TASTE THE ESSENCE OF RATTLESNAKE KATE
Historical figures are on the menu as local businesses jump on board the Greeley History Museum’s newest marketing campaign that’s bolstered by the city of Greeley’s promotional concept, Greeley Grub.
“The community is taking this history theme and our Rattlesnake Kate story and helping promote it by developing menu items and sharing them on their social media,” said Rachel Egli, the city of Greeley’s content marketing supervisor. “It’s becoming a visitor experience with many layers.”
Aunt Helen’s Coffee House invented the Rattlesnake Kate latte and 477 Distilling brought back its cocktail of the same name from a previous menu that had included people relevant to Greeley history. Both businesses are in downtown Greeley.
City of Greeley’s museums manager Chris Bowles said the Greeley History Museum’s t-shirt marketing effort, which focused on “Colorado Grit,” feels like a tribute to his grandmother.
When he was having internal conversations with his staff about what to print on the limited edition t-shirt in the museum’s campaign featuring notable northern Colorado people from the past, he said he really liked the word “grit.”
“It reminded me of my grandmother, a plains woman living through the
Aunt Helen’s Coffee House invented the Rattlesnake Kate latte, a traditional latte with amaretto and cinnamon topped with nutmeg that offers a good intersection of spicy and sweet to match Kate Slaughterback’s character. The Greeley History Museum’s limited edition Colorado Grit t-shirt is available at locations promoting the museum’s campaign and the museum’s gift shop.
Aunt Helen’s Coffee House | 800 Eighth Ave., Greeley | aunthelenscoffeehouse.com AH Express | 940Ninth Ave., Greeley | aunthelensexpress@gmail.com
477 Distilling | 825 Ninth St., Greeley | 477distilling.com
Depression and the Dust Bowl,” Bowles said. She had a daughter die of dust pneumonia. Nothing ever
phased her, she had an attitude that, ‘we just keep going,’ much like other women of that generation. They took the good with the bad and kept moving forward.”
The museum’s t-shirt features an image of Kate Mchale Slaughterback, a woman more familiarly known in these parts as Rattlesnake Kate, thanks to her epic rattlesnake-killing afternoon on Oct. 28,1925, when she and her adopted 3-year old son, Ernie,
were riding on horseback near her farm in Hudson. According to a Greeley History Museum blog post, Slaughterback had heard shots fired at a lake nearby and the pair left their cabin hoping to find a few downed ducks for dinner left by the hunters. Instead, the mother and son were surrounded by over 100 migrating rattlesnakes.
Slaughterback killed a few snakes with her .22 Remington rifle until she’d emptied the cartridge, however with snakes surrounding the horse, Slaughterback climbed down, snatched a wooden sign close at hand and clubbed the rest of the rattlers to death. All told, she killed 140 snakes that afternoon and sewed a flapper-style dress from the cured skins, along with