By Than Acuff
Slinging concrete in the rain 25 years ago, local skateboarders built a daring skate park that caught international attention. Where will the next generation of freewheelers take it? Back in 1996, Lenny Byrd, a 24-yearold transplanted Floridian who was living the classic ski town lifestyle in Crested Butte, had a skate ramp in his rental unit in Riverland. It became the focal point for skaters throughout the Gunnison Valley, and that freewheeling energy soon spilled out onto Elk Avenue, much to the chagrin of the business community. One day, Byrd got a call from thenCrested Butte Town Manager Bill Crank. It seemed that several business owners on Elk Avenue had grown weary of the whizzing skateboarders and wanted something done about it. This being a small town, Crank had heard of Byrd’s skateboard ramp. “I guess he’d heard about it through the grapevine,” recalled Byrd. “It was near the end of the ski season and I was going to move out of my place anyway, and I told him that if he wanted, we could move the ramp and just set it up over at the Nordic Center.” Relocated with help from friends and refurbished with Town funds, the ramp became an instant hit with young people. But to everyone’s surprise, what grew from that first ramp had a ripple effect on the skateboard world, not just in Crested Butte, but eventually nationwide and ultimately worldwide. “Once we set it up, it was flooded with kids, every single day, all summer long,” recalls Byrd. That then led to the creation of the bold and original Crank’s Tank, the current skate park shoehorned in at the corner of Third Street and Belleview Avenue 54
