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This story begins one hundred years ago, on a small farm in Ohio
where a father of seven children sold everything
and courageously made his way across the continental divide.
This is the story about the man
who created a landmark,
a legacy.
Located in the town tucked in the northwest corner, of Colorado.
This is the F.M. Light and Sons story,
as it unfolds over five generations
in Steamboat Springs, Colorado
The homesteaders,
Pioneers, miners,
Trappers and cowboys
couldn’t resist the spirit and romance of the west across the
Mississippi in search of
a dream. One of those dreamers was a man named F.M. Light.
Looking for relief from his asthma,
F.M. Light moved his wife, Carrie and seven children, aged 7 months
to seventeen years
from Ohio, to the rocky mountains. “So he said
to his wife, ‘I think I’ll…
…let’s move to Colorado and to Steamboat.’
He said ‘if other people can make a living in the Rockies we can too.’
So, they sold their farm
in Ohio and
packed up their seven kids and,
And uh, bought tickets on the Rio Grande, and,
uh... they came by train to Wolcott.
Then they got on a stagecoach
the next day and went to Yampa and stayed at the Antler’s Hotel that night.
and then uh...
on in to Steamboat the next day. They got here real late that night.”
It took F.M. Light just a few days to determine that a man’s clothing store was
Just what the town needed.
Using the proceeds from the sale of his Ohio farm,
he bought a commercial lot,
built the store,
and fully stocked it with two thousand dollars worth of inventory in just six
months after arriving in town.
It was a snowy, blustery day
when store opened on November ninth, 1905.
“They sold eleven dollars and fifty cents that day.
The next day they sold ten cents.”