Crank’s Tank by Than Acuff

from Crested Butte Magazine - Summer 2021

Voices in the void by Arvin Ramgoolam

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

Photos courtesy of Matt Johannes

Opening Day - Fall 1997 next to Big Mine Ice Arena.

The first step to building an actual skate park was finding someone who knew about building a skate park. Or, at the very least, a little about building a skate park. So Byrd reached out to friend Tim Payne in Orlando, Florida, who had started a skate ramp building company called Team Pain.

“I had built a lot of skateboard ramps with Team Pain, but I’d never built a concrete skate park – but I knew some people who had,” explained Byrd.

With his friends at Team Pain, Byrd brainstormed what they wanted in a skate park. “We just kind of drew it on some paper and built it from there,” he said.

While there were other skate parks nationwide, including one being built in Grand Junction and another in Durango, they were rare, and Byrd and the local skateboard contingent wanted something different.

“There were a few of them in the country, Crested Butte was like the fifth or sixth one, but ours was the first one planned with a pool section with pool tile and pool coping,” says Byrd.

But, while ideas are great, ideas within a municipality need approval, and that’s when a groundswell of support rose for the skate park. As word spread, local filmmaker Murray Wais helped usher the skate park enthusiasts through the official process, resulting in an audience with the Crested Butte Town Council.

“We were just going for it; it was really just a bunch of skaters wanting to build a skate park,” said Byrd. “Murray really stepped up. He helped us craft the paperwork to get our points across.”

An initial conversation with the council led to a public hearing, and that’s when the idea took hold at the town level.

Danny Hartigan, one of many skaters who spent time at Byrd’s ramp, recalled that first public hearing. “There was a line out the door. There were so many skaters there I couldn’t even get in. We bombarded that meeting.”

Byrd added, “They were kind of in a position where they had to say yes. They gave us carte blanche to do what we needed to do.”

This also prompted Bill Crank to remind the passionate crew of skaters, “If I go down, you’re going down with me.”

A mix of paid construction workers, experienced builders and volunteers, almost all of whom were skaters, went to work at

a furious pace to build the skate park. Such a pace that when they were close to finishing the deep pool end, it was night, and it started drizzling rain.

“The concrete started sloughing down, so the guys finishing the concrete had to build a tarp tent over the deep end,” said Byrd.

The only problem was that, it being night, materials for building a tent structure were nearly impossible to come by…nearly. While the lumberyard was closed, it was still just half a block away, so a couple of volunteers hopped over the fence to grab the needed lumber.

“We went back the next day to pay for it,” said Byrd.

Still, the concrete wasn’t doing what they needed it to do, so they improvised. “Since it kept slumping down, they had to take shovels and start flinging the concrete onto the wall. It was quite the operation,” recalled Byrd.

By the fall of 1997, the park was built and open to the public.

“It was the first one designed and built by skaters in the state,” Hartigan said.

Little did those skaters know what they’d started by creating a new type of skate park complete with a pool section. Not only was it a haven for local skaters, but it attracted some nationwide attention as well.

“It kind of became this Mecca for people to travel to,” said Byrd. “People were coming from all over the country to skate here.”

Crank’s Tank drew not just average skate-tourists, but also professional skaters, as well as the editor of the seminal skateboard magazine Thrasher. There was even an article in Transworld Skateboarding magazine about Crank’s Tank.

“It kind of set the standard for what skateboard parks should be,” said Byrd. “We were kind of pioneers.”

Several people who helped on Crank’s Tank went on to grander projects, building parks all over the world with Team Pain. Team Pain wasn’t done in the Gunnison Valley, either; the company returned to build a 12,000-square-foot concrete park in Gunnison. “They’ve become one of the premier concrete skate park builders,” Byrd said.

The legacy in the Gunnison Valley continues as well. Several of those at the start of the Crank’s Tank build have remained in the area and are now hoping

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“We just want to keep a good skateboarding vibe there,” said Hartigan.

Since Crank’s Tank took shape in 1997, skateboarding locally has been on a rollercoaster ride, but it has seen a recent resurgence. Thanks to the efforts of Joe Steckdaub, Hunter Donleavy and Town of Crested Butte Recreation Supervisor Joey Carpenter, skateboard programs are now offered once again through Crested Butte’s Parks and Recreation Department.

“It was dormant for about five years and then we brought it back,” said Carpenter. “The big reason was Hunter reached out to me through his Capstone class at Western Colorado University. From the beginning he was on board to put the work in and make it happen.”

The renewed interest has the Town of Crested Butte paying attention. For years, skaters have been calling for maintenance to Crank’s Tank. In those years upkeep and repairs were in the hands of volunteers. Recently, the Town has agreed to fund some of the repairs, with Ever Peacock, son of local Pete Peacock, doing the work.

“Pete would buy the materials and get Ever to do the work,” said Hartigan. “He’s great at it.”

The Town may be stepping up even more. According to Parks and Recreation Director Janna Hansen, the Town will go through a public planning effort this summer regarding the skate park, with plans to apply for Great Ooutdoors Colorado and Met Rec funding for possible renovation work in 2022.

But it doesn’t stop there, as Crested Butte South is also interested in having a skate park facility built there. “It’ll be great,” said Hartigan. “You’ll be able to skate in Crank’s Tank, get on the bus, skate in CB South, and then get on the bus and skate in Gunnison.”

And while the announcement met with mixed feelings among the larger skateboard community, skateboarding is now an Olympic sport. Once improvements and an expansion are made on Crank’s Tank and the park in Crested Butte South is built, the three parks in the valley could have Olympic repercussions.

“These kids could essentially train for the Olympics,” said Hartigan. “Skateboarding has come a long way since I was a kid getting arrested for ‘coasting’ in Boston.” b

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