a time before it was a bowling alley. Which would be just sad.

[@HistoryAnonymous]

Good news for Victor! For those who imagine that "just fixing the roof" is easy, please know that many of these buildings are made of soft-fire bricks, not hard-fire ones, so the structures themselves need much more than simple remodeling. Look in the video at the roof of the old bar next door to see what's entailed in reconstruction. How many of us remember when the City put a chain link fence in front of the American Legion building as we gathered to watch it dramatically crumble? And how many remember what the inside of the Union Miners Hall looked like before the fire gutted it? So much history here! But the real treasure in Victor are its invitation-by-God-only residents. Such wonderful people! Priceless.

[@lajeangreeson2423]

Only one lane is usable because of the ceiling problems. They are looking to restore, not tear down. The drop ceiling is not original to the building. Those came much later than even the 1930s bowling alley. I’ve been inside this building. The ceiling and roof are major issues that will have to be addressed no matter what.