As winter came into Telluride this week, pulling its white hood over the canyon and sending flurries into the afternoon street, the sheltered nook of the newly opened Voodoo Affordable Housing Project is quiet and empty. But not for long. Come Monday, November 4th, this alcove across from the Post Office will be the new location of Telluride's Free Box.
Here’s Free Box Manager Beck Boehm: “what you can expect from the new Free Box is a bigger shopping space; I wanted a space for a rack to hang hangers and nice clothes and jackets. One of my main thoughts was obviously a shelf for the glassware. That's something that needed to be there.”
This new box on Willow Street has cheerful bilingual text labeling the different bins. There is more space, but it's much the same as Telluride's current Free Box, which has been located by the intersection of North Pine Street and Colorado Ave for nearly 50 years, where it’s shadowed by the long awning of the Van Atta building, constructed in 1891.
That location, says Telluride Historical Museum Director, Kiernan Lannon has always been a hub:
“Van Atta was a grocery dry-goods store,” he says, “so, it got a lot of traffic. Certainly during the mining heyday that was the busiest intersection [in Telluride].”
By the seventies, the Van Atta store was long gone, replaced by a natural foods coop. It was in one of those years that Telliuride’s Free Box was born:
“Of course it started as just a box,” Lannon says. “I take it a woman was trying to get rid of some stuff and asked if she could leave it there. [The co-op] said ‘yes,’ and it wasn't too long before people started bringing stuff thinking: ‘hey, well, maybe I can get rid of my stuff too.”
It grew and grew, becoming the shabby 3x4 bin structure it is today.
“That iteration came about in 1983 and they actually needed and got a HARC certificate of appropriateness for it,” says Lannon. “So it was considered a legit structure in the town.”
HARC is the Historic and Architectural Review Commission, signaling the town government's seal of approval for this community asset.
Despite its magic, the box has always had its detractors, or at least skeptics, says Lannon: “somewhere in the late 70s is the first reference that the town was being urged to do something about the Free Box, the condition of the Free Box. People are complaining about it getting messy and blocking the sidewalk and people bringing stuff that shouldn't really be there and all that kind of stuff.”
The truth, explains Boehm, is that a Freebox takes work, management, and care, or else the trash piles up to obscure the treasure.
Who performed that work has shifted over the Freebox's history, falling on different volunteer groups and sometimes — such as in the mid 2010’s — going undone.
“And so as we all know, it kind of fell into disrepair,” says Boehm, “and it was a huge trash dump for years. When COVID hit, the discussion came up, do we want to keep the Free Box? Is it something that we want in the town?”
A pandemic pause shuttered the box. Then, as the COVID germ scare subsided, residents called for a reopening. The town was ready to do it on its own terms, funding Boehm’s position to manage trash buildup at the box and incorporating a relocated Free Box, housed on town property, into the designs for its Voodoo Affordable Housing Project.
With the housing project complete this fall, it's time for the box to move.
Twenty-four seven and three-sixty-five, the Free Box Bustles. On a recent afternoon, Nicola Kerr enthused about her finds, and she shows off an outfit picked from the Box on prior days of hunting.
Are folks worried about the new location? Not particularly. Says Sarah Owens, browsing with Kerr: “a couple more blocks’ walk isn't gonna hurt anybody…It's gonna be good for all of us. I think it'll get more action [with its new location].”
What is it about the Free Box? Why has this community stayed so dedicated to its shabby curbside catchall?
“I do think the Freebox does speak to a very specific time in that period in the 1970s,” reflects Lannon. “As the town has progressed a little more into the resort feel that it has now, it's hearkening back to a part of the culture that still seems to be there, even if it's a little more under the surface.”
While nostalgia certainly may be a factor, Boehm says it's not the only piece.
Everyday, she says, she sees “how much people need that Free Box, not just because they want free stuff, but how they need it as a social space, as a way to clothe their kid, as a way to just feel connected to this community.”
Elizabeth Gick, who's lived in town for decades, was browsing on a recent afternoon, and she says it's true, the Free Box provides:
“I have found absolute treasures in here,” Gick exclaims.
Today, she brings a donation: “I'm dropping off a beautiful pair of pajama pants with patterns of elk. And it's just a little too tight around the waist for me, so I hope somebody else will have a good night's sleep in it!”
The Free Box officially opens at its new location across from the Post Office on South Willow Street on Monday, November 4th. And — supposedly — it will never close. Should you need to make a return, you can do so, no questions asked.