Brief by Central Staff
Colorado lore – April 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
John A. Love, who died in January, was the first person ever elected to three four-year terms as Colorado’s governor. He took office in 1963, and remained there until 1973, when he resigned to become the nation’s first “energy czar.”
Love, a moderate Republican, was from Colorado Springs, seat of El Paso County. In early March, state Sen. Bill Thiebaut, a Pueblo Democrat, introduced a bill to designate U.S 24, as it passes through El Paso County, as “the John A. Love Memorial Highway.”
That’s all well and good, and as far as we’re concerned, they can extend the name across South Park, over Trout Creek Pass, up to Leadville, and over Tennessee Pass past Minturn, where U.S. 24 now ends at the junction with Interstate 70. Before the numbers were adjusted about 20 years ago, Highway 24 continued on west, and back in the 1920s, it was known as “the Pikes Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway.”
However, we actually prefer an earlier proposal from 25 years ago to honor the former governor by renaming one of the high bores on Interstate 70 in Colorado: “the Tunnel of Love.”