Milestones Icon: Hover Family

Charles Hover was born in 1867 in the small Wisconsin town of Mazomanie. He earned a degree in pharmacy, then moved to Colorado in 1898 at his father’s request to help run Hover Drug Co., a wholesale drug business in Denver.

On his arrival in 1898, he met and married Katherine Avery. The couple settled in Longmont, where Charles served on the Chamber of Commerce and as mayor. The couple attended the St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church and donated time and financial support to host church and community fundraisers.

In 1902, Charles left the family business on doctor’s orders. Worn down by stress and shaken by an explosion at the company, he bought a 160-acre parcel of land west of Longmont.

The 160-acre lot, purchased for $11,200, was plagued with alkali problems and clay soil, making water stagnate on the ground and irrigation difficult. By installing a drainage system to remove alkali deposits from low areas and planting part of the farm in alfalfa to replenish nitrogen, he improved the soil.

Charles also supervised all improvements to the farm, including new farm buildings, addition of the latest equipment, addition of a complete blacksmith’s shop and heated stock tanks for the livestock. Alfalfa silage was used to feed livestock, and all manure was returned to the fields, including fertilizers. Crop rotation was instituted for wheat, alfalfa and beet crops.

Hover became a longtime participant and board member of the Boulder County Fair, showcasing improvements he made on his land. A Denver newspaper headlined a 1912 story on the Hover farm, “Prairie Farm is Paradise in Ten Years.”

Charles and Katherine lived in the original farmhouse until 1912, when a cottage was completed in an orchard north of the property. The 3,500-square-foot Tudor-style home took four years to build, cost $25,000 and included electricity and running water.

In 1907, the couple adopted a nine-year-old girl named Beatrice, who had lived in and out of orphanages. They arranged to adopt the girl if she would agree to take care of them in their old age. Beatrice took care of her parents until their deaths and lived on her father’s farm until she died in 1993. It was her dream to preserve the farm as a retirement home.

“My hopes are that it can be preserved as a home … as a museum exemplary of a fine house of the early 1900s with furnishings, rare books and artifacts kept intact, so the home can become a community center,” she said.

The brick residence and frame farm buildings are now the site of Hover Manor, a nonprofit, assisted-living retirement community.

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