San Juan Club (1894 ~ 1920)
CSU/SigEP has always been committed to sustaining and expanding its partnership with CSU. We have been partners since we were first founded as the San Juan Club back in 1894.
The San Juan Club, was organized September 2, 1894, in the room of Jean B. Balcomb and Abner S. McKee, whom originally conceived the idea after the only dormitory with food service on campus with was closed and re-purposed in 1893. All the students were forced to live and eat off-campus.
It was the first boarding club formed in the connection with the C. A. C., they the objects of the club was defined in their preamble:
We, the rip-ram-snorters, pumpkin huskers, tachymeter squinters, and caliper manipulators of the “San Juan” Boarding Club, in order to form a more satisfactory cuisine, establish boarding facility, insure domestic equauity, provide for the summurn donum, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of mastication, insalivation, deglutition and gastrication to ourselves and our future posterity, do ordain and establish this boarding club for the students who are the recipients of an abundance of sympathetic assistance, but who need something more substantial; or, in other words, for the sole purpose of reducing the price of chuck.
Such an enterprise had never been tried, it was with difficulty that the club was started, but they managed to secure a house located at 646 S. College Avenue, solicit fifteen members to start with, and by the middle of January they had twenty-two, which showed that the club was a success in every respect.
The club meals were always to be ready on time and each member was required to be on time to eat them, provided he has no good excuse, if he is tardy a specific length of time he would be fined $.10 or he may appease the wrath of the cook by washing dishes.
By 1898 the membership became so great the club became a necessary appendage of the college. The club provided more than nutrition, it provided substance for the sole. Members would stay long after meals were served, do homework, hold meetings in the dinning-rooms and host events for fellow students.
San Juan Club Founding Fathers
Jean B. Balcomb, 1895
Comes to us from Success, Kansas, having been born in the good old Empire State in 1868. His early education was obtained in the district schools of Illinois and Kansas, and he was a student in the State Normal till within six months of graduation.
He is familiar with farm work and the use of carpenters’ tools and has had four years of experience in school teaching. In 1893 he worked at carpentering on the World’s Fair buildings and entered the college at the close of the fall term of that year.
He is a young man of strong religious convictions, and in ’94 and ’95 was President of the Y. M. C. A., and teacher of their Bible-class during the spring term of ’94. The Columbian Literary Society elected him its President in 1894, and in 1895 he was chosen art editor of the “ Silver Spruce.”
He has acquired the power of concentration, and places work before pleasure. He excels in mathematics and is one of the best students in his class. Mr. Halcomb possesses both ability and energy, and whether lie turns his talents in the direction of evangelistic work or civil engineering, he possesses the ability to make a record of which to be proud.
Rocky Mountain Collegian-Volume IV Number 10, June 1, 1895
ABNER SHERMAN MCKEE, 1896
Was a native of Mercer County, Illinois. He is one of the most intelligent and best known of his class. After being brought into this world of woe in 1870, Feb. 11th, he was trained in the way that he should grow in the Delta, Colo., schools.
When his business life had begun he spent five years in the immature Cripple Creek, where he owns interests in mining property, and in roughing it over the state. He owns some interests in the vicinity of Timnath, and makes frequent trips to Denver on business.
The College opened to receive him in 1890, but sickness has made him a thankful member of the class which graduates this week and he became "one of us” in time to assist at the tree-planting in the spring of 1894. Ab. is of fair stature, rather slight, of fair complexion and flaxen haired.
He has taken the course in Mechanical Engineering and expects to follow the profession of Mechanics in the future. In the battalion he has become 1st Lieutenant of his company. He has had his turn at the pilot wheel of the class vessel; been president of the Columbian Literary Society in the spring term of 1895; has been business manager of the Collegian; steward of the San Juan club; and was a devoted member of the Columbian Program Committee.
Rocky Mountain Collegian-Volume V, Number 9, June 1, 1896