Arvada High School is one of the oldest schools in the Denver area, it is the school I graduated from in 1989 and the school where I spent the first 16 years of my teaching career. While I was teaching at Arvada, the school formally adopted the Bulldogs as its mascot. How the school went from the start of what was originally known as the "Arvada School", to the Arvada High School Bulldogs is a twisty, strange, bizarre story. One that captured the nation's attention for a time and put the school, its students, and its staff directly in the crosshairs of the nation's culture wars.
The Start
Arvada, Colorado had been a remote farming community sitting between Denver and the foot of the Rocky Mountains. By the late 1800s enough people had settled in the Arvada area that a school was needed to educate the children in the area. A one room brick school was built on what is now known as "Olde" Wadsworth Boulevard between what is now 57th Avenue and Grandview Avenue. At first the school was only for primary grades- essentially an elementary school- but by 1900 the school added grades through 12th grade. In 1904 the first senior of Arvada School graduated, Miss Angie Bates. This original one room schoolhouse still stands today and is currently the barroom for the School House Kitchen and Libations in Olde Town Arvada. Eventually there were enough students in the area that the community decided it needed a separate school for secondary grades and in 1922 the new Arvada High School building opened on the corner of Ralston Road and Wadsworth, today the location is a 7-11.
The First Mascot
Originally the school lacked a mascot. The school and its sports teams were called the "Cherry-Whites" after the colors of the school; Cherry and White. When the new school building opened in 1922 a new Agricultural Arts and Welding teacher was hired, Tom Vanderhoof. Vanderhoof started the first football team, built the football field for the team and coached the football team, as well as several other sports, for many years. Coach Vanderhoof was also the one responsible for the first mascot of Arvada High School.
The football jersey's of the 1920s were essentially wool sweaters. Since the school colors were cherry and white, the sweaters were dyed cherry red. When the football players would finish practice or a game, many would remove the sweaters as they left the field and as a result of the sweat the dye would transfer from the sweater to their skin, coloring their skin red. Due to this the students began to call the football players "redskins". Because of this Vanderhoof wanted to make Redskin the official mascot of
Arvada High School. The 1920s were at the end of what was known as the Progressive Era in American History and Vanderhoof supported several progressive causes. Concerned that the name "redskin" may be offensive to American Indians, Vanderhoof sent letters to all of the registered tribes in Colorado asking for permission to use the name Redskin for the Arvada High School football team. All of the responses Vanderhoof received back from the tribes did not express any concerns about using the name Redskin so the name stuck and soon a depiction of an American Indian became the mascot of Arvada High School. Arvada High School would be the Redskins for the next 70 years. Until 1993.
The Controversy and Change
In the early 1990s a Jefferson County parent organization, the Jeffco Native Americans Parent Organization asked the school district of Jefferson County as well as the administration at Arvada High School to consider changing the name of the school citing the offensiveness of the name since it was a racial slur towards American Indians. And thus began one of the most unique, bizarre, and uproarious years ever witnessed in any high school in the United States.
During the 1992-93 school year Principal Jim Melhouse, under pressure from district administration, considered changing the mascot of Arvada High School, and the circus began setting up its tents. Various groups quickly organized in support of or against the name change and began lobbying anyone and everyone they could find in support of their goals regarding the mascot of Arvada High School. The emerging story captured the attention of the national media and soon stories about the controversy were appearing in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, on NPR, and national newscasts. A community meeting was held in the auditorium of Arvada High School so that supporters, opponents, students, faculty, alumni, and community members could express their opinions. Security for this meeting was tight as there were threats of violence and media coverage was intense. The popular late night ABC News program Nightline did a live broadcast from the school auditorium about the issue and school mascot names.
Unfortunately, as is always the case with such volatile issues, the threat of ugly acts of violence were made by people who somehow feel threatened by change or when things are not going the way they want them to go. Because of death threats against him and his family, Principal Melhouse was given a bulletproof vest to wear in public and the Arvada Police escorted him into and out of the building. Furthermore, Melhouse had to remove his children from the neighborhood elementary schools because of threats of violence and kidnapping against his children.
Ultimately Melhouse, who was in favor of changing the name, decided that the faculty would vote to change the mascot of the school or to keep it the same. At this point, somehow organizations both for and against the change, got a hold of the home addresses and numbers of the faculty resulting in both sides beginning to lobby the faculty at their homes attempting to influence how they would vote on the issue. In a close vote, the faculty of Arvada High School elected to drop the Redskin as the mascot of the school.
Following the decision to change the mascot of the school, the parent organization that initially forced the issue came through Arvada High School and pointed out everything that had to be removed from the school. Essentially any thing with the word Redskin or any depiction of Native Americans had to be removed. The only thing depicting an American Indian that was allowed to remain in the school was a podium that had been built by a student and on the front of that podium was a painting of an American Indian that had been done by another student. The parent group determined that it was an honorable depiction of American Indians and not exploitative, so it could remain. This podium was in the classroom of Social Studies teacher Zeph Villano. I have since inherited this podium and it continues to sit in my classroom at nearby Pomona High School.
Aftermath
Following dropping the name Redskin, Arvada went through a number of new mascots. First up was a Harlequin, a type of clown dressed in costume with a diamond shape pattern. This mascot never caught on and unceremoniously disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared. Next, the school was just known as the “Reds” without any mascot of any kind. The Reds remained the name of Arvada High School throughout the rest of the 1990s.
Shortly after the mascot changed, Social Studies teacher and graduate of Arvada High School, Craig Wilkie- who was in favor of dropping the mascot- proposed creating a museum of Arvada High School since it was the first school in Arvada and one of the oldest schools in the Denver area. In this museum would be artifacts from the school telling the story of the school throughout the nine decades of its existence. This museum would obviously incorporate the story of the Redskin mascot as well as feature artifacts depicting the former mascot. There was pushback from some that this was simply reintroducing the former mascot back into the school, however Wilkie successfully argued that museums are designed to preserve and inform others of the past. Sometimes that past is distasteful or uncomfortable but it doesn’t change the past. You can’t erase or ignore history just because some may not like it. In fact, you should preserve and talk about the past for that very reason. You have to remember the past to understand where you currently are and help you figure out where you go from here. Ultimately Wilkie’s argument won out and with the help of several students and faculty members the Arvada High School museum was created and featured prominently in the lobby of Arvada High School for the next 30 years.
From A Color To An Animal
In 2000, new school Principal Robert Lopez decided that it was time for Arvada High School to get a new mascot and the students would be the ones to decide what that mascot was. Three possibilities were proposed as the new mascot of Arvada High School: a Miner, a Titan, or a Bulldog. Visual renderings of these three possible mascots were created by an award winning art student and were all featured in a mascot campaign put together by the Arvada Student Council leading up to the election for the new mascot. At a Spring Pep Rally the results were revealed and overwhelmingly the students had chosen the Bulldog to be the new mascot of Arvada High School.
However, the switch from a color to a Bulldog as the new mascot of the school was not without its own controversy. All of this took place in the wake of the tragedy of Columbine. Jefferson County Schools became hypersensitive and created a special committee to review all mascot depictions in JeffCo to ensure that they were not unduly aggressive or encouraged violence. The original Bulldog mascot created by the student depicted a very burly, muscular bulldog in a spiked collar, bearing sharp teeth. The Jefferson County Schools Mascot Review Committee determined that all of this was inappropriate as it encouraged violence, aggression, intimidation, and bullying and they ordered that that mascot be toned down. So, a softer, more friendly version of the Bulldog emerged. However, the original mascot that was too mean was somehow magically painted one weekend on the wall of the new band room at Arvada High School, and to the best of my knowledge, is still there today.
The End Of The Museum
The Arvada High School Museum that had been created by Craig Wilkie with the help of students and other faculty members in the mid 1990s endured for the next 30 years as a source of pride for the school and interest for all who visited. After Wilkie had retired several teachers and students served as the curators of the museum faithfully maintaining, cleaning, and updating it.
Recently the State of Colorado has determined that the museum violates state law because it tells the story of the Redskin mascot and has mandated that it be removed from the school by October of 2024. Apparently neglecting the argument of Craig Wilkie about the reason for the museum and ignoring one of the key lessons from history “If learning history doesn’t make you uncomfortable, you are learning the wrong history.”
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