This year, on October 25, the Emma Crawford Coffin Races were held in the streets of Manitou Springs after the parade to kick off the festival, showing the participants coffin designs, costumes and team names.
This annual event was inspired by Emma Crawford after her death in 1891 when her coffin slid down the mountain into town due to the heavy rain.
In coffin races, multiple teams race the coffins two by two until there is a final winner. There is usually one person in the coffin and four people around the coffin pushing it.
Jacob Jacobsen, is the current manager of the Manitou Springs Penny Arcade and worked as architect of their coffin. Jacobsen used the design to represent and advertise the arcade. “Since we are an arcade, we wanted it to be a similar theme, we wanted to promote it,” Jacobsen said. “I thought it would be a good idea to make our coffin out of a game cabinet.”
Mia Alonzo, an employee of the arcade, was able to help by picking out the parts and design. “Jacob and I went to go get the parts, and then I did the painting,” Alonzo said. “It was just spray paint and touching up the actual design. They only made 20 of the game that we used, and only five of them with this design of the game, so I didn’t want to change a bunch of it.”
The process felt time consuming for Jacobsen because of the many pieces he had to buy for the coffin. “The process was very long and very annoying. First we had to strip out the game cabinet including all of its technology, its screen and most of the stuff inside the game cabinet. After that we had to get wood materials, bolts and wheels so we could actually make it into a coffin,” Jacobsen said. “I came in for a month, and I built it using those materials.”
Jacobsen used many materials for the coffin and built it at his work place. “I used the game cabinet, which was provided by the Penny Arcade. I then bought caster wheels from Amazon that swiveled to that dent. Then I got wood and wood screws from Ace and Home Depot. And lastly, I got carriage bolts, nut locks and washers as well,” Jacobsen said. “I built the coffin in the main area of the Penny Arcade for all the managers. It’s called rock shop. It was just a private building for employees at the Penny Arcade.”
Joe Jacobsen, a contributor to the design and building of the coffin, feels that it was pretty difficult to figure out, but the end product was worth it. “It was very challenging figuring out how to engineer it so that it wouldn’t fall apart, because we were making it out of an old arcade game,” he said. “We were able to complete it, and it did pretty well in the race. So it was a fun experience. I think it went really well for the first time doing it.”
Jacob Jacobsen and the team who were racing his coffin made a plan to decide who would push and be in the coffin during the race. “I decided to push the coffin because I’m not very light, and we had someone working at the arcade that was much lighter than me; so we chose him to be in the coffin, and I chose to be a runner because we didn’t have enough people to run, and not a lot of people at the Penny Arcade wanted participate in the coffin races. Since I was building it, I decided I might as well be a runner, too,” Jacobsen said. “I went to go on daily runs every day to help build up stamina and exercise so I could run down Manitou Avenue.”
Alonzo was able to help with many preparations, so that the team would be ready for the race. “So we’re actually going to take it to the MAC tonight, and we’re just gonna do some touch ups so we can actually push on the poll. So we’re just gonna actually build some of it at the MAC. I’m very excited, super excited,” Alonzo said. “We locked in and we did it in our free time, did it whenever we could.”
Joe Jacobsen was able to contribute by making sure the coffin was ready to race. “On the day of the race, we supported them by being there to check it over before they ran with it, and then we walked in the parade with them before they raced,” he said.
Alonzo felt comfortable with the end result after the coffin was fully finished on the day of the race, which was her favorite part of the process. “Honestly, it comes together at the end, like actually seeing everything is really nice, because originally we thought we weren’t even going to race, but it turned out pretty good. And it was really pretty,” Alonzo said.” It was really just an all-manager team, most of them were managers, and I thought that was really silly, but fun.”
