The city of Durango announced on Tuesday the long-standing Reading Club of Durango is this year’s recipient of the Library Community Champion award.
The Reading Club of Durango is one of Colorado’s earliest federated women’s clubs. It was also known as the Ladies Reading Club of Durango.
The club was founded in 1882 and went on to found the city of Durango’s first library seven years later in 1889, a news release from the city says.
The library was located where the Carnegie building is at 1188 East Second Ave.
“The Club wrote to Andrew Carnegie to obtain funding for the building in 1907, and donated its own small library of books, furnishings and fixtures to the new library,” the release says.
In 2015, the Reading Club of Durango donated scrapbooks to the Center of Southwest Studies “in keeping with its mission to guard tradition and flex with contemporary times,” the release says.
Several members of the club were “instrumental” in protecting Mesa Verde National Park. It donated $25 in 1926 to help build a library at the national park.
The Durango Public Library’s Friends of the Library and the Library Advisory Board choose a winner of the Library Community Champion Award every year.
The release said the Reading Club of Durango “has a long and storied past with” the town, adding that 2023 is the 141st year in support of libraries.
A proclamation is scheduled to be read at the next Durango City Council meeting on Tuesday. Proclamations are typically read near the top of City Council meetings.
At 3 p.m. on Oct. 30, an hourlong celebration for the Reading Club of Durango is scheduled to take place at the Durango Public Library.
cburney@durangoherald.com
