Monday, November 13, 2006

Pikes Peak Floral Co. lives on .... in Texas ... and Louisiana ... and Tennessee

Pikes Peak Floral Co. was registered to do business in Colorado Springs on Dec. 10, 1904, and is still carrying the Pikes Peak name more than century later ... even though its nearest office is 963.25 miles away from its mountain namesake, in Houston. Pikes Peak Floral Co. was a retail, wholesale and flower growing business initially and stayed that way until brothers Charles and Ora Ben Haley, Jim Kelly and several other investors bought the East Columbia Street company after World War II and rebranded it as Pikes Peak Greenhouses Inc. They split off the retail operation to a former employee to concentrate on growing and wholesale in the early 50s.

The Haley family opened a branch in Houston in 1978, which was incorporated as Pikes Peak of Texas in 1982, adding its own branch offices in New Orleans, Memphis, Dallas and Austin. The last vestiges of the Colorado Springs arm of the original Pikes Peak Floral Co. were removed within the past five years when Charles T. Haley sold his Flower Stop retail location to Wild Birds Unlimited and brother Tim Haley closed the Pikes Peak Greenhouses on Nichols Boulevard. Pikes Peak Floral, the retail shop which was spun off from the company in the early 50s, shut down its store at 17 E. Kiowa St. just over a year ago

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