Brief by Central Staff
Guffey – July 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine
The mayor of Guffey got a few minutes of fame recently, when Denver TV station KMGH featured the public official on its 10 p.m. newscast.
Guffey, which sits between South Park and Cañon City, isn’t incorporated, but the settlement has a mayor anyway. Her name is Shanda, and she’s a seven-year-old golden retriever.
Bruce Buffington owns the general store and the mayor, and explained that it’s a tradition in Guffey that the mayor be a pet owned by the owner of the general store.
The first three mayors were cats; two disappeared into the woods, perhaps to be recalled by coyotes, and the last one moved to a new home four years ago when Buffington bought the store.
And so in 1993, Shanda got the position for life, term limits or no. She’s pretty laid back, Buffington said, so the municipal government isn’t all that active.
Buffington said we might be able to meet Shanda the celebrity mayor at the annual Guffey Chicken Festival on July 19.