Mondo's Savery Cache #2

This is a replacement for the larger cache in this area that went AWOL.

A prominent visual landmark at 110th and Federal Boulevard is the circa 1925 Savery Savory Mushroom Farm Water Tower, the only intact remnant of what was originally an extensive collection of buildings, structures and other features that made up the corporate agricultural facility owned and operated by Colorado's "mushroom magnate," Charles William Savery, from 1923 through 1953.

The tower is a local Westminster historic landmark and is also listed on the Colorado State Register of Historic Properties.

History of the Savery Savory Mushroom Farm and Water Tower

Charles William Savery was born on 15 November 1878 in Parkersville, Chester County, Pennsylvania, the third of six children born to Stephen Webb Savery and his wife, Susanna (Susan) Forsythe. Long citizens of the United States, the family could trace its lineage back to ancestors who moved from England to Chester County in the early 1700s.

Charles Savery attended public schools in Westchester, Pennsylvania and little else is known about his childhood. As a young adult he worked in the lumberyard business, owning a facility in Philadelphia from 1900 through 1908. On 16 June 1904, Savery married Denver resident Frances Darlington and the couple had two sons, Robert and Stuart, and a daughter, Jean. When the lumberyard operation failed, he was forced to repay heavy debts in Philadelphia. With that achieved, the family headed west in 1909 and settled in Denver, where they arrived with less than $600 to their name.

The following year Savery turned to the securities business when he opened a mining stockbrokerage office in Denver. Initially, he and a partner operated the business under the name Savery-Petrikin Securities Company, with offices strategically located in the Mining Exchange Building. The Petrikin side of the business appears to have been William Petrikin, who after 1917 became president and chairman of the board of the Great Western Sugar Company. Savery remained partners with Petrikin through 1917 and the two may have parted ways as the latter was elevated to his new position as one of the most prominent sugar industry executives in the country.

During this time, Savery invested in a molybdenum mine in Questa, New Mexico, and sold his interest for enough money that he was able to retire. However, retirement didn't suit him well and he returned to the securities business. In 1918, the brokerage's name changed to C.W. Savery Securities Co., with offices in the Denham Building. Savery continued working in the business through 1920, although he appears to have dabbled in mining investments on a part-time basis well into the 1930s. At the same time, he invested in an 80-acre irrigated farm located over seven miles north of the city in unincorporated Adams County. Savery purchased the property in 1918 for $18,000 from Jacob and Nettie Milstein, Russian-Jewish farmers who had migrated to the Denver area from the failed Cotopaxi colony in southern Colorado.

In the early 1920s, Savery embarked on the third and final phase of his career when he entered the mushroom growing and canning business. His interest in mushrooms did not emerge from a vacuum. Rather, it was based in the fact that the center of the mushroom business in the United States was Charles Savery's boyhood home of Chester County, Pennsylvania. Introduced to the United States from France in 1902, mushrooms quickly became a popular delicacy, with 80% of the nation's crop produced in Pennsylvania. Savery reportedly had a cousin, Ed Jacobs, engaged in the business there who introduced him to the growing of mushrooms.

In 1922, Charles Savery and partner L.A. Hughes began limited production in a building under Denver's 20th Street viaduct. The facility, however, was soon ordered closed by Chief of Police William Candlish, who told the men that he had received complaints about the unpleasant odors produced by the large amounts of horse manure used in the growing process. Savery, though, recalled in later years that the chief had it in for him after the official was caught cheating in a poker game.

The Cache
You will be searching for a camoed 35mm. Bring your own writing instrument.