{"id":13243,"date":"2026-02-23T15:57:53","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T22:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/secret-societies-and-masquerade-fever-took-over-colorados-social-scene-in-the-1870s\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T19:30:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:30:51","slug":"secret-societies-and-masquerade-fever-took-over-colorados-social-scene-in-the-1870s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/secret-societies-and-masquerade-fever-took-over-colorados-social-scene-in-the-1870s\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret societies and masquerade fever took over Colorado\u2019s social scene in the 1870s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Guard\u2019s
Guard\u2019s Hall, at 15th and Curtis streets in Denver, is seen in this photo from the 1870s. (Courtesy of Denver Public Library Special Collections, X-18553)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Though it wouldn\u2019t be formally established as a federal holiday until 1879, George Washington\u2019s birthday \u2013 later Presidents Day \u2013 was celebrated with special enthusiasm across the country in the centennial year, and Colorado was no exception.<\/p>\n

All around the territory, businesses were closed, with residents turning out for parades, military salutes and a variety of \u201cout-door games and literary exercises,\u201d reported the Denver Tribune<\/em>. In the evening, grand balls were held in Golden at Standly\u2019s Hall, in Boulder at Union Hall and in Georgetown at Cushman\u2019s Opera House.<\/p>\n

In Las Animas, a newly organized Masonic lodge hosted guests from nearby Fort Lyon and towns as far away as Granada and Kit Carson, who took to the freshly waxed and polished dance floor as an orchestra played waltzes and quadrilles until 3:30 a.m.<\/p>\n

The Las Animas Leader<\/em> could hardly have been more effusive about the event\u2019s success. Not only was it \u201cdoubtless the most brilliant gathering of all which have so far taken place in this part of the territory,\u201d the Leader <\/em>wrote, the holiday ball had demonstrated that \u201cthis community possesses and presents in its social circle a standard of refinement and intelligence which would be creditable anywhere in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

As was the case in fledgling settlements all over Colorado, the Leader<\/em>\u2019s local boosterism overlapped with self-interest: The small weekly paper\u2019s owner and publisher, Charles Bowman, was a member of the ball\u2019s organizing committee and a prominent Mason.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s early decades as a territory and state coincided with the so-called Golden Age of Fraternalism, when millions of American men joined societies like the Freemasons, the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythia and many more. In 1876, there were five separate Masonic lodges in Denver alone, along with dozens of other social clubs, military orders and benevolent societies formed by the city\u2019s various immigrant and religious communities.<\/p>\n

Aside from business connections and a sense of belonging, these groups offered their members an early social safety net in the form of mutual aid and insurance benefits. Especially in the fast-growing cities and towns of the West, fraternal orders and the gathering places they built served important social and civic functions. Colorado\u2019s final territorial Legislature was held in 1876 on the first floor of Denver\u2019s newly opened Odd Fellows Hall \u2013 at the same time its constitutional convention met in the space the order had just vacated.<\/p>\n

\"Masquerade
Masquerade and costume advertisements in the Denver Times and the Rocky Mountain News in February 1876. (Courtesy of the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection, Colorado State Library)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
The Maennerchor masquerade<\/div>\n

In Denver, the holiday\u2019s main event during daylight hours was a trap shooting match put on by the Denver Shooting Club, which arranged for horse-drawn streetcars to ferry spectators to its club grounds at 26th and Glenarm streets. At the time, though a growing number of people considered the practice cruel, the targets shot in such events were not clay decoys but live pigeons. Longtime Denver gunsmith Carlos Gove took the top prize, though the Denver Times<\/em> noted that because of a \u201clack of pigeons,\u201d ties for third and fourth place would have to be \u201cshot off in a few days.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the evening, Jack Langrishe, the famous frontier impresario whose acting troupe had arrived for its latest stint in Denver earlier in the month, staged a double feature of comedies, \u201cThe Serious Family\u201d and \u201cPoor Pillicoddy,\u201d at the Denver Theater.<\/p>\n

But the \u201cgrandest success of the season,\u201d in the Denver Times<\/em>\u2019 judgment, took place at Guard\u2019s Hall, where the Maennerchor, the city\u2019s German-American singing social club, hosted hundreds of masked and costumed guests for a Centennial Carnival.<\/p>\n

Masquerades, a favorite pastime of Europe\u2019s elite since the 15th century, rose in popularity among the ascendant American aristocrats of the Gilded Age, peaking with the famously lavish Vanderbilt Ball held in New York City in 1883.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat fun it is to see masks squeezing each other in a fancied intrigue when, perhaps, they are neighbors, see each other three times a day, and feel, in ordinary life, the most comfortable indifference for each other,\u201d said the Rocky Mountain News<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Preparations for the Maennerchor masquerade had been carried on for weeks, with Mrs. Candace Bement and Madame Eugenie Putz, dressmakers on Larimer Street, competing for the brisk trade in domino masks, wigs, hats and other costume pieces. In commemoration of the Centennial, masqueraders dressed up as figures like George and Martha Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, British and Continental soldiers and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese annual balls of the Maennerchor \u2026 take the lead of all our masquerades, in the extravagance of grotesquerie,\u201d said the Rocky Mountain News<\/em>. \u201cNo previous ball approached this one, it is claimed, in the number of spectators present, the participants in the festivities, or in the variety of characters, ranging all the way from the cheapest to the costliest costumes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Reporting
Reporting and advertising related to the Black Hills gold rush filled Colorado newspapers in February 1876. (Courtesy of the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection, Colorado State Library)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
Conflict in the Black Hills<\/div>\n

The News<\/em>\u2019 extensive Feb. 24 account of the decadent Maennerchor ball and its costumed soldiers was immediately followed in its columns by an early report of the trouble brewing a few hundred miles north of Denver.<\/p>\n

A Wyoming correspondent wrote of the \u201csuddenly organized expedition\u201d of Gen. George Crook, who was preparing to march out of Fort Fetterman in a winter campaign against the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne in the Dakota Territory. Crook\u2019s maneuvers began the Great Sioux War of 1876, a yearlong conflict that would culminate in one of the most famous defeats in U.S. military history and cast a pall over the Centennial celebrations later that summer.<\/p>\n

Over the preceding two years, thousands of gold prospectors had flocked to the Black Hills, trespassing on land considered sacred by the Lakota and other tribes, and reserved for them under the terms of an 1868 treaty.<\/p>\n

Federal officials sought to force the tribes to negotiate the region\u2019s sale \u2013 they\u2019d similarly pressured the Ute people into a cession of Colorado\u2019s silver-rich San Juan Mountains \u2013 but Lakota leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse refused. Tensions reached a breaking point as prospectors and settlers, many of them relocating from the Colorado Territory, continued to flood in at the gold rush\u2019s peak in early 1876.<\/p>\n

\u201cFOR SALE \u2013 CHEAP \u2013 SALOON \u2026 going to Black Hills,\u201d read a Feb. 22 classified ad in the News<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The troops under Crook would march north against the Lakota and Cheyenne in March and again in May \u2013 when they would be joined by a cavalry force marching west from Fort Abraham Lincoln under the command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, a Civil War veteran whose 1874 expedition into the Black Hills had kicked off the gold rush.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Newsline, visit www.coloradonewsline.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

soon-to-be Centennial State celebrated Washington\u2019s Birthday with parades, pigeon shoots and decadent costume balls<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,28,198,994],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-13243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-headlines","tag-history","tag-trueanthem"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13243"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18879,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13243\/revisions\/18879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13243"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=13243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}