Old Fire House Museum

Niwot’s first fire house, built in 1910 when the town bought its first fire-fighting equipment: a plain 8-by-14-foot frame shed with double swinging doors, put up on Second Avenue between the Niwot State Bank and the Livingston Hotel. The hotel later used it as a laundry shed, and in the 1970s and 1980s it was Floyd Edmunds’ office inside the Niwot Auction House.

In 1997 the building’s new owners offered it to the Niwot Historical Society, and volunteers took it apart in six pieces, carried it across the street and rebuilt it next to Niwot Hall, on the Left Hand Grange No. 9 lot. It sits in the Niwot Historic District, and a bronze plaque gives its date. Out front is a Buffalo No. 21 soda-and-acid chemical fire engine, the hand-pulled cart that arrived in 1910.

The Historical Society uses it for displays on Niwot history and opens it for open houses, such as the Fourth of July morning tours, rather than on regular hours. Check the Society’s site before making a trip; the building, cart and plaque can be seen from the sidewalk at any time.

Sources: Niwot Historical Society, Fire House Museum: A Short History and The Fire Cart and Fire House; Left Hand Valley Courier, The Story Behind the Name: Fire House Museum, 29 June 2022.