By Paul Haseman - Guest Historian
Most of us have motored up Lookout Mountain Road. Its history in brief is remarkable. The vision for the route derived entirely from Goldenite, William “Cement Bill” Williams. Perhaps not a vision, as two rail funiculars were constructed up Lookout Mountain and South Table Mountain in 1912 and 1913, respectively. The tramway up Lookout Mountain crystalized the idea for Cement Bill to build an automobile road up the mountain.
With little local enthusiasm for such an engineering impossibility, Willams reached in his own pocket (with a little help) and surveyed and then built a two-foot-wide concrete trail up the mountain. This strip led the State Road Commissioner to approve the route. With this approval Cement Bill raised $30K to start work. With added workers from Buffalo Bill’s bankrupt Wild West Show, the road was opened within a year on 26 August 1913. As you might expect, the popular new road put the Lookout Mount funicular out of business in a few years.
But more about Cement Bill. With his success going up the mountain, he then connected “his” road (then State Hwy 27) to the Denver Park System’s “Lariat Loop” to the west at Genesee Park. With further visions of grandeur, he noted that the existing rutted stage route to Idaho Springs was unsuitable for automobiles. It needed a better road and who better to build it than Cement Bill . . . particularly when Idaho Springs officials and residents were clamoring for improved transportation. Cement Bill’s road to Idaho Springs opened in 1914.
With this road completed, Cement Bill began renting his own Stanley Steamer for trips up Lookout Mountain. With early success, he took another step in February 1915 to exploit his road construction. He formed the Williams Transportation and Investment Co with Charles Quaintance, G.W. Parfet and other local luminaries, with Cement Bill as President. The first two tasks – build a large garage (now Woody’s Pizza) and purchase a new a fleet of Stanley Steamer touring cars. With both tasks completed, by December 1915, Cement Bill’s company was making regular runs to Idaho Springs charging $1.50 one way the $2.50 round trip.
As a contractor, Cement Bill performed other work in and around Golden. One contract, not surprisingly, was with the State Road Commission in 1919 to install protective wire cable along the Floyd Hill section of the road to Idaho Springs. Additional work included work in Big Thompson Canyon, and his crew rescuing stranded travelers snowed in at Berthoud Pass with early and late blizzards in September 1919 and May 1920. Another job was a two-story vault for Golden’s Rubey Bank.
Cement Bill was more than a hard-working contractor. In April 1920 he scored the highest mark on the State Civil Service exam among 20 engineers and was appointed Superintendent of Construction for the State Highway Commission. An unexpected achievement for the bib overalls working man in the photo above.
In April 1919 Williams moved his family to Bergen Park, beyond Genesee and his name appeared less often in the Golden press. Cement Bill certainly left his mark on Golden.
Bill Williams died on May 17, 1945, and "his ashes were scattered on Wildcat Point at the end of the Lariat Trail as he had requested." (Colorado Transcript - May 24, 1945)
