Colorado Springs Flea Market

On Saturday and Sunday mornings at 5225 E. Platte Ave., on the east side of Colorado Springs, sellers lay out tools, toys, antiques and collectables on the outdoor lots, garage-sale style. The indoor shops open alongside them, as they do all year. From May through August the market adds Friday hours. Its own pages count hundreds of local sellers each weekend. The owners’ 2019 announcement put the figure at more than 500 vendors across 25 acres “at the base of the foothills.” Randy Cloud, whose family ran the place for decades, told the Colorado Springs Business Journal in 2016, “It’s kind of amazing to think we’re supporting 600 small businesses every weekend.”

Bumper boats and Paco’s Tacos

A concession stand is open every weekend, and Paco’s Tacos serves as the on-site restaurant. There is live music on weekends and a large shaded area for sitting. Children have bumper boats, a super slide and a bounce house. In 2016 the Business Journal reported that the restaurant held a liquor license, and that customers could “sip a margarita or a beer while perusing used books, one-of-a-kind antiques, vintage dishes.”

Shoppers’ reviews, reprinted on the market’s site, list what people carried home. Patricia B. bought “fresh wildflower made honey” and a belt buckle for her boyfriend, and at the fruit stand she had lychee for the first time. Melissa S. paid $2 to get in, parked free, and wrote that her favorites “were all the different knives they had.”

Cloud described the trade in 2016. “Over the years, it’s changed from selling things people didn’t want to being the place to go if you’re looking for something collectible,” he said. “Buyers come here with something in mind that they might resell later. Sellers do the same thing — it moves back and forth.” He told of a customer who started selling photographs at the market and a few years later opened a shop in The Citadel mall. “If you can’t make it at a flea market,” Cloud said, “you won’t make it somewhere else.”

Rocky the rabbit on North Nevada Avenue

The market began at a dog track. Colorado voters legalized betting on horse and dog racing in 1948. The next year attorney Martin Murphy incorporated the Rocky Mountain Kennel Club, won a state racing license, and secured a site on North Nevada Avenue, then 2 miles north of Colorado Springs. He ordered concrete poured and a prefabricated steel grandstand put up, and the grandstand went up in six weeks. Jerry Wagner, president of Transit Mix Concrete Co., had the contract. When Murphy could not pay, Wagner took stock in the racing company instead, and he and his wife, Red, joined the owners. A year later he was running the club.

Opening night, July 21, 1949, drew a sellout crowd estimated at 2,500; a photo caption in the same Gazette article gives 4,500. Track staff built charcoal fires under the grandstand to keep gamblers warm on cold nights. Greyhounds chased a mechanical rabbit called Rocky. The Wagners’ daughter Patricia and Don Cloud were junior high sweethearts who worked at the track before they married in 1954. “We had five children, and every one of them worked at the dog track,” Don Cloud told the Gazette in 2014. Attendance reached a record 165,929 for the three-month season of 1955. By 1988 the annual wagering approached $50 million. In season the track kept 500 or 600 dogs and about 350 staff a night.

From the parking lot to East Platte Avenue

The family diversified by opening a flea market in the track’s parking lot on offseason weekends. Bill Vogrin of the Gazette wrote in 2014 that this began in 1968. The market’s own history and Randy Cloud, speaking in 2019, give 1978 as its start. By 1991, according to the Gazette, the market had grown popular enough that the Clouds bought 120 acres on East Platte Avenue near Powers Boulevard and moved it there. The 2016 Business Journal article dates the market’s time on Platte Avenue from 1993. That article described thousands of people filling a 35-acre site every weekend, “except when the snow flies.”

Cripple Creek’s casinos opened in 1991, and crowds at the track began to fade. In 1995 the family spent $9 million on Red and Jerry’s, an off-track betting complex in Sheridan, south of Denver, named for the grandparents. The Gazette says the family sold the greyhound park in 2001; its photo captions say Karen Cloud was general manager until the sale in 2002. Live racing ended in 2005, and the track closed in 2008. When Vogrin walked the grounds in 2014, he found weeds on the track, airsoft players in the east grandstand, and people sheltering in the concrete-block kennels. Don Cloud, then 81, said, “Probably the best way to go is to just tear it down.”

Racing blankets in the office

Karen Cloud and her brother Randy were managing the family’s remaining businesses by then. In 2014 the flea market offices held the track’s memorabilia: scrapbooks of photographs, the numbered racing blankets the dogs wore, programs, and the printing plates. The siblings recalled wiener dog races and “mongrel marathons,” when the public was invited to run their pets around the oval. “It’s in our past,” Randy said. “We’ve moved on.”

On April 1, 2019, Denver-based United Flea Markets announced that it had bought the Colorado Springs Flea Market. It was the company’s 11th market and its second in Colorado, after one in Henderson. Rob Sieban, the company’s president, said, “We’re honored that the Cloud family has entrusted us to take the reins and build on their strong foundation.” The new owners announced plans for Wi-Fi throughout the grounds and new rides. “The Colorado Springs Flea Market has been a big part of our family since its inception in 1978,” Randy Cloud said. He stayed on after the sale to manage the market’s day-to-day operations.